Today was the first day of Professor Lynne Kiesling’s Economic 318 History of Economic Thought course. Professor Kiesling is piloting NUIT Academic & Research Technologies experiment with a new Learning Management System called LoudCloud Systems. I am the Project Manager for this exciting and innovative LoudCloud pilot and have been working closely with NUIT A&RT, the LoudCloud team, and Professor Kiesling since January to implement her course within this platform. LoudCloud enables instructors beyond the basic functionalities of a Learning Management system, granting the ability to utilize behavioral analytics to gauge student participation and integrate more social media aspects to enhance the class experience. Features include a class wall, ability to “like” posts and readings, and have readings in LoudBooks where students can annotate, ask Professor Kiesling specific questions about readings, and share comments with classmates. Professor Kiesling has also integrated her Course Nuggets created by the NUIT AR&T AMPS team with the Mediasite interface that provides captioning within LoudCloud to supplement classroom topics. We are very excited to support this pilot with Professor Kiesling and her ECON 318 course. As Professor Kiesling told her students this morning, “We can come together as a scholarly community within the LoudCloud platform to enrich the classroom experience.” We cannot wait to see the results of this cutting edge Learning Management System experiment at Northwestern University!
