LAMS, the Learning Activity Management System, is a free and open-sourceLearning Design system for designing, managing and delivering online collaborative learning activities. It provides teachers with a visual authoring environment for creating sequences of learning activities. These activities can include a range of individual tasks, small group work and whole class activities based on both content and collaboration. LAMS is 'inspired' by the concept and principles of IMS Learning Design. LAMS is developed in collaboration with LAMS Foundation and a number of educational institutionsaround the world. LAMS has been developed since 2003. LAMS International and LAMS Education Asia are commercial companies that provide development and support services for the LAMS platform.
Community
The LAMS community website is a global community website for teachers and developers who use the LAMS software. As of March 2020, the LAMS Community had over 12500 members across 80 countries sharing 3900 sequences.
Available versions
As of December 2019, the current stable version of LAMS is 4.0 Version 4.0 introduces analytics, central question bank, learning outcomes mappings, improved content support, IMS LTI enhancements and hundreds of improvements and bug fixes
LAMS can be integrated with any LMS system that implement IMS LTI as a consumer. However, IMS LTI 1.2 has some important limitations, therefore native integration with other LMSs. LAMS is both an IMS LTI 1.3 consumer and service provider, including Deep Linking and Membership extensions. The LAMS Tool Contract is an architecture to allow Tool Interoperability across Learning Management Systems. It allows tools to become "pluggable" in any LMS. The LAMS Tool Contract is the underlying architecture of LAMS and currently tools from other platforms like Moodle and dotLRN can be used within LAMS.
Conferences
These international conferences are academic conferences where papers submitted are peer-reviewed by members of the conference committee. The main topics of this conferences are LAMS and Learning Design and are mainly in English. The first LAMS Conference was in Sydney Australia in December, 2006. Usually there are two conferences a year, one in Australia and one in Europe or Asia.
2011 Asia Pacific LAMS & Learning Design. Singapore, June, 2011
The 6th International LAMS & Learning Design Conference, Sydney, December 2011
The 7th International LAMS & Learning Design Conference, Sydney, December 2012
The 8th International LAMS & Learning Design Conference, Singapore 2013
The 9th International LAMS & Learning Design Conference, Singapore November 2014
Awards and recognition
LAMS in conjunction with the associated LAMS Community won a Gold Award and Best Learning System at the IMS Global Learning Consortium's Learning Impact Awards in May 2009.
