'Tis the season for wish lists, at least in our commercialized culture. In that spirit, I thought I'd put out a wish list of affordances for an imaginary LMS.

I want to be able to post grades right at the point of responding to the learner's posting of the assignment. I don't want to have to skip over several screens in order to punch in a grade. I want a running update of each learner's grade at any time (so they won't email me asking how to add the scores earned and divide that by the sum of the points possible). I want a SCORM-pointer and a repository for digital learning objects. I want eportfolio functionality with rubric feedback. I want automated enrollment and automated "gating" of assignments. I want to be able to cluster all related assignments and works in the same place instead of having to scatter them in different areas of the online classroom. I want to be able to annotate the online resources and to have others annotate...and to be able to layer those annotations to see different points of view. Also, I want guest speakers with different areas of expertise to be able to come in and look at a document and annotate that...and offer their differing layers of insight. I want to be able to make notes about various learners in my classes, and have those notes float as a reminder when I roll over a learner name, so I can remember their individual issues and challenges. My face-to-face learners tend to be "humanized" more quickly and easily. I can customize the teaching and learning more easily based on their unique needs and circumstances. I want ease of real-time synchronous multi-user video interactivity. I want the software interface design to be accessible and plug-and-play.

Ooh. Yeah, wish lists are not pretty. It's easy enough to want, but the actualizing of these various functionalities may mean an enormous amount of development work.