LMS Evaluation and Procurement for a University Continuing Education Office

The Challenge

A university’s continuing education office was struggling with its self-hosted learning management system. The department lacked the in-house technical skills to keep the system updated and functional, and, more critically, the LMS couldn’t integrate with the university’s student information system or payment processing, creating major operational gaps.

The office needed a new LMS that could meet their functional needs and integrate with existing institutional systems, but lacked a structured process for evaluating options and building a confident, well-supported recommendation.

My Approach

I led the evaluation and procurement process from requirements through recommendation:

• Gathered requirements across stakeholders, consulting closely with the department as well as the university’s IT department and the office managing the main university-wide LMS, to understand both our specific needs and broader institutional constraints.
• Coordinated and evaluated vendor demos, using the sessions to test each system against our requirements, including integration capabilities with student information and payment systems.
• Built a feature checklist spreadsheet to visually compare vendors side-by-side against our core requirements, translating demo notes and findings into a clear, comparable format.
• Made a final recommendation grounded in both the functional evaluation and my understanding of the department’s day-to-day instructional and operational needs.
• Led the migration process after the vendor was selected, helping ensure existing courses transferred smoothly to the new system.
• Created guides for staff to smoothly migrate and create new courses, and support learners in with course registration steps.

The Outcome

The recommended vendor was selected and implemented successfully. The office received strong ongoing support from the vendor, and course migration went smoothly enough that the next round of courses launched on schedule that fall. Most importantly, the new system let the office collect registration fees before giving learners access to a course, which was something the previous system couldn’t support. This was a game-changer for the department in terms of daily operations and revenue captured.