Ben,
Thanks for your reply. I had been questioning whether it were possible to allow administrators to transfer classes between departments, allow the public to view faqs or files, etc. Upon further research, the permission/context system is extremely flexible and these would simply be business/design choices rather than system limitations.
Regarding UI...redundant contextual clues, clear separations between navigation and content, and consistent metaphors are great strengths of the microsoft information products. In the cyber learning world the prometheus system does a pretty good job with this, starting from portlets for the personal home page but moving into course/community pages with left sided navigation cleanly separated from content (A demo can be accessed via http://cybercampus.ggu.edu/). Again, clearly a choice, not a limitation.
