Category Archives: LMS Selection

As a group, we tried to consider the specific context of the program we were developing by digging into the nitty gritty of accessibility, readiness, and cultural responsiveness. Overall, I am happy with the level of detail in our rubric and feel that it would be an effective starting point to help select an appropriate technology solution. In terms of working as a group, my team members were all diligent and engaged. As always, it can be a bit of a challenge to overcome differences in time zones, expectations, and work styles, but we managed to pull together to collaborate.

The context of working in Aboriginal communities was quite new to me, but I really appreciated the support my group shared in piecing together our experiences and research to understand the case as best we could. I appreciated gaining insight into how one might approach the selection of an LMS, but would also be interested to explore some of the LMS platforms in a more hands on way as well.

When reflecting upon the process of completing Assignment Two, I made connections back to Chickering’s article (1996) specifically the principles of reciprocity and cooperation among students and respecting diverse talents and ways of learning. Through the use of Google Hangouts and shared Google Documents, our team was able to learn face-to-face which allowed for the sharing of ideas and responding to others’ thinking. Generally, our conversations allowed us to build upon each other’s knowledge in order to produce a better product. As a team we agreed that a key criteria for an LMS to exceeded expectations was the inclusion of social media applications into the High Priority section of the rubric. This decision was based upon Spiro’s (2014) idea that the integration of social media tools into a LMS promotes stronger learning communities through faster communication and more engaging activities. Tools such as Twitter, blogs, wikis and social networking sites like Instagram when used effectively create strong student engagement.This assignment really brought to the forefront my understanding of how,” good practice respects diverse talents and ways of learning.” Chickering & Ehrmann (1996) While some of my group members were academically and technologically strong, others were better organizers and leaders. Our diverse talents allowed for deeper collaboration and learning. Finally as an educator who strives to provide active learning for my students, I appreciated the necessity of applying the reading material and additional research articles in order to create a valuable assessment tool that met the requirements of the case study, as it created a situation where my ability to synthesize became the focus rather than my recall. It is clear that the use of Chickering and Ehrmann’s Seven Principles as a framework for creating assignments using technology is not just theoretical, but rather a practical design tool for teachers online and in the classroom.

Chickering, A. W., & Ehrmann, S., C. (1996). Implementing the seven principles: Technology as lever. American Association for Higher Education Bulletin, 49(2), 3-6. Retrieved from http://www.aahea.org/articles/sevenprinciples.htm

Spiro, K. (2014). 5 elearning trends leading to the end of the Learning Management Systems. Retrieved from http://elearningindustry.com/5-elearning-trends-leading-to-the-end-of-the-learning-management-system

For the LMS selection: Evaluation rubric assignment, I worked with Agnieszka, Tracey, and Samantha. We were tasked with developing an evaluation rubric to decide which LMS would best suit Yukon Education Student Network (YESNet) who want to develop blended secondary courses that are relevant from an Aboriginal perspective. We had to take into consideration the bandwidth and reliability of internet access and possible upcoming extension.

As I did not have any experience working with indigenous communities before, I found the assignment quite challenging. It was really important to understand the restrictions of their traditional territories, needs and cultural perspectives.  Agnieszka found and shared a few valuable resources that helped me review and analyse the adoption and use of digital technologies specifics in remote and northern Indigenous communities in Canada and get a perspective on their challenges and possible project success issues.

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The experience of working collaboratively in creating a rubric for the Athabasca University was very interesting. For our case study, the focus was to expand Athabasca’s programs to South Asia but one of their main concerns was the internet connectivity in the remote areas. We started off with everyone brainstorming ideas on a Google Doc and interestingly enough, we all noted down very similar criteria. This formulated our five main categories for our rubric: functionality, accessibility, support, technical requirements and cost. We elaborated on each category by using the SECTIONS framework (Bates, 2014) as the foundation and ensuring all the components were addressed in the rubric criteria.

Throughout the process, I realize that it was very difficult to include detailed evaluation criteria for every stakeholder involved. Although our goal was to ensure that administrators, instructors, and students are all accounted for in the evaluation, it was not possible to address the independent needs of each stakeholder equally in the rubric. It is obvious that certain criteria are of major concern to one stakeholder and not so much to another. Continue reading →

For the LMS selection and rubric assignment, I worked with Paige, Mimi, Faeyza, and Andrew and our target audience was adult Francophone students looking to complete High School and improve their ability to read and write English.

Overall, this project was an excellent exercise in learning more about LMS selection, and how to work as a team to determine necessary elements in evaluating LMS systems for specific user needs. We recognized as a team how difficult it can be to accommodate each individual user’s needs, and through that initial frustration, we learned how important discussions and collaboration are in selecting the best LMS possible. While we had originally attempted to organize our rubric by users: Students, Teachers, and Administrators, we quickly realized it is difficult to divide these users in such a separate way. We realized that there is a lot more overlap between users than we originally thought, but it was important we came to this realization during our process, as we diligently worked to ensure that our collective final rubric factored in the needs of all the potential different users, facilitating their different needs (Spiro, 2014). Ultimately we divided our rubric into three sections, High Priority, Medium Priority, and Low Priority. The High Priority chart focused on LMS elements that are essential and necessary to most LMS users. Medium and Low Priorities are more “nice to have” items that allow for greater customization, and Low Priorities, more specifically, are for future predictions. Then we further organized each rubric section into Technical, Functional, and Network (with colour coding) to allow a greater visual overview of which elements the LMS is targeting.

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There were three main challenges to this assignment: understanding the scenario, designing the rubric, and identifying the LMS features and functions.

As I read the scenario, I realized that it only provided a few clues about the exact requirements. I turned to the module readings, Spiro (2014), Porto (2013) and Coats, James & Baldwin (2005), to gather more information about the needs, size, scale and type of the LMS that would fit the scenario. However, the readings did little to clear the clouds. I then reviewed Bates (2014) SECTIONS model and knew this was the framework that could be used as a guide. Continue reading →

Working as a group, we first aligned on focusing on the given scenario (YESTNet Pilot Program and Aboriginal learning) and providing as much detail and depth as possible so that creating the rubric could be very specific. We found the rubric the most effective when the criteria were very detailed and pointed. This required doing a lot of research to investigate ever dimension of the context of the scenario. The first step was to understand the dimensions of the YESNet Pilot Program as it relates to Aboriginal learning (Greenall et al. 2001). When we couldn’t find actual data, we made reasonable assumptions (i.e. the allotted budget). We then defined large sweeping categories (always relating back to the original context) like accessibility (O’Donnell 2016), readiness (Sharp et al. 2011) and cultural responsiveness (Greenall 2005). We then delved into each category. For accessibility, we evaluated items like technical access, special learner needs, and usability (Medina-Flores et al. 2015) keeping the overall cultural context in mind. For readiness and support, one point we looked at was the need for face-to-face technical support as an outcome of the cultural background (Yukon 2007). We looked at how the platform could effectively support the blended learning requirements (Rueckl 2017) all while fitting within the budget constraints and potential future deployment plans.

There really are so many different factors that impact the decision to be made on choosing an LMS. It’s important to start with the breadth of the situation before choosing the areas to evaluate. And there are so many aspects of the categories to evaluate, that priorities need to be assigned to ensure critical decisions can be made. There is clearly not one LMS that will suit every scenario but evaluation with the help of a rubric can help focus the decision.

References:

Greenall, D., and L. Stelios. (2001). Aboriginal Digital Opportunities: Addressing Aboriginal Learning Needs through the Use of Learning Technologies. The Conference Board of Canada

Greenall, D. (2005). Final report October 2005: Formative evaluation of the Sunchild, E-Learning Community. Ottawa: The Conference Board of Canada. Retrieved from https://www.sccyber.net/images/pdf/Conference_Board_of_Canada_Study_2005.pdf [accesed 20 January 2018]

Medina-Flores, R., & Morales-Gamboa, R. (2015). Usability evaluation by experts of a learning management system. IEEE Revista Iberoamericana de Tecnologias del Aprendizaje, 10(4), pp. 197-203.

O’Donnell, S., B. Beaton, R. McMahon, H. E. Hudson, D. Williams, T. Whiteduck, and First Nations Education Council. (2016). “Digital Technology Adoption in Remote and Northern Indigenous Communities in Canada.” Canadian Sociological Association 2016 Annual Conference. Calgary, AB: University of Calgary,

Rueckl, R. (2017) Don’t Ditch the Classroom: How an LMS Can Support Blended Learning. Software Advice. Retrieved from https://www.softwareadvice.com/resources/lms-blended-learning/Retrieved from https://www.softwareadvice.com/resources/lms-blended-learning/ [accessed on 20 January 2018]

Sharpe, D., D. Philpott, and M. Bourgeois. (2011). “A Pan-Canadian Survey of E-Learning for Aboriginal High School Students.” Killick Centre for E-Learning Research Report. http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/citations?doi=10.1.1.230.8146 [accessed 21 January 2018]

Yukon Education Reform Project (2007) Final Report. Department of Education, Yukon. Retrieved from http://www.education.gov.yk.ca/pdf/publications/ed_reform_report.pdf [accessed 25 January 2017]

The completion of the assignment has been a real learning curve for me. First, I was not even sure what we were asked to do. I relied on my team-mates to clarify what a rubric for an LMS might look like while I took on another task, namely the preparation of the Précis. Second, when I finally got the grasp of what a rubric for LMS was and how to assess it (Pappas 2013, Kabassi et al. 2015, Rueckl 2017), I found myself not even wanting an LMS for this particular case study. Continue reading →

The act of developing a rubric for selection of an LMS, while enrolled in an online course hosted on an LMS is fertile ground for reflection!  Being my 7th course, I am now pretty comfortable navigating within the sandbox provided–both Blackboard and Canvas.  In a very meta way, I find that the MET program designs their courses in a way that follows best practice–our group work on this very project, for example, was a great exercise in meaning making in a social context.  Continue reading →

The LMS rubric assignment allowed me to gain a greater understanding of the decisions that organizations and institutions must make regarding Learning Management Systems. The members of my group were great to work with, because everyone was flexible with meeting times and completed their work by our self-imposed deadlines. I felt that the assignment was equitably divided between our five members and was done at the same level of quality by all.

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The process of preparing a rubric for Athabasca University’s new Learning Management System (LMS) was helpful in exposing the fact that a single framework could never meet the needs of every institution. Nor could a single framework meet the needs of one institution over time as needs and priorities are constantly changing. For example, when Athabasca University began contemplating the need for marketing their courses in South East Asia, it was clear that the direct demands placed on their current LMS would change, such as the need for functionality over low bandwidth internet and meeting security and accessibility regulations in different countries (Squires, 2017).

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One of the benefits of this assignment for me personally was the ability to really dive into what a learning management system is and how to go about choosing the right one for a particular task. When I first came into this course I had no idea what LMS even stood for. I was surprised to know that I had been using a variety of them for years, but hadn’t really considered why I had used them.  Having taken a much closer look at the work by researchers like Bates and Chickering and Ehrmann, I have a much better foundation that I can look to when choosing an LMS in the future for myself or my students. With so many options now available, having sound research or a guideline like SECTIONS is so beneficial when choosing an LMS.  Pairing that with a well structured rubric and you’re really setting yourself up for success.  Of course no LMS is perfect and you most likely will encounter issues, but doing the upfront work I feel will pay off. I’m hoping this will help guide my thinking in the future of this course as we work on our future assignments.

I found the group work aspect informative when we had the chance to meet, but I unfortunately missed one of the early meetings and felt a bit lost.  The group was very accommodating and had left a part of the assignment that I could complete once I was able to touch base with them all. They all worked quickly and effectively to finish the assignment and it was nice to have a conversation about the course as well as hear more about their backgrounds. Way to go team!

Jamie

The case study assigned to our group was of particular interest to me as an International Development professional. Evaluating LMS platforms for the English-speaking learner in South Asia encouraged me to extend and reflect on my current knowledge of delivering offline learning solutions to the non-English speaking, marginalised populations in Asia and Africa that my professional work currently focuses on. This assignment allowed me to think about the South Asia region from a different perspective; as an educator, it reminded me to think about micro environments and the implications for designing optimal learning environments.

Most interesting to me was understanding the expectations of online learners in a developing country context (Ssekakubo, Suleman & Marsden, 2012). Reading about this topic allowed me to look beyond my pre-conceptions and to resist the urge to project onto different contexts the type of online learning I am accustomed to here in Canada. The ubiquity of internet connectivity I am exposed to as a professional in a Western context isn’t applicable to a region where bandwidth is a barrier, data usage is expensive, internet connectivity is unreliable and mobile phone devices largely vary from the basic phone to smart phones. These considerations are also underlined by having to reflect on the rich diversity of the South Asian context where each country in the region has varying levels of exposure to online and distance learning (Taylor & Sharma, 1990), schooling in the English language and usage of desktop and mobile devices.

As a result, the group proposed a rubric that would feel the most flexible and welcoming to a diverse range of learners. We highlighted the importance of offline learning mode and its reliable synchronisation upon connecting to the Internet; we emphasised the importance of mobile compatibility and its seamless integration with all types of devices; and we made provisions for language localisation that would provide learners the option to explore their learning between English and their local language through translated and contextualised content and interface. We also reflected on the intersections between these considerations with the other dimensions of LMS selection: support, technical, costs and functionality.

I was also pleased to have worked on the Accessibility considerations for learners with disabilities. This experience opened my eyes to the features I take for granted: being able to read in the default type face no matter the font type, colour or size; being able to navigate through an online platform despite the navigation features; and being able to use any device (i.e. mouse, track pad, mobile touch screen) available to command the platform. One salient example while reading the work of Rangin (2011) on Accessibility considerations was the challenge it poses when websites do not provide a confirmation page or notification once an activity or action is complete. For example, when a user fills a form, clicks submit and does not receive a confirmation that the form has been successfully completed. This prompts users to have to re-navigate through the site, re-populate the form and complete the process again. For a user without accessibility challenge, this is already a frustrating experience that disrupts learning, let alone for those who require additional accessibility support.

Overall I enjoyed this assignment – I was able to reflect on the LMS from a critical standpoint grounded in an applicable context. It also helped that I had excellent group members, all of whom provided expert insight from their own experiences.

References:

Rangin, H. (2011). A Comparison of Learning Management System Accessibility. Disability Resources and Educational Services (DRES).  Illinois Center for Information Technology and Web Accessibility. Retrieved from: http://presentations.cita.illinois.edu/2011-03-csun-lms/

Ssekakubo G, Suleman H & Marsden G. (2012). Learning management systems: Understanding the expectations of learners in developing countries. Retrieved from: http://pubs.cs.‌uct.ac.za‌‌/archive/00000790/01/el2012_F_202_Ssekakubo.pdf

Taylor, J. & Sharma, S. (1990). Distance Education in South Asia: Towards Regional Co-operation. Retrieved from: http://web.worldbank.org/archive/website00236B/WEB/COLL_02.HTM

My personal reflection for this assignment will be divided into two different sections. First I will discuss my experiences with my group, and second I will discuss the rationale, trying to not repeat too much from the assignment!

This assignment designated me to work with Che, Sally and Ghassan. We initially discussed our ideas over Google Hangouts, which led to a couple video chats that allowed us to converse about our evaluation rubric and what we hoped to achieve. I really enjoyed working with this group and it was great to work with someone who works somewhere that had actually gone through the process of choosing a LMS before. This allowed for some great insight behind the procedures and practices that are followed in a real life situations and how a team is developed to choose a LMS. As such, our group was able to go through each and every part of our rubric with the selection team in mind to ensure we covered all areas that were necessary to cover. Continue reading →

Going through the process of this assignment brought to light the many challenges that must be overcome and factors to be considered in order to select an appropriate tool for a learning management system. As an elementary school teacher, all those decisions are already made for me and something I don’t really even contemplate when using the tool(s). The only categories of the Bates model that I would really concern myself with would be that of Students and Teaching Functions. While I would also want my students to have rich interactions, this decision would not necessarily be in my hands. When I consider the Students and Teaching Functions categories, I feel that the Chickering and Ehrmann model of the Seven Principles would be more applicable to me as an elementary school teacher. As we indicated in our concluding paragraph, this model appealed to us as having a more pedagogical approach and what I would have to consider using the platform to best suit my students’ needs. Continue reading →

Here is my reflection for our second assignment – LMS selection rubric, linking to my blog. 🙂

I hope you all enjoyed working on this assignment.

For assignment #2, I had the privilege of working with Paige, Alexis, Mimi and Faeyza. Thanks to Natasha for making our groups based on time zones, it was easy to connect three times over the two weeks using Google Hangouts. We did notice how although Blackboard would ‘meet expectations’ according to the rubric, how we often resorted to third-party software (ex. gmail, Drive) as tried-and-true applications. These however are under different privacy agreements compared to Kaltura for example, which is pertinent to consider in context.

From the Bates (2014) and Chickering-Ehrmann (1996) readings, our initial rubric design focused on three LMS aspects: Functional, Technical and Networking. Functional incorporated affordances the LMS provides; Technical incorporated background hardware requirements; and Networking incorporated promoting connectivity not limited to social media. We approached these sections from three varied personas: student, teacher and administrator, since LMS decisions would look different from each perspective. As a teacher, I might focus on usability; technology personnel might focus on server requirements; principals might focus on budget, etc. Our group ultimately decided that framework (refer to Appendix A) was too restrictive given none of us have actual experience being administrators needing imagination, while there would be considerable overlap between descriptors for students and teachers both working in the classroom.

The structure was then redesigned to focus on each criteria, transferring important points from brainstorming each persona into a unified rubric. Instead of all-or-none, we embedded a scoring system to describe the extent to which the LMS does not meet, meets or exceeds expectations for particular topics within each broad category. Delegating tasks among group members was positive and natural, making revisions directly on Google Docs. Towards the end, I was in charge of downloading a copy to reformat before submission, where we experienced slight miscommunication as minor corrections were still being made to the online document as it was being formatted offline. It took a bit more work and time to piece the modifications back together, but otherwise our team experience was phenomenal!

References

Bates, T. (2014). Choosing and using media in education: The SECTIONS model. In Teaching in digital age. Retrieved from https://opentextbc.ca/teachinginadigitalage/part/9-pedagogical-differences-between-media/

Chickering, A. W., & Ehrmann, S., C. (1996). Implementing the seven principles: Technology as lever. American Association for Higher Education Bulletin, 49(2), 3-6. Retrieved from http://www.aahea.org/articles/sevenprinciples.htm

The assignment of creating a rubric to decide on a Learning Management Systems (LMS) for Athabasca University was an interesting endeavor. It demonstrated the complexity of the process of developing a team-created rubric as well as the multiple considerations for implementing and using a sustainable and user-friendly LMS.

Although I do not participate in a committee or process to adopt and maintain the Desire2Learn (D2L) LMS at Camosun College, I am now more confident to share my thoughts and experiences with our LMS to help guide decisions and make improvements that will benefit students and faculty. I create and use rubrics in all my courses, yet this assignment provided a different context that demonstrates the value in assessment for multiple platforms.

I appreciated all my team members and their willingness to create a positive collaborative experience. They readily shared their skills and knowledge regarding Learning Management Systems, as well as contributed to the tasks for assignment completion. Everyone was flexible for scheduling meetings and were actively involved in team conversations. It was helpful to be introduced to new tools for making our processes efficient (e.g., Google Hangout and Google Docs).

Thanks everyone for a great learning experience and first completed group project in my MET courses!

Working to create this rubric deepened my understanding of the complexity of LMS selection for a postsecondary institution. We were tasked with providing an LMS scoring rubric for Athabasca University with the specific intention of expanding the distance-education program at the undergraduate level in the English-speaking South Asian market. An additional consideration was the availability of internet connectivity in remote or underserved areas of the region. A closer look at the Athabasca University mission statement and mandate revealed that the institution is “dedicated to the removal of barriers that restrict access to and success in university-level study and to increasing equality of educational opportunity for adult learners worldwide” (Athabasca University, 2017). Our group adopted this as our foundational understanding in developing the rubric, with accessibility and inclusivity as top priorities. For me, the complexity arose when we tried to articulate which specific rubric design elements were to be included in our final product.

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In completing this assignment, I was able to think a little more critically about some of the decisions that seem “automatic” in my job every day.  I teach Grade 4 for the Calgary Catholic School District, and we are currently in the process of implementing Google Classroom.  We have used the Google suite of tools (Docs, Slides, Sheets, etc.) for a while, but when I asked about Classroom, I was told that “the district is going in a different direction.”  This year, Google Classroom is what we’re using as a district and I haven’t seen a lot of reasoning behind the decision.  Granted, I’m not in a role where I would be privy to that decision-making process, but often we receive an explanation of the rationale behind these decisions.

The SECTIONS model seems quite relevant to upper elementary.  Student access and ease of use issues are paramount.  Students need almost immediate feedback from their teachers and benefit tremendously from a constructivist-style collaborative process with their peers.  Technical support and networking infrastructure issues are something that our district struggles with on a regular basis.  Schools seem to be “testing the waters” to see how these technologies fit with provincial FOIP laws around student privacy.

I enjoyed the chance to grapple with some of these issues in a hypothetical scenario, because it was interesting to see how they would apply to the Calgary Catholic School District.

I also lucked out with my group assignment.  Lisa, Mike, Amanda and Jamie are fantastic to work with.

Our group rubric assignment:

LMS Rubric BC Group

My Reflection on Assignment 2 – LMS Selection :

My reflection on this task will be divided into two parts; the first part will be on the assignment itself and the process of the assignment through to completion, and the second part of my reflection will be focusing on the group work since the beginning and all the collaboration and cooperation experiences that the group had to complete this task from A to Z.

business.salary.com/group-work

Since I started looking at assignment #2 and reading the requirement of the task, it seemed to be an easy task that my group and I could accomplish fast and easy. To prepare for the assignment, I began considering the literature to understand the procedure of choosing an LMS.  I start drawing up questions regarding the rubric that we are tasked to create, despite being given little information. In addition to that, I also began considering the topic of learning management systems in the market, starting with learning about what kinds of features they offer to the institution, instructor, and student.  There were many features that are similar in many LMS, but each and every LMS has a unique feature that makes it a strong choice for some tasks and not so strong for others.

I was never tasked to choose a Learning Management System before, so through reading different articles, such as Choosing the Right Learning Management System (LMS) for the Higher Education Institution Context by Kasim, N. N., & Khalid, F. (2016). and Choosing and using media in education: The SECTIONS model.  In Teaching in digital age by Bates, T., (2014) I managed to understand that each LMS must have basic features that make the use of this LMS easy for all parties involved.

Secondly, I learned that by meeting with all the parties involved you would have a very good idea on how to link the teaching and learning components to the interactivity of this LMS, also keeping in mind the technical support, which plays a big part when choosing an LMS. After this initial research, I began to consolidate my ideas about where to start, what questions to ask, and which role to take within my group.

I, then, initiated the connection with my group outside the Connect UBC platform. I thought that if we met using Google Hangouts we would be easily connected using chat, text, and video conference. I must say that I was very lucky with all the members of my group: they were all ready and prepared.

Each member was accommodating to the other’s needs and we were all working well as collaborators among ourselves, especially that we found that some of the group members have done this task before in real life. We met twice to discuss the rubric, and we assigned tasked and finalized the assignment. The amount of collaboration and organization was very high. So, I would like to say that because of my group I learned even more and gained a real-life experience. So, thank you all and I hope to work with you in the future.

In sum, I can say that this assignment was a full hands-on assignment where I have learned many new skills regarding choosing a Learning Management System, and what are the major features and factors that are very important to look for when you work with LMS in the future.

Ghassan Barhoumeh

In this self-reflection of the Learning Management System (LMS) rubric assignment, I will revisit and contemplate the learning goals which I set at the outset of the Course in my Flight Path.  To recap, these comprise of: (i) reflecting on my personal and professional journey to date in terms of education and technology, (ii) gaining a deeper understand of the language, concepts, theoretical perspectives of educational technology, (iii) developing new skills, and (iv) evolving myself in new ways.

In the area of reflection of my previous professional journey, the rubric assignment helped me to consolidate and revisit my experiences of using similar tools in the past.  The challenges of developing tools and processes that are user friendly, objective, and measure the important variables whilst not being overly burdensome for the user.   My belief that the assessment ‘process’ is as important as the rubric tool itself, was further reinforced.  The value of working in teams, to gain a range of perspectives and expertise to create a better final product was also consolidated, despite the challenges of working across three corners of the globe.

With respect to understanding, the educational assessment model of a rubric is somewhat new to me, so this was an opportunity to further dissect the components of this tool, think more deeply about: wording, challenges of scoring and weighting, and the strengths and limitations of the rubric tool.  With respect to the limitations, a recognition of the importance of building a process around the rubric, including the participation of multiple stakeholder and group reflection before a final determination was also highlighted.   Applying the SECTIONS model in a concrete way helped me to consolidate this practical and comprehensive framework (Bates, 2014).  Importantly, I also gained deeper understanding of the complexity of sourcing a LMS with the multitude of considerations that need to be addressed in determining selection.

In the area of developing new skills, the assignment helped me to build competencies in rubric development which are transferable to many other domains including: educational course development, contracting of other technology systems, and various other applications.  The assignment also facilitated my further exploration into the availability of online tools for health-related case management and clinical assessment; and I was surprised to find a considerable number of resources for case management, but relatively little for clinical review.  This is an area I hope to explore further in the future.  Through this exercise I was also able to strengthen my skills in the google suite, especially google hangout which I hadn’t used previously, but is analogous to other tools I’ve used extensively such as WhatsApp and skype.

Finally the assignment helped me to consider how I can evolve my interest in educational technology with my long experience in public health.  The assignment helped me further consider how these different areas of interest can be blended in a meaningful way in my personal and professional journey.  In particular, I became clearer that in a low resource public health context, learning environments will likely be more about what Spiro refers to as facilitating and guiding the ‘pull’ of learning, rather than the ‘push’ learning which has been the dominant model used by LMS to date (Spiro, 2014).

References

Bates, T., (2014) Choosing and using media in education: The SECTIONS model.  In             Teaching in digital age.    Retrieved from https://opentextbc.ca/teachinginadigitalage/part/9-pedagogical-differences-between-      media/

Porto, S. (2015). The uncertain future of Learning Management Systems. The Evolution:                           Illuminating the Lifelong Learning Movement. Retrieved from                                                 http://www.evolllution.com/opinions/uncertain-future-learning-management-systems/

Spiro, K. (2014). 5 elearning trends leading to the end of the Learning Management Systems.                 Retrieved from http://elearningindustry.com/5-elearning-trends-leading-to-the-end-of-the-learning-management-system