- I have indeed noted pedagogical restrictiveness in my personal practice. Starting approximately 4 years ago, Schoology had gained popularity among members of my PLN and I began to explore it. I found it to have a similar feature set to Moodle, with plans for feature growth and development. However, my school division mandated that all online teachers use Moodle as the only LMS to be used. To that point I had accepted the limitations of Moodle as I had no other access to LMS and was not willing to pay a subscription fee for a system that I may not be allowed to use. At this time, I decided to leave my division’s online school and focus my LMS use on my in-house students.
- Learners’ experiences are affected by all of the features of the LMS. From the layout of the site, to the ease of use, to the technical support pieces; everything experienced by the learner will have an impact on his or her learning. In my use of Moodle, I would always have an “at-a-glance” calendar at the top of the site. Students were easily able to see their due dates and schedule without having to drive deep into the site. Since using Schoology, I have used the interactive assignment dropbox to both accept and give feedback on assignments. Schoology allows me to use my iPad to annotate images and return them to the student instantaneously. Research has shown that this speed of feedback is crucial to increasing student learning and engagement.
- By standardization, there increases the capacity to solve problems and create solutions as every user will be familiar with the same system. Problems that crop up with one user can be described to others without the learning curve of learning a new LMS. Tech support personnel can become experts in a LMS rather than a jack-of-all-trades. However, by using a standard LMS, instructor professionalism s jeopardized as many aspects of their online course will be prescriptive. Keeping good teachers teaching online requires that they be comfortable with their LMS and also that the choice of LMS aligns closely with their personal and professional practices and beliefs about learning.
- Spiro states that LMS “are about managing and control.” To an extent I agree with this statement. In the current educational landscape, curriculum must be prescribed by some entity and managing that knowledge falls well within the parameters of a LMS. However, I must disagree with his prediction that “the LMS as we know it will be dead in five years.” There will always be a need to manage content and package it in manageable portions. Even when considering MOOCs, there are a plethora of delivery platforms, but there will always be a need to manage and organizing the content.
LMS… The Past, Present, and Future
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