Write a platform evaluation report, which should help the institution’s decision-makers to choose an LMS for the organization-wide implementation.
(a) Briefly describe the organization of your choice, the reasons for implementing the LMS (consider the organizations’ needs and resources), and the goals this organization can better achieve using this LMS.
(b) Explain what functionality (the affordances and features) of the recommended LMS fit the organization’s goals. What impact will this LMS implementation have on the teaching and learning? Support your reasoning with evidence: your own experiences and observations, official reports, research data, experts’ opinions, and peer-reviewed publications.
(c) Consider how sustainable the implementation of recommended LMS is: what impact will it have on the resources of the organization, its learning and teaching practices, and its future development?
Abstract
The purpose of this report is to evaluate the efficacy of implementing Eliademy as a Learning Management System (LMS) in the MYP and DP programme at Suzhou Singapore International School (SSIS). This evaluation will describe why the LMS is a good fit with SSIS, it’s long-term sustainability, and the needs and resources needed in order to make the implementation a successful one.
Organization
Suzhou Singapore International School is an International Baccalaureate (IB), not-for-profit, international school located in Suzhou, China. It serves over 1,200 students from early years to year 12 from over 40 countries across the globe. It’s mission statement is to provide “an excellent education to the children of expatriate families.” Its overall vision is for the three main stakeholders (parents, staff and students) “to work in partnership to create a learning environment that encourages students to be self-motivated, lifelong learners, who value other cultures and are responsible, meaningful participants in the international community” (SSIS, 2016).
Students who would be considered as “secondary” would fall under two categories under the IB: Those in the Middle Years Programme (MYP) – grades/years 6-10, followed by those in the Diploma Programme (DP) – grades/years 10-12. The DP is very rigorous and not for everyone; students do have a choice to graduate with a high-school diploma outside of an IBDP diploma. However, those that do graduate with an IPDP diploma are often well recognized in the international university community, with some being rewarded with their hard work through course credits, scholarships and more (IBO, 2015). Part of the graduating requirement of the DP is to complete the Creativity – Activity – Service (CAS) programme (IBO, 2015), which will be discussed in further detail below.
From a technology standpoint, SSIS is a 1:1 MacBook school from grade/year 5 and up. This means that every child brings their own MacBook and learning with digital technology is incorporated into much of the day-to-day at SSIS. The network and infrastructure are well supported with several local full-time network maintenance staff, along with a full-time MYP/DP expat ed-tech coach and a full-time expat supervisor responsible for all of learning technologies within the school.
Eliademy’s fit with SSIS
Not-for-Profit Based
The whole premise of Eliademy is that it is an open-sourced and cloud-based LMS that is free for non-profits, like SSIS, and more. Essentially, Eliademy aims to democratize education through the use of technology – basically supporting the belief that education is a right and not a privilege. Anyone can create a course and participants can choose to join or be invited by the instructor.
Diverse Language Compatibility
Even better, is that volunteers can contribute to a translation of a course. Eliademy is available in 36 languages thus far and it aims to be available in many more in the future. With the diverse languages and cultures on display at SSIS, this is an apparent benefit to many of its ESL students. Aside from supporting the use of home language, SSIS currently offers world language courses in Chinese, Japanese, Korean, German and Spanish. Courses already on offer could be translated or new ones could be created in a variety of languages.
Minimal Investment in Staff and Infrastructure
Since the software is cloud-based, all that is required is a mobile computer and a moderately fast internet connection. To further simplify matters, Eliademy’s login accounts are free for both instructor and learner. SSIS already has the hardware in place to make this happen with school-wide wireless access points (WAPs) and students possessing their own personal MacBooks from the 1:1 program.
Because the software is cloud-based, that also means that updates and maintenance are automatic, similar to how Google’s Apps for Education update (i.e. they never need to be updated since it happens in the background). This equates to huge time savings amongst support staff who can dedicate their time to other things, like up-skilling staff in how to create courses in Eliademy instead of spending their time installing updates.
Worth mentioning, but not a concern, at present, is the compatibility of the cloud-based website within China relating to censorship and the Great Firewall (GFW). Currently, Eliademy works flawlessly. However, something to be cognizant of over the longer-term is whether or not Eliademy decides to use Google or not for server hosting. If they do, a Google script may be attached to the site, which means it will most likely be censored in China. Many education software providers have a “China” workaround, yet many don’t. Luckily, it looks like Eliademy does care about its presence in China, as it has a Chinese specific branch that was launched in June, 2014 (Shuhang, 2014). Since SSIS has a no VPN for digital learning policy, this is something to monitor closely over the longer term.
Curriculum Match
Eliademy would easily promote “Communities of Inquiry” that align with the IB’s style of learning through conceptually-based units of inquiry. Users can engage in learning through: A teacher presence of rigorous, challenging and entertaining material; a social presence that they trust, whilst building personal relationships and taking risks; and, a cognitive presence that celebrates discourse and reflection (Garrison, Anderson & Archer in Bates, 2014, p. 16).
Moodle Compatability
SSIS’s schoolwide LMS, DragonNet, runs on Moodle. Many MYP and DP students use this for submission of work and accessing course work, daily. SSIS’s MYP and DP instructors also contribute to the content within this LMS by designing the courses in order for successful learning to occur.
Eliademy offers its instructional designers the ability to import current Moodle courses directly into theirs. This means minimal time for instructors to add to the wealth of learning within the new medium, if it were to be implemented. In addition, any course offering created in Eliademy can be exported to another LMS afterwards, such as Moodle.
The benefit and motivation for LMS course designers on staff at SSIS would mean that they could easily transport their course designs, if they were to ever leave the institution. By keeping their course designs on Eliademy, the medium affords the creators more global mobility to the content that they designed.
CAS Program
Perhaps the best educational fit for Eliademy at SSIS, which answers the “Why introduce, yet another LMS at SSIS?” and/or “What’s wrong with DragonNet?” questions that will surely be raised, is the potential that it has to fit with the DP’s CAS programme. As mentioned above, DP students need to complete the CAS programme’s requirements in order to graduate. This is done by being able to illustrate ongoing examples of how they have showed creativity, activity and service.
If students were to choose to be “creative” by offering courses to “service” the school and larger global community by creating and facilitating their own courses on Eliademy, this could be used as evidence to qualify for the requirements of the programme.
Not only could this be used to support classroom teaching, it would truly promote distributed learning since the construction of materials would be for learners, by learners (i.e. learner centered) (Bates, 1997 & Gubbens et. al, 1999 in Nel, Dreyer & Carstens, 2010, p. 239). Imagine a Korean ESL student creating a course on Korean language, culture or history? Then what if a fluent English speaker (of Korean descent) was able to contribute to a full English translation of the course? Or what about a student creating an introductory course to robotics or programming based on his or her passion projects that involve tinkering with Raspberry Pi’s? Afterwards, other students could volunteer to translate it to other languages. Such focus on creativity, communication, global citizenship and design process will help further promote essential digital skills that the International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE) consider necessary for work and life in the next century (ISTE, 2016).
Reduction in Server Pressures
Another strong win for using Eliademy would be to alleviate space concerns on the already bottle-necked, local servers at SSIS. Because DragonNet courses and material are set up to be locally hosted on SSIS’ servers, space does become an issue, especially near the end of each school year. If more of a shift in DP course offerings were transitioned to the free, cloud-based servers at Eliademy, this would have the potential to keep DragonNet, and thus the servers lighter.
One caveat, potential pitfall, or legality concern would be that of storage of sensitive material and how susceptible it is to security breaches if stored on Eliademy’s cloud servers. Also, since this is a Finnish company, perhaps content may not be allowed to be stored outside of China. This pitfall could be overturned, however, if thoughtful common agreements were to take place and well communicated amongst all SSIS stakeholders as to what is acceptable material to include in course design and submissions, and what is not. As mentioned above, perhaps the local investment in infrastructure in China from Eliademy may have included some cloud server hosting to remain in China as well.
Conclusion
In conclusion, the implementation of Eliademy at SSIS is a venture worth exploring due to it being free for not-for-profit schools. All the infrastructure is already in place for it to synergize well with the 1:1 program and updates pose little-to-no hassles due to the medium’s online, cloud-based structure. In addition, Eliademy has the potential to reduce bottlenecks in local server space, since some of the media will be shifted to the cloud.
Furthermore, the medium matches well to the inquiry based curriculum. It will empower both students and instructors alike to share their creativity and learning beyond the borders of the school’s current LMS, the Moodle-based DragonNet, yet without having to re-develop any previous learning that has been previously composited, as it all can be easily exported to Eliademy. Most importantly, DP students can use the medium as another way in which they can demonstrate “creativity” and/or “service” towards completion of their CAS Program requirement for their DP diploma.
References
Bates, T. (2014). Chapter 4: The ADDIE model. Teaching in a Digital Age.
Chickering, A. W., & Ehrmann, S., C. (1996). Implementing the seven principles: Technology as lever. American Association for Higher Education Bulletin, 49(2), 3-6.
International Baccaleaureate Organisation (IBO). (2015). Diploma Programme: Creativity, activity, service.
International Baccaleaureate Organisation (IBO). (2015). University Admission.
International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE). (2016). Redefining learning in a technology-driven world: a report to support adoption of the ISTE Standards for Students.
Shuhang, L. (2014). Finland open course ware Eliademy launch Chinese version of April by the seed round of financing (Chinese translation). TechCrunch China.
Nel, C., Dreyer, C., & Carstens, W. A. M. (2010). Educational technologies: A classification and evaluation. Tydskrif vir letterkunde, 35(4), 238-258.
Suzhou Singapore International School (SSIS). (2016). Who we are: At a glance.