Groupwork – Page 5 – New Learning Space

“LMS are not pedagogically neutral technologies, but rather, through their very design, they inﬂuence and guide teaching. As the systems become more incorporated into everyday academic practices, they will work to shape and even deﬁne teachers’ imaginations…”

— Coates, 2005, p. 27

I think one question Benoît needs to ask himself before deciding to go with Moodle or Blackboard Learn is how much influence on the actual content of his course by the LMS is he willing to accept? As mentioned in the A Critical Examination of the Fffects of Learning Management Systems on University Teaching and Learning article by Coates, technology is not neutral and will inevitably have some influence on teaching and learning. In the 2005 article by Coates, he does mention that there has not been much research in that area. LMS’s provide structure to the learning content, and they lends themselves to institute wide standardization. Even if Benoît uses Moodle, which is less standardized in his case, this can both be a good thing or bad, depending on what is valued by the institute, his faculty instructors and himself.

If I was in Benoît’s position, I would consider the past, in order to make some decisions about how to move forward. His institute had previously used WebCT, and many of his colleague didn’t not feel the move to Blackboard Learn provided the functionality that WebCT did. It seems that using the LMS to deliver the actual content was not the issue, but rather the dependency on the LMS functionality.

I personally think Benoît should design his course for online, and not design it for a particular LMS. I think Benoit’s approach on storing the content on the FTP server is a good start and good way to centrally store the actual course content, regardless of his LMS selection. As far as the LMS functionality, he should design the course to rely on LMS functionality as little as possible, so that he is able to “control” the content, and be able to adapt to LMS upgrades or migrations more easily in the future. For example, he could limit LMS use to assignment submissions only, and use tools like “the social web [which] has been offering myriad tools that support everyday communication, productivity and collaboration” (Porto, 2015) . Often those tools are more intuitive to use, are of better quality and functionality when compared to those previously found exclusively inside the LMS (Porto, 2015).

Use this approach will greatly reduce development time. Benoît will not need to learn the intricacies of either LMS. He would not have to write content to include for the discussions or testing areas in the LMS. This will save time in the future as far as edits to content, as the content is centralized on the FTP server, and not repeated or broken up into the different LMS areas.

A far as giving a total completion time, is is hard to predict given how little we know about Benoît’s current training materials. He already have his face-to-face materials prepared, but we don’t know what they are (PowerPoints, readings, lectures, etc) and nor do we know how he is grading the students. Whether he would like to include his lectures in video or animated graphics is not mentioned. We don’t know if the text is used, and if that text book has a publisher’s companion site with interactive features already existing for student use. In fact, we know nothing about the students demographics, preferences, etc. So as far as the design of the course content, and development, it is hard to accurately gauge.

Works Cited

Coates, H., James, R., & Baldwin, G. (2005). A critical examination of the effects of Learning Management Systems on university teaching and learning. Tertiary Education and Management, 11,(1), 19-36. http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11233-004-3567-9

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

Strategies for Lenora to build a website

Assuming that upgrading her home internet is not an option, Lenora should first be tapping into the Cradleboard network of educators along with anyone in her local area who could support her in her learning about website creation. Obviously, she could also do an internet search and tinker with web tools herself, but from the information presented in the case, it generally sounds like Lenora’s technology skills are not strong. Having a weak internet connection would only exacerbate any frustrations that would already occur in this process.

That being said, a website is still a good idea because it provides a resource not only for their own First Nations education community but also for communities who may be in need of similar resources elsewhere. Looking at how the website is being built, the content that would reside on it, and who would put together that content could be a major strategic move for Lenora in her initiation of this project. If I was advising a specific tool for a beginner, I’d suggest a template-based web platform like Weebly that is free, provides in-app tutorials/videos, customer support, and a simple drag and drop user interface for web design.

In addition to learning a thing or two about website design and creation, the Cradleboard network and local educators could also support her by creating content for the site, as “many had stories to share about the bullying in their band schools.” This would not only bring more culturally relevant lenses to light, but would lighten Lenora’s workload in the project (and offset some of the dial-up internet woes, too). Even if the additional authors didn’t have the technological skills to add it to the site, Lenora could do the uploading at home, a page at a time, and would at least be eased of the task of creating some of the content.

Lenora could also attempt to see if her own district would support her in the development of the website project. I have seen teachers who head worthwhile professional development projects be provided with release time from the classroom in order to fully develop and hone them. Support from administration and district leadership in these scenarios may be present; all she has to do is ask. This would allow her to work more quickly and efficiently with access to the broadband network at her school.

Depending on the amount of time she can save herself through in-district or network-based collaborative resources, I would estimate that this website would take at least 3-4 months to build, but this could vary based on her internet speed. This estimation is made with a consideration that she already knows what she generally wants to include on the website. If she’s still in the process of curating sources, I’d say 4-6 months minimum.

Benoit’s Decision

How might Benoît go about deciding whether to go with Moodle or Blackboard Learn? What questions might he ask himself? Come up with one specific question; be sure to explain why this is an important question.

According to Daniel (2003), access, cost and quality are the three most common reasons why universities choose LMS platforms (as cited in Coates, H., James, R., & Baldwin, G., 2005, p. 23). If this is the case, Benoit should ask himself, “Which LMS platform best covers all the criteria in Bates’ SECTION model?” Some questions he might ask himself are: Do the students require a compatible device to work from or will the LMS platform be universally accessible? How reliable is this LMS? How much will it be in terms of startup, maintenance and IT help? What instructional strategies does he plan to use? What kinds of interaction will be most useful for his students?

Since Benoit is comfortable with WebCT and its design mode, he initially could be drawn to this (Blackboard) at first but this might not necessarily be the best choice for him.

How much development time (in weeks) would you estimate Benoît would need to develop Business Writing, the online version? Be sure to explain how you came up with this number.

Benoit estimates that he could be spending up to 5 hours each week on creating and designing his online version of the Business Writing course. How long is the course? In that 5 hours, how much can he accomplish with the design? How many pages, assignments, activities, forms of assessment will he be needing and creating? It’s hard to say exactly how many weeks he will need due to the unknown variables. I think we need to know more information from him to determine just how many weeks he will need.

Coates, H., James, R., & Baldwin, G. (2005). A critical examination of the effects of Learning Management Systems on university teaching and learning. Tertiary Education and Management, 11,(1), 19-36. http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11233-004-3567-9

Bates, T. (2014). Teaching in digital age http://opentextbc.ca/teachinginadigitalage/ (Chapter 8 on SECTIONS framework)

Thoughts for Benoit

I suppose it is slightly skirting the scenario but I think Benoit should first ask himself if his Business Writing course is appropriate to be run online. By that I mean, will the learners reap the same benefits (or more) from the online version of his course that they do from the face to face version? Coates, James & Baldwin (2005) mentioned in their article that a lot of educational institutions have been drawn in by the allure of Learning Management Systems as they allow for more efficient regulated teaching. However, it has yet to be fully proven if online mediums positively or negatively affect student learning (Coates, James & Baldwin, 2005). Just because Benoit can put his course online does not mean he should put it online. Benoit must balance the aspirations of the university to reach a larger audience with student expectations and course goals/ desired outcomes.

I do not have experience developing online courses so I am not positive how much time Benoit will need to put his course online. With that said, I think he would have to work through the following steps:

Determine if Business Writing should be offered online
Research possible platforms (Moodle and Blackboard Learn)
Experiment with online technologies
Alter/develop content for an online medium
Have a trial run of the course
Adjust the course based on the trial run
Go live with the course

References

Suggestions for Benoît

Benoît surely has a difficult task ahead of him. He needs to make a decision, that not only needs to suit him and his abilities, but must also be able to fit his teaching style. Benoît’s background and motivation is going to be very important in making this decision. A big part of the choice is going to be how comfortable he is in using an LMS system to achieve his goals.

His experience is limited, he used WebCT to disseminate notes, which is a very simplistic use or the platform. He has also coded a website but again this is not very challenging and doesn’t necessarily apply to LMS.

Having support will be very important for him, however it doesn’t necessarily need to come from the help desk, which is slow anyway. Lots of people in his faculty are using Moodle over WebCT despite its lack of support. It would be key for Benoît to ask his colleagues about their choice, reasoning, and decision. Particularly he should find colleagues from similar backgrounds with little experience and really discuss how they are adapting and if they might be willing to help him should the need arise.

He needs to make this decision carefully it should be about understanding enough about the system to be able to use it to achieve what he wants in teaching so that the system itself doesn’t dictate the way he teaches. After talking with colleagues it would be helpful for him to try each system and get a feel for them before making his final decision.
Q: After discussing and sampling both systems, which one do you feel more comfortable with/ excited by?

This question is important because regardless of his decision, he is going to have to spend a significant amount of time learning to use it, creating a course on it and he will need to have a passion for what he is doing to motivate himself to finish.

Benoît has said that he could spend an five hours a week working on the course to go live the next semester. I really don’t feel able to say if this is enough without knowing more details. How long is left until the next semester? Is he simply going to be transferring existing materials? Or developing new parts to the course? How was his course organized before? Test based courses would be easier to transfer. How quickly does he adapt to using new technology? Is he good at working productively or does he become distracted? I think he needs to start transferring the course, being sure to ask these question, and see how long it takes him to accomplish the first couple of units, then a progress check could be used to see if he is on track for finishing in the set time.

If I was in Benoît’s position…

How might Benoît go about deciding whether to go with Moodle or Blackboard Learn? What questions might he ask himself? Come up with one specific question; be sure to explain why this is an important question.

Without (reasonable) access to the Help Desk, do I have the confidence and intuition to take on learning Blackboard Learn?

If I was in Benoît’s position, I think one of the first questions I would ask myself is to judge my ability to take on such a task. Often when I am introduced to a new type of technology, I like to google it and watch related videos on Youtube to see what others have to say about it. There are numerous tutorials available. I don’t know if this would be the case with Blackboard Learn but this is a starting point that I often use.

How much development time (in weeks) would you estimate Benoît would need to develop Business Writing, the online version? Be sure to explain how you came up with this number.

If Benoît teaches a 13 week course, I assume that compiling each week of the course would take 2-4 hours. The range takes into account the length of time it takes him when he first begins developing versus once he has put together a few weeks, I assume that with time he would become more comfortable and perhaps quicker. The range could also comes into play if some weeks of the course, such as the first week, require less building or have less (or more) content.

Total time to development (average) 39 hours, but considering the range development time could be as little as 26 hours and as much as 52 hours.

Benoits Dilemma

Benoit could invest a bit of time exploring each platforms website. Getting a feel for what each has to offer, what learning tools they offer to develop a course, sample courses and what supports are offered by each if problems do arise.

Looking at the SECTIONS framework he could ask:

S-tudents- What features does each program have that would meet the learning needs of his students? How will the learning needs of his students change in an online delivery of the course? Will the demographics of an online course be similar to the students in his face-to-face class? What are the options for personalizing the delivery of the course to meet a variety of student learning styles? Do his students have access to this type of learning system? Have these students taken other online courses? Are they familiar with other platforms?

E-ase of use- Benoit has knowledge about the technical support levels available through the school’s IT department. He would need to discover; How closely aligned is the design from his previous experience WebCT Vista to the new platforms? Since both platforms have been used at his school, he could investigate with other instructors if the programs have been reliable. How long did it take other instructors to set up their courses? What were common complaints around the structure of the courses? Depending on the type of learning objects he plans to use, how can each support this i.e. video vs. text?

C-ost. Moodle is an open sourced platform so therefore comes at no cost. Is there any other associated costs i.e. data costs? Blackboard is provided by the school. What are the per student or per course costs associated with it? Cost will likely be more of a factor for the school than for the instructor.

T-eaching functions and media selection- Do the design options support the learning activities he wants to develop? Does each allow for multimedia options? How adaptable are the design elements if he wants to adjust his design as he goes or in future courses?

I-nteraction- What types of interactions does he want his students to undertake? Which platform offers the widest range of options? Which options most closely match his objectives for interacting with his students? Between students? How will the students interact with the materials?

O-rganizational- It appears that the organization has supported both options. He may want to know how this course will be used after its development? Will he work in collaboration with other instructors to develop the course? Will his online course be used by other instructors in the future? What are the organizations long term plans for LMS? He has been using a LMS that has been discontinued, what is the likelihood that this could happen again?

N-etworking- How will communication outside of the course be managed? How much social media will be used in the course? Do the students have other face-to-face opportunities or does the community of learners need to be established through online networking opportunities?

S-ecurity and Privacy- Where is course information stored? What security measures does each platform use to protect its students?

Guestimating how long it will take to develop the week is very difficult. So many variable go into this calculation. Depending on what type of learning activities are used, how much is already available, how specific the design style is i.e. graphics or instructor produced videos, etc. will largely contribute to the time it takes.

Using the ADDIE framework;

Analysis

Design

Development

Implementation

Evaluation

The Association for Talent Development reports between approximately 40-150 hours per hour of instruction depending on the complexity and whether a template is used. (If I understand this correctly) In order to calculate how many weeks it would take, we would need to know the length of a typical instructional course.

Bates, T. (2014). Teaching in digital age, Chapter 8. Retrieved from http://opentextbc.ca/teachinginadigitalage/

Kapp, Karl. M. & Defelice, Robyn A. (2009) Time to develop one hour of training. Retrieved from: https://www.td.org/Publications/Newsletters/Learning-Circuits/Learning-Circuits-Archives/2009/08/Time-to-Develop-One-Hour-of-Training

A Matter of Degrees

In order for Benoit to decide whether to go with Moodle or Blackboard Learn, I cannot limit myself to coming up with only one question Benoit would need to consider. As I see it, there are a number of questions he has to determine answers to. These include:

If he was to choose Moodle, how comfortable does he feel about his own learning skills to learn a new system? Is it important to him to use a system that others in his department generally use? Is it important to him to be using something that does have institutional support, even if that support is not highly effective? Porto (2015) and Coates, James & Baldwin (2005) indicate that one of the features of LMS is a move toward more standardization in teaching and a system that allows for more flexibility in design on the instructor’s part may play a role in a decision between them, so how important is a sense of autonomy to him. The case study indicates that Moodle might offer the opportunity of more autonomy as the flip side of it also having less IT support; however autonomy might also relate to flexibility in the design of the course, and which system might offer that.

Related to these questions are considerations about the types of learning activities that Benoit wants to use in his teaching; which system would better support these types of learning activities? What kinds of interactions does we want between himself and his students, between the students themselves, and between the students and the course content?

An additional consideration is whether or not he thinks it will make a difference to the students who potentially access his courses. Does this even matter to him? Are they predominantly students in the English department who might prefer a platform they are also using in other courses? The answers to these questions might have an impact in terms of thinking about “ease of use” from the SECTIONS model.

Given my limited experience of knowledge in designing completely on-line learning course, and complete lack of experience with even using Moodle (along with no information in the case study about the types of learning activities, types of assessments etc, that Benoit would develop for the course) I am ill-equipped to even estimate how much development time Benoit might need to develop an on-line version of his course.

As I was writing my response to this case study I came to realize that what I was identifying as factors that Benoit would need to consider were actually some of the things that were probably things that were important more to me than they might be to others with different (but as important to them) priorities. Some of the questions that I came up with for Benoit did not have “yes” or “no” answers; they were an attempt to identify to what degree something was important and see how one thing relates to another. It reminds me of Bates’ (2014) assertion that trying to make decisions about educational technology, even when using a model such as SECTIONS is not something that could be coded and automated.

Bates, T. (2014). Teaching in digital age http://opentextbc.ca/teachinginadigitalage/ (Chapter 8 on SECTIONS framework)

Too much work, not enough time…

Benoit definitely has a task ahead of him. The first factor that he should take into consideration before comparing the two platforms is the time constraint. Let’s say for example that Benoit has between 12-14 weeks until the next semester starts. That gives him roughly 60-70 hours of available time to invest in this project. Benoit’s time is a finite resource that needs to be taken into account throughout this project. While it does seem that there are positives and negatives to both platforms, my initial opinion is that with such a limited amount of time for development he should be leaning towards a platform he is more or less familiar with, which would be Blackboard.

To expand upon this, Benoit should be asking himself about the overall time commitment for development and support throughout the launch of this course. Being that Benoit’s experience with LMS has been limited to using them as an online repository for resources, the learning curve to create and maintain a new online course is going to be substantial for him. It is hard to say which aspect of technical support is going to be more time intensive between the two solutions. Even if IT is slow to respond for Blackboard issues, it might be quicker and/or easier than some of the issues that arise in Moodle with no formal support structure. I suppose it depends on how comfortable Benoit is with working on online systems.

My breakdown of the time allocation needed for Benoit is as follows:

4 hrs – Review of existing course materials to see if anything needs to be updated or removed for the course transitioning to an online delivery platform.

8 hrs – Revision, modification, and addition of course materials to suit the online course model.

4 hrs – Development/modification of the course topics, objectives, and outcomes.

8 hrs – LMS account/course creation and training time to familiarize oneself with a new system.

16-24 hrs – Creating and/or curating multimedia content for the course. This would include videos, images, audio, presentations, etc.

16 hrs – Development and creation of the weekly activities in the LMS.

8 hrs – Development and creation of the LMS assessments if applicable for the course.

4 hrs – Time spent reviewing and testing the modules of the course.

8 hrs – Time spent dealing with technical difficulties.

My total estimates would put the development at around 76 hours or 15 weeks for Benoit’s Business Writing course.

Category Archives: Groupwork

If I were in Benoit’s shoes…

Neither, Either or Both