Welcome to our last post in the four-part series where education experts give their opinion on learning management systems. In this piece, David Palank, Principal at San Miguel School in Washington DC and Jeannette Geib, the Educational Director at the world’s first online high school CompuHigh, share their experience of using  virtual learning environments.
Also read:
– Learning Management Systems: Your Opinion – Part 1
– Learning Management Systems: Your Opinion – Part 2
– Learning Management Systems: Your Opinion – Part 3
San Miguel School uniquely serves low-income youth in the DC area with a preference for those living in poverty and who would not otherwise have access to a high quality private education. San Miguel uses multiple Learning Management Systems at our school. They are an excellent tool for teachers and schools to monitor progress, give feedback, and gather data on student performance throughout the school year.

They benefit students in multiple ways. One of the ways they benefit students is that they give unbiased and immediate feedback. If a teacher gives you feedback, there is a chance that the student may feel that they are under ego threat and not accept the feedback. However, if a computer gives you feedback and tells what has been achieved or not, it is not a person telling you and therefore the student’s ego is not threatened.
Video games operate under similar principles. Many students enjoy video games because they are challenging, give immediate feedback, and operate on a progression through levels. They engage students because of these elements. Learning Management Systems operate the same way.
However, these systems are a tool, not a crutch. If teachers rely on them as their sole means of instruction, they are not using them properly.

I am the Educational Director at CompuHigh, an online high school that has been around since 1994. When this school was founded, there really wasn’t anything else like it out there; there wasn’t even a ‘World Wide Web’ to speak of, so doing high school online was a unique proposition.
Our founder, Stan Kanner, simply taught himself programming and created the software he needed to run a school on the internet. Today, our ‘homegrown’ Learning Management System works beautifully because the programming has always sprung organically from the needs of the students, teachers, and administration. We just say, “Hey can we have a button here that does this? Can we have a system that tracks this?” and Stan could make it happen, usually the same day.
I realise that most school systems are too large to be that nimble, but I would always recommend hiring a smart programmer and growing your system ‘in house’ rather than trying to buy an ‘out of the box’ LMS.

In the third of our four-part series of articles on learning management systems, Sean Aiken Head of Basis Independent School in McLean and Dr Daniel Usera from Arkansas State University talk about e-learning platforms in their institutes.
Also read:     – Learning Management Systems: Your Opinion – Part 1

          – Learning Management Systems: Your Opinion – Part 2

 

Software simply cannot replace the dynamic, co-creative classroom interaction between teacher and student. Technology is one of many tools available to teachers to inspire students to take ownership over their learning. But there is no replacement for a genuine relationship – you will always remember your favorite teacher more fondly than your favorite computer.

At BASIS Independent, our approach to the use of technology in education is highly focused: we use technology to help us solve problems of scale, as the connective tissue that joins an international network of PreK-12 schools. Most learning platforms are designed to displace the teacher or compensate for weak pedagogical talent. Our platform by contrast is designed to give full control to trusted educators and their unique styles and goals to strengthen and enhance our services over time.
BASISedLink and Assessment our curricular management system, was created to address the challenging balance of accountability and autonomy in the classroom. It’s an example of expertly curated crowd sourcing for instructional design and quality control, to ensure that crucial decisions are made by master teachers and not top-down, centralized bureaucracies.
With BASISedLink and Assessment (BELA), our teachers capture, organize, and share their innovative lesson designs, topic sequencing, time allocation, best practices, and desired outcomes – all in real time. Each topic is linked to assessment tools of varying form, depth, and complexity, like simulations, or short answer, and yes even multiple choice. We want to expose students to diverse avenues in which they can demonstrate success and then let expert teachers determine the best course of action. This intersection of teacher agency and student performance produces useful data to inform the path they will walk together.
BASISedLink and Assessment’s planning and review features help teachers analyze what their kids have actually mastered, not just what they’ve completed. Students benefit from adaptable, authentic learning experiences that align to what’s actually happening in their classrooms. We expect teachers to diverge from a syllabus when the needs of their students call for it, and that flexibility is vital to their lifelong engagement.
The science and art of learning is extraordinarily complex. When we consider the course of technological progress, we should be cautious about those ‘advancements’ that further diminish the role of teaching as an actual profession. Rather than pitching technology against teachers, tools like BASISedLink and Assessment help energize and empower us to create richly-layered and highly interactive learning experiences for all our students.

Arkansas State University uses a very popular LMS. I think it definitely has advantages. It acts as a central hub where students can turn in all of their assignments in one place, and they can see their grade progress without having to send an e-mail. It makes keeping track of student assignments way easier.
The LMS has a ton of features like plagiarism detection, creating forums, and blog posting. With students being more computer-savvy these days, I think they enjoy the convenience of accessing course material and their grades at the click of a few buttons.
There are a few disadvantages, however. Some students (especially non-traditional) are not as computer literate, so they will often e-mail me asking how to do basic tasks. Every once in a while, a student will use the LMS malfunctioning as an excuse for turning in a late assignment (e.g. “the LMS wasn’t working” or “I tried turning it into the LMS but it kept getting an error.”) And at my university, the IT people often have to do “maintenance” on the LMS, which requires it to go down for periods of time. And if you don’t like reading off screens, grading assignments can be a strain on the eyes after a while (so I have to take breaks).
So that’s my experience.

This is the second of our four-part post on learning management systems. Read Learning Management Systems: Your Opinion – Part 1, where Donna Lubrano from the Northeastern University in Boston shares her opinion with our readers.

In this post, Kathy Walter, Educator and CEO at Nsoma, reveals her thoughts on Learning Platforms and their contribution to student learning.

Learning Management Systems (LMSs) are used in a number of schools to deliver online learning content in a structured way. As opposed to gather random search content from search engines, learning management systems do just that – they manage learning based on the subject, teacher and curricula being taught. Like all technology, they work only as well as the people or person loading them with content. Most technology solutions for learning do not come with content and those that do need to have that content licensed separately.

Learning Management Systems are great for delivering content to students for a number of reasons.
1. Different paces, steering together: because you can control what content students see, but students do not necessarily know where other students are in their learning path. So, for instance, one student may be far ahead in a lesson and another may be far behind, but unless the lesson plans for them working together on a topic, each student proceeds at their own pace.
2. Anytime, Anywhere: LMS allows students to log in at school or at home. So if they are sick or miss an assignment, want to review for the day ahead or want to go back and review a concept they did not understand, it’s all possible.
3. Flexible Delivery: Most LMS render on a computer or laptop, but also on mobile phones and tablets. So it does not matter what device a student has, they can learn from anything.
4. Special Needs Handled: When students require additional mechanics like braille readers, color blind screen adaptors, text readout, etc, many LMSs link with other technology tools to help all learners.
As with any technology, there are also drawbacks:
1. Training: LMSs are more prevalent these days, but many schools and teachers still have not learned to use them. And schools may change their LMSs as contracts expire and new bids have to be issued. It takes a long time to train staff and students to use them when it’s not something they are familiar with.
2. Let me in! LMSs require logins and when they are not sync’d with other login systems and a student forgets a password, it takes valuable learning time to get them up and running
3. Technology changes: LMS companies deliver a lot of technology changes each year, but not all LMSs have the same functionality. Some can vary widely. And some functionality works more intuitively than others. This can be frustrating for users when they expect to do something quickly and wind up with more work – for instance, teachers trying to load in lessons and assessments. People usually adapt well, but when a new round of changes comes out, companies still have a habit of not always understanding classroom and school processes, and it can lead to user frustration. Too much user frustration, particularly by teachers means some will stop using a system all together.

Bottom line: every school should have an LMS. The types and cost vary widely, but technology runs our world. Not introducing our school kids to technology in all aspects puts them at a severe disadvantage. It’s worth the time and effort to deliver at least part of their education via online content.

Kathy Walter, CEO at Nsoma, is responsible for conceiving and delivering innovative solutions that support the instructional and educational agendas of school districts and edTech companies. She recently served as the Executive Director, Product Strategy & Innovation at the NYC Department of Education and prior to that as Director, Product Development at a start-up online learning solution.
Kathy has a BA in Applied Math from Union College, an MBA From NYU’s Stern School of Business, and a Graduate Certificate in Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages (TESOL). She’s currently completing her JD at Fordham Law School in Education and IP law. Kathy has been an ESL Educator at Northeastern University and Cambridge Learning Center; an ESL curriculum consultant with the YearUp program in Boston; and a program developer for several teaching projects in Uganda.

We’ve asked education experts about learning management systems in their organisations, how they benefit their students and if they see any disadvantages or problems in using them. As the replies we received were numerous, we’ll be posting a four-part series of articles, where education experts give their opinion on learning management systems. This is the first part of that series.

The first opinion comes from Donna Lubrano at the Northeastern University in Boston:

Learning Management Systems are fantastic tools for the instructor as well as the students. For the professor it provides a repository for all the learning materials to be used for the course, a systematic approach to the course development, and learning tools to make multimedia presentations, such as podcasts, videos exams and quizzes.

The classroom is a new entity where the majority of learning comes from the students preparation for the physical classroom experience. The LMS provides the delivery of those tools that can be used outside of the classroom in preparation. It allows the professor to curate the material and provide his/her perspective on the subject/material. This is especially helpful for remote learning, hybrid and full online learning environments.
For the student it’s fantastic. They have a clear path to the material and a dynamic learning environment using many of the mediums which are part of their everyday experience. Listening to podcasts and viewing videos can be done on their smartphones while traveling or even in a coffee shop.
The multimedia nature of the tools and resources accommodates the many different types of learners and provides an opportunity to even have some fun with tools such as Quizlet to take quizzes, research tools and other materials.
Learning is no longer confined to the classroom; Harvard Professor, Eric Mazur and his concept of Peer Instruction and the flipped classroom support this idea for course management software. It has helped re-engineer the instructor’s role from “sage on stage” (not my words!) to “guide on the side”. The LMS helps the professor “curate” the material for the student to help guide them through the subject. In the curation the student gets to understand the professor’s perspective as well.
A notable disadvantage is that the student has to be technically savvy, have reliable internet access and a computer, iPad, or phone. Without those tools they cannot do the work. So in lower-income areas or schools, these tools may not be readily available to all students and will put them at a disadvantage in regards to other students.
For older students, especially those who are returning to school via online programs, learning the LMS toolset can be a barrier in and of itself. Especially if they are exclusively online and may need in-person help to learn the systems. Professors need to set clear office hours to help students over some of those barriers and to provide alternatives for students who don’t have reliable access to computers and the internet. This can be done with more flexible deadlines and options to hand in homework the old-fashioned way, via paper.
The benefit to the student is tremendous; it is 24 hours a day access to the classroom requirements; especially for those students who work to pay for their education – it allows them to work on their reading and assignments, before or after work. Because learning is a very collaborative environment, the LMS has incredible collaboration tools that don’t require students to be in the same room together. A classroom in Dubai can work on a project with a classroom in US using tools like video conferencing etc. These tools are game changers and continue to change the role of the professor and the way classrooms are designed.
Donna Lubrano is an adjunct faculty with a Master’s degree in International Business from Boston University. She has experience in a broad range of commercial endeavors including, health and fitness, international education, event and conference planning, healthcare, and corporate training. She has worked with students from around the globe, in Leadership and Entrepreneurship. She is a frequent contributor to on-line articles, is a business mentor to small businesses and start-ups. She is currently working on an international virtual student exchange program that would allow students who cannot travel abroad to work on business projects with students from international classrooms.