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In the second part of our series on Learning Management Systems (LMS), we will particularly focus on the benefits and long-term leveraging for learners and instructors. A recap of what LMS are: they are electronic learning and development platforms used by organizations/corporations, schools, and tertiary learning institutions to deliver learning materials, courses, and programmes to people. In the 21st century, LMS are cloud-based, i.e. they are managed and hosted online so they are live and dynamic.

Cost and Efficiency

LMS have been in use for decades and have been popular with companies as they have proven to be a cost-effective way to help staff develop new skills and provide training for new business needs. The efficiency of a corporate LMS is that staff can do training and courses onsite, from their desks – there is no need for staff to leave the office to attend lectures or seminars at another location, this saves time which can be used productively for work; a trainer/instructor does not need to be contracted to deliver seminars; many more users can attend training without causing disruptions to the business and attendance can be staggered without needing to consider the availability of an instructor; managers and the human resources team can access attendance records, participation information and see grades. For people upgrading their skills using an LMS, there is much greater control over when and how you study. Your timetable is not dictated by the operating times of the learning institution or when an instructor is available. There is no need to travel to a training venue which saves time, energy, and cost. Your ability to track your learning progress, record feedback, and re-do parts of courses that you struggled with or didn’t fully understand the first time all greatly improves. LMS allow the student to have greater control over their learning pace and strengths.

Design

With LMS such as the one hosted by Amazon Web Services (AWS) – see part 1 of our LMS series –  the smart design is geared towards helping you plan, manage and observe your learning journey to align to a career path. Previously, where you may have sought the help of a career guidance counselor or mentor, you can now work with your LMS to plot a training journey to develop the skills you require for your chosen career or vocation. With a system like AWS, which is connected to various other cloud platforms where new data and information is constantly becoming available, your options will be informed by the latest developments in the field you are interested in, in real-time. This is an exciting prospect, still relatively new in how LMS are designed, where the Internet of Things and unprecedented access to knowledge assets allow us to intelligently plot our continuous learning journeys.

No Contact

More schools and universities are utilizing LMS, catapulted by the need to have low- and no-contact learning environments as required by the global lockdowns in 2020. While many schools and institutions have long had LMS to manage course resources, there has been a major shift in how reliant they are on their LMS and the extent to which they are being used. We have seen up to 100% of classes being conducted on LMS such as Google Classroom, with all lesson presentations, learner interactions, virtual face-to-face time with the teacher, assessments, and student results conducted on the LMS. This fundamental and fast shift, driven by necessity, has been a period of rapid prototyping, provided a laboratory for understanding how artificial intelligence can be utilized in every day, for things we consider mundane.

Participation

For learners and students, and where parents and guardians are involved in the learner’s performance, there is a greater measure of control and accountability from all parties involved. Learner participation, engagement and delivery of work is managed and recorded on the LMS. Teachers’ lesson presentations are available for use even outside of the lesson time and the class session can be recorded. Assessments are conducted, marked and graded, recorded and made available on the LMS for all stakeholders to review.

Real-World Practices

One of the best benefits to students and instructors working on a LMS is that they are engaging real-world practices. More and more professional work is shifting to a cloud-based, fast-paced, virtually connected global environment where people are interacting more frequently through virtual spaces and platforms. The soft and technical skills required to perform in such an environment used to be learned at university or on the job. However, more and more we are seeing young learners mastering this way of working in the world. With suitable access to data, we will see the opening of spaces and opportunities for more people from different backgrounds to quality education and accredited and professional programmes. What we will need to see in South Africa, for this to be made a reality that is equally available to all young people, is a strong political will in the government to drive digital equality and integrity and innovation amongst tech and telecommunications companies to deliver cheap, reliable data across geographies and demographies.

As technological advances continue to transform the way we connect with each other, so there will be a need for different ways of learning. And in the wake of the lockdown and social distancing regulations brought on by the coronavirus outbreak, many industries had to move from casually considering remote working set-ups to implementing them in a short space of time.

In higher education, though, online learning has long been top of the agenda. For example, Unisa (University of South Africa) is popular for its distance learning methods and integrating a system where students can do work assigned to them in their own environments; submit it via the portal and also view results and feedback. They are also a decent example of blended learning.

Learning Management Systems (LMS) can be defined as web-based software platforms that facilitate the administration, documentation, tracking and reporting, and the delivery of educational courses/content and learner outcomes.

And as you typically would join a webinar or online meeting, you gain access to a learning system through a URL or username and password. And it’s worth noting that the quantity and quality of e-learning platforms for higher education have increased significantly during the past decade.

In terms of choice, the number of available tools and platforms, and the possibilities they offer both students and teachers can be both challenging and rewarding.

How LMSs differ from the (traditional) classroom

The first major difference is the format of the interactions between educators and students. Naturally, using online tools to organise and attend your classes has its obvious advantages and a few drawbacks.

Learning through the use of LMS’s means that there will be a change in the type of human interactions, compared to the traditional classroom setting. Subsequently, there might be a need to adopt an independent learning style.

However, the growth of LMS’s present changes to modern distance learning. Courses now mostly incorporate higher levels of human interaction, with teaching styles that lean toward traditional classroom settings. There’s also a variety of tools and features found on most learning management systems designed to help students with their learning, including communicating with lecturers and other faculty staff. And socializing with other learners within the learning platform helps cultivate a sense of belonging, and inspires a well-rounded learning experience.

A few examples

As with any other market, there are several companies that offer products and services connected to online learning. This makes the platforms available and the features they carry different. There are free or open-sourced alternative products as well. These software tools play an important role in the spread of online education, helping students from all backgrounds to acquire education and qualifications.

Google Classroom

With the service owned by a large and well-resourced company, you can easily manipulate and integrate your content across the Google ecosystem. For example, the platform enables teachers to have face-to-face meetings with students using the flagship Google Meet app, which is built into the Classroom.

Moodle

Moodle is a free and open-source learning management system. The platform is used for blended learning, distance education, flipped classrooms, and other e-learning projects in schools, universities, workplaces, and other sectors.

AWS Educate

Amazon says that their LMS is used in more than 200 countries, connecting 2,400 institutions, over 10,000 educators, and hundreds of thousands of students. Part of their mission is to help people discover the necessary skills to begin building careers in the cloud industry. Along the way, learners have opportunities to test their knowledge and obtain credentials for subjects passed on the platform. With the qualifications obtained, they can go on to apply for jobs within the Amazon platforms or at other companies.

Blackboard

The University of Johannesburg broke new digital ground when they introduced a range of 100% online courses. The organization uses a learning management system called Blackboard.

Broadly, this means that to successfully complete a Bachelor of Commerce in International Accounting degree (with U.J. or any other institution with an LMS in place), you’ll need to learn the basics of working within a learning management system. Additionally, working with different types of media as part of organizing your education will introduce you to the concept of content management systems.

A content management system (CMS) is a software application used to manage the creation and modification of digital content. Example: a blogging platform such as WordPress is a CMS. By creating a user account, you can write, design, host, or publish a variety of media on the platform.

Advantages of a LMS

• Learning Management Systems support content in different formats: text, video, audio, etc.
• Immediate access to learning material at any time, anywhere.
• Instructors can edit/modify and re-use learning content, and students don’t need to wait to access updated material.
• The evaluation of students is much easier and fair, based on student attendance and online quizzes.

Pitfalls of a LMS

• Teachers and students have to be willing to adapt their courses and ways of working from traditional to online lectures.
• Learning fully through an LMS can feel impersonal and lacking in dialogue provided by in-person training.
• Not all students have access to reliable and always-available Internet connectivity.

Another thing. It’s easy to assume that all students are tech-savvy and will easily embrace technology for their learning. However, for students to get maximum value from using digital learning systems, basic digital and platform training goes a long way to help them interact effectively with coursework.

Navigating the pitfalls

Blended learning as tool

This is a combination of distance learning and the traditional in-classroom learning. Ultimately, you have a less rigid schedule where you attend some of the classes on campus. However, most of the work still remains online, allowing you to complete assignments at your convenience. This ensures that you still get the administrative and archiving benefits of using an LMS and balance out the disadvantages, such as working in isolation for prolonged periods.

Planning ahead

Using digital resources to connect to people and knowledge is an incredible feat. However, living within the reality of continuous #Loadshedding power cuts, it’s essential to plan ahead. When possible, get a schedule detailing the load-shedding program in your area. You can use electricity to charge up your devices and attend to your ‘online tasks’ and during the hours with no power, you can push ‘offline tasks’, for example.

Managing information, nurturing creativity

As we’ve established, we live in an interconnected world where the traditional concept of learning (or anything else), is fast becoming irrelevant. And software vendors, open-source developers, and educational institutions, awake to this change, will continue to embrace systems that support the management of courses and communication with students remotely.

The ultimate key to effectively engage with learning management systems is to make a paradigm shift. This means moving into a mindset where the information you consume as a student can be stored, managed, updated and expanded into a useful library of knowledge over time.