Hello, dear readers! Let’s continue our journey into the world of technology.
This time I’d like to focus on Learning Management System (LMS). Nowadays, most educators at higher educational institutions are exposed to LMS, and various platforms assist teachers/facilitators in enhancing the quality of an academic process, both in online and face-to-face classes. And today I will share my view on the article “A Critical Understanding of Learning Management System” by Dr. Solomon Arulraj David (2013).
To my surprise, the first LMS prototype was introduced in 1924 by Sidney Pressey, who created a teaching mechanism that looked like a typewriter but with multiple windows features. Then throughout almost 50 years till the widespread of the Internet in 1990, the SoftArc introduced the LMS in the form which has been deployed till now (cited in Carmen, Davis, and Wagner, 2009, no page). The tech advancement has been upgrading the LMS, but the initial basic features remain the same.
The author emphasized the main benefits of the LMS, they are a centralized learning environment in order to achieve consistent training, tracking, and reporting for improved performance. Most educational LMS employed for educational purposes can adjust easily and materials can be recycled. In addition, variations for creating curriculum, and designing materials are vast.
Some drawbacks mentioned are quite reasonable. For example, learners might feel isolated, those who are less motivated may lag behind, and others may need clarification in navigating themselves and may miss important information, deadlines, and updates. I fully agree with the disadvantages mentioned as I remember the experience of emergency online studies back in the academic year 2020-2021. Many of my students shared their experience of online classes stating that it was complicated for them to stay focused, at times clearer instructions were needed and finally spending hours in front of the computer made my students feel lonely. As a consequence of that negative occurrence, many of learners had poorer results than expected.
However, I understand that the future is inevitably connected with technologies and we all need to figure out how can they serve for the benefit of learners and educators. As David, S.A. (2013) mentioned in his article, the LMS is going to be more and more part of teaching and learning, its advancement and enhancement is an ongoing process. It continues to expand, but students and teachers should remain the key focus when updates and developments are introduced. Thus, critical evaluation of LMS in terms of rapid changes in the teaching and learning processes should be considered (cited in David and Wildemeersch, 2010, no page).
After I have highlighted the most important features of LMS provided in the article, you may draw your own conclusions. If you ask me, I believe that a smart approach to teaching and learning is highly valuable. As there are learners with various educational habits, I as an educator should find a balanced way of approaching them all, thus LMS is an important tool, but should not be overestimated.
Reference:
Carmen, C., Davis, B., and Wagner, E. (2009). The
Evolution of LMS: From Management to Learning. The eLearning Guild,
Santa Rosa, CA.
David, S. (2013). A Critical Understanding of Learning
Management System. Www.academia.edu. Available from:
www.academia.edu/3681177/. [Accessed 16 February 2023].
David, S. and Wildemeersch, D. (2010). Globalisation
and growing global perspectives in higher education curriculum: General
tendencies in India. In: Majhanovic S., Gok F., Soudien C., Macleans
A. (2010) (Eds.), Policy, Economics and Comparative Education. Rotterdam:
Sense.
