Students appreciate difference: constantly using the same, standard LMS can be repetitive and dull – changing it up with tasks and activities involving knowledge-networking applications improves motivation and attention, making learning more engaging.
Web 2.0 applications will never fully replace a learning management system (LMS – or virtual learning environment as it is also known). However they provide an essential complement when using such systems (as we do at Curtin in Internet Communications) or will be a great, light and fast alternative when you are looking for a specific kind of online activity (especially when teaching primarily on campus).
The problem with an LMS is that it is large, cumbersome and slow to react. On the other hand, it does some fantastic things, like managing assignments and providing a private space for students to discuss their work. They are often integrated into other university systems which can make them either vital or required for academics to use. Only Moodle 2.0 appears to ‘get’ the way the internet is developing as a public, social, developmental technological phenomenon and so it may provide the best complement to Web 2.0 applications ( I have commented on the possible benefits of Moodle 2.0)
Further, you cannot do knowledge networking with just an LMS – they are ‘walled gardens’, shut off in most cases from the rest of the Internet. Online learning, via an LMS, too often becomes a rather narrow form of what occurs on campus. There are too few opportunities for highly specific, structured cognitive activities through an LMS – just presentation of content and student-teacher interactions. They are neither public enough, nor knowledge-creative enough to be fully effective.
While complex learning management system is essential for any comprehensive online learning experience, such systems are not essential to the rapid uptake of digital media woven through courses and units that are delivered on campus. Indeed, the LMS can impede effective developments of this kind by prioritizing ways of working that have been designed, over many years, for fully online learning.
Some further thoughts on the LMS
In 2009, when commencing the LINK project I took this view of the ‘problem’ of the LMS:
The problem of the learning management system in contemporary innovation in using the Internet for education is best understood by considering the circumstances of its origin, and then systematisation. These two circumstances no longer reflect the diversity, capacity and capability of the Internet and thus place in question whether using an LMS is, in fact, Internet-based learning.
Simply put, the LMS – even before that term became popular – emerged in the 1980s in the creation of relatively easy-to-use interfaces for communications and information exchange by which to conduct computer-mediated learning. This ‘virtual classroom’ came from the combination into a usable package of numerous functions and features of Internet-enabled communication and an interface to provide a learning context. Various packages and interfaces were developed, though we now know that WebCT and Blackboard emerged as the most common through the late 1990s and into this century. As the LMS matured, it began to include specific learning applications of Internet communications, such as assignment delivery and return, grading and results functions and so on, though these are not unique to the learning environment in their underlying functionality.
Very rapidly, LMS development also included attention to identity management – always a key component in successful systems development and utilisation, especially when involving the creation of specific, bounded communities such as occurred with virtual learning communities. At the same time as approaches to LMS development began to mature, this concentration on the management of students also came to be a selling point for advanced versions of software like WebCT Vista. While WebCt and Blackboard came to dominate, with Moodle functioning as a largely similar – but open-source – equivalent, other systems began to develop that concentrated more on the creativity with which academics and educators could author material for online learning (LAMS for example, from Macquarie University), or Sakai which attempted to emphasise communications and collaboration over content.
Ultimately, what made learning management systems successful at a particular point in time was their capacity to offer uniform, scalable, reliable, secure and largely simplified forms of internet communication and information exchange, extracted from the unruliness of the public Internet. This was very appealing for academics and learners who needed simplicity and security, within institutions that became increasingly dominated by the pursuit of ‘widespread’ adoption of existing approaches rather than ongoing innovation which, ironically, had been the root of WebCT and so on in the first place. But, whatever the strengths of the ‘learning management system’ it is questionable whether the LMS offers much for innovative education using the Internet. While existing LMS approaches scramble to adapt to and include Web 2.0 elements within their products, they do so either very slowly, or by hastily bolting on tools like wikis and blogs without thinking how the underpinning logic of Web 2.0 changes the very nature of the online learning enterprise.
Source: Allen, M. 2009. Education and the Internet Web 2.0 & renewed innovation in online learning. Teaching and Learning Forum, Perth
See also: Allen, M. And Long, J. Learning as knowledge networking: conceptual foundations for revised uses of the Internet in higher education. World Congress of Engineers and Computer Scientists: Education and ICTS Conference , San Francisco, October 2009
My views and those of others on the differences between LMS and the so-called open web can be seen in the following video production from the COFA Learning to Teaching Online series:
Further reading
Dalsgaard, C. 2008. Social software: E-learning beyond learning management systems. European Journal of Open, Distance and E-Learning
IMC (UK) Learning. 2010. Learning Management Systems – are organisations making the most of them?.
McGill, T. & Klobas, J. 2009. A task–technology fit view of learning management system impact. Computers and Education, 52.2: 496-508.
Sclater, N. 2008. Web 20, Personal Learning Environments and the Future of LMS. Educause Research Bulletin, 13.
Some further thoughts on the LMS
