Edu2.0. When to LMS. Dave Wilkins, who I admire, has taken up the argument for the LMS in a long post, after a suite of posts (including mine). I know Dave ‘gets’ the value of social learning, but also wants folks to recognize the current state of the LMS, where major players have augmented the core LMS functions with social tools, tool repositories, and more. Without doing a point-by-point argument, since Dan Pontefract has eloquently done so, and also I agree with many of the points Dave makes. I want, however, to point to a whole perspective shift that characterizes where I come from. I earlier made two points: one is that the LMS can be valuable if it has all the features.
The argument for the former is one tool, one payment, one support location, one integrated environment. Which, again, may still be an acceptable solution if the price is right and the functionality is there. Which raises the question of whether you can actually manage learning. Your Digital Classroom. An Enterprise Application in the Cloud. How to make curriculum mapping useful to university academics. The following is an attempt to make concrete various ideas that have been floating around about a project to take a very different approach to curriculum mapping.
There’s a small glimmer that these ideas may form the basis for an ALTC grant application The following includes: The idea – a basic outline of the idea. What is curriculum mapping – a brief definition. The problem – what this project is trying to fix Current representation – the source of the problem? Alternate representation – why this is different. The idea The outline of the idea is: Implement the following changes by working closely with the academics and changing the project, its processes, aims etc in response to the learning that occurs. The main part of the project would be having a group of people with the right mix of technical and educational knowledge actively working with the academics to identify how this information could be made useful for the academics.
What is curriculum mapping Problems with current practice. The Open Source LMS. Selling Solar Panels to Oil Sheiks. In a reflective mood on my Friday evening commute home I tweeted that: That tweet seemed to strike a chord with some people and I can understand why. For me, it was bought on following a couple of weeks of analysing use statistics for a university LMS and observing that the use rate remains similar (slightly lower in fact) than Rogers’ (Rogers, 2003) numbers for innovators and early adopters combined (2.5% for innovators and 13.5% for early adopters). This is after eleven years of using a university wide LMS. I am sure that this is the case for the majority of traditional universities. Now this isn’t a diatribe against the use of an LMS.
This post is simply to try and say what many people don’t want to say and that is, that most universities really don’t care about educational technology or elearning. I regularly hear of senior academic managers describing the uploading of lecture notes to an LMS as being ‘blended learning’. Finally, I think we will get there in the end. Take This LMS and Shove It « Living In Learning. If we consider the title of this piece as a title to a Country and Western song, I wonder what lyrics might fit best. Quite possibly many Learning Management System (LMS) owners could easily sing a whining lament on betrayal, heartache, left standing at the altar, or living hard times at the hands of their technology investment.
Regardless of the lyrics we choose to sing, the LMS plays a starring role in a love-hate relationship with technology worthy of song, ten-gallon hats, boots, and a little slide guitar. Similar to C&W music, boots, hat, and guitar are not always enough – neither is the LMS if strategic learning objectives include creating and sustaining a dynamic learning ecosystem. Wow…now there is some new jargon to chew on – dynamic learning ecosystem. Do not get me wrong; I am not ragging on the poor LMS as much as you may think. Figure 1.0 Josh also made the statement that we are spending upwards of 80% of our training resources on the 5% slice of the pie. Sorry folks! Different perspectives on the purpose of the LMS. Antonio Vantaggiato gives one response to a post from Donald Clark titled “Moodle: e-learning’s frankenstein”.
Clark’s post is getting a bit of traction because it is being seen as a negative critique of Moodle. I think part of this problem is the failure to recognise the importance of the perceived purpose to which Moodle (or any LMS) is meant to serve. Just in my local institution, I can see a number of very different perceptions of the purpose behind the adoption of Moodle.
In the following I’m stealing bits of writing I’ve done for the thesis, some of it has appeared in previous posts. This probably makes the following sound somewhat pretentious, but I’ve gotta got some use out of the &%*#$ thesis. The importance of purpose Historically and increasingly, at least in my experience, the implementation of e-learning within universities has been done somewhat uncritical with the information technology taken for granted and assumed to be unproblematic. Differences of purpose References. E-learning’s Frankenstein. Is the educational hat on the Moodle logo a little dated and about to fall off? The word ‘Moodle’ was a word used for nearly a century to describe just ‘messing about’. “….he has gone off to moodle about doing nothing” Back to Methusela (1921). Apparently the word was used in Australia (where Moodle was first developed) to mean just dealing with things as they come along.
It then became 'Martin’s Object Oriented Dynamic Learning Environment', as it was first developed by Martin Dougiamas, then squared up into the more geeky Modular Object Oriented Dynamic Learning Environment. This semantic drift is reflected in the TLAs (Three Letter Abbreviations) that describe this type of software – LMS (Learning Management Systems), VLEs (Virtual Learning Environments), DLEs (Distributed Learning Environments), CMS (Content Management System), LSS (Learning, Support System) etc.
As we shall see, Moodle has become lots of different things to different people. Cambrian sea explosion From sea to land. Learning Management System : The University of Melbourne. IT Campbelltown - TAFE.