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Course Management Systems and
the Reinvention of Instruction
By Craig Ullman and
Mitchell Rabinowitz
There is so much to say but not enough time to say it. Many
educators are attracted to teaching because they like to wax eloquently about
subjects they are passionate about. The problem is that there is never enough
time during a semester to cover all you want to cover. Once again, technology
potentially comes to the rescue with the Course Management System (CMS). A CMS
is Internet-based software that manages student enrollment, tracks student
performance, and creates and distributes course content. In this way, the CMS
enables teachers to extend the classroom beyond its traditional boundaries of
time and space. Some common systems include:
* Blackboard (
www.blackboard.com)
* eCollege (
www.ecollege.com)
* WebCT (
www.webct.com)
The CMS became widely
available in 1997, and its popularity and use have increased dramatically ever
since. These software solutions have been widely marketed to and adopted by
colleges and universities across the country. They have also been adopted by
many publishers and e-learning companies that provide curriculum for the K-12
and corporate training markets. Given the increased adoption of the CMS as an
instructional tool, it’s important to address how instructors are to make use of
this technology. A review of extant literature shows that many articles have
been written comparing the functionality of different systems (Hall 2003; Van de
Pol 2001); how to incorporate this functionality into an existing course,
however, rarely has been addressed.
In this article, we will argue that university teachers approach the use of the
CMS with a pre-existing "mental model" of how the technology should be used and
that this mental model then constrains how the teachers use it, thereby using
technology to reinforce traditional teaching styles. We will further dispute
that there are at least two distinct mental models to account for these
approaches, each with a different goal for how to use the CMS. According to the
first mental model, CMS should be used to supplement a conventional course
experience. According to the second model, the CMS could be used to organize a
conventional course experience. We will contend that this subtle distinction
between supplement and organize has dramatic consequences on how instructors use
the technology. We will also argue that the organize model is a more effective
model to adopt in order to improve student instruction.
CMS Functionality
Prior to discussing the distinction between supplement and organize, let’s
summarize some of the functionality of the CMS first. Although there are a
variety of systems on the market, every CMS contains some implementation of the
following functions:
Authoring/Publishing Tools. These tools allow the instructor to publish files to
a section of the CMS for students to download, or simply publish a list of
hyperlinks that students can click through to read additional materials online.
Some systems also allow the students to upload files, but this functionality is
frequently avoided as bandwidth and server space limitations can quickly
complicate hosting the CMS.
In addition, these tools facilitate the creation and publication of Web pages —
typically, template-driven forms consisting of text and images. Audio or video
streams also may be accessed through the CMS, usually by means of a hyperlink.
The most common example of these tools is the creation of online tests.
Test-authoring tools, in particular, support a variety of question formats
(e.g., multiple choice, short answer, essay, etc.). Some tools only support text
forms, whereas others support the embedding of graphics and hyperlinks into the
test.
Virtual Community. Every CMS enables instructors and students, individually and
as a group, to communicate online. Communication can be synchronous (as in
chat), whereby two or more people exchange text messages in real time, or it can
be a virtual classroom that usually includes chat with a whiteboard and/or
PowerPoint slides. The communication can also be asynchronous, as in a threaded
discussion, whereby multiple users enter text comments based on a general
question or in response to a previous user’s comments.
Data Management. For students to access course material, the CMS must allow for
the creating of classes, as well as the assigning of one or more instructors and
a number of students to that class. Most platforms also allow students to
register for a class online rather than being registered by a teacher or system
administrator. This form of registration may capture information beyond simply
confirming the legitimacy of the student’s access to the content; for instance,
the student’s e-mail, home address and similar personal information may also be
collected. Alternatively, the CMS might be connected to the database of the
school’s registrar, whereby student data is automatically supplied to the CMS.
Some platforms also enable students to pay for a course, which might be included
in the CMS itself, or "pass through" to the university’s online e-commerce
system. Typically, access for both teachers and students is rigorously password
protected, as password management by a system administrator is an important
feature in every CMS.
Each system also offers the ability to capture students’ performances on tests
and their resulting grades. Grading functionality usually includes the ability
to enter grades for papers, projects or tests not done online. Thus, the system
becomes the complete online grading book for the instructor, regardless of the
amount of testing done online. Most systems’ grading functionality also enables
teachers to compute weighted averages of the students’ grades throughout the
semester to generate a final grade. In addition, students can access their
previous coursework online, including the tests they submitted, notes saved and
the like.
Making Use of the CMS
How the CMS is implemented usually is left to the individual university — or
more often, the individual instructor. This position, in fact, is common in the
software industry. It’s practically an axiom for companies to know their
products are succeeding when customers use their software in ways that were
never fully imagined by the programmers.
However, that attitude assumes that users of the system explore every function
in a creative fashion. While such a paradigm might work for other kinds of
software, teachers usually don’t have the time or inclination to explore some
new technology. Also, the Instructional Technology departments of most
universities are not prepared to train their faculty on anything beyond the
simplest use of new software, while the companies themselves usually avoid
suggesting a specific pedagogy with their software in order to appeal to the
broadest possible audience. Consequently, how a CMS effects the organization,
implementation and even the meaning of a class has rarely been explored.
CMS as a Supplement
The assumption we make is that teachers commit extensive time and effort in
preparing their classroom activities. Many educators teach the same class year
after year, and while they update their materials periodically and learn from
past experiences, the general framework of the class is set. Therefore, left to
their own paradigms, teachers most often use their university’s CMS as a
supplement to their preferred teaching style. The lecture and teacher-led
activity remain the organizing principle — the locus of attention for students
and teachers alike. The instructor uses the CMS functionality as an add-on to
the course. What d'es this mean in terms of making use of the CMS?
Authoring/Publishing Tool. Typically, teachers might use the CMS to put content
on the site, including publishing their syllabi and class assignments. Students
can then check the CMS for their assignments and due dates. Teachers sometimes
create PowerPoint presentations of their lecture notes which they can upload or
provide Web hyperlinks to. In addition, teachers often post links to Word or PDF
files for reading materials or links to online references. This content provides
support for the course experience, but d'esn’t substantially affect how the
class is organized or what happens in the classroom. The content is usually
text-based and not intended to stand alone. Teachers also sometimes use the
test-authoring tool, mostly to generate a series of simple multiple-choice
questions that can be graded automatically.
Virtual Community. Teachers frequently ask students to write a number of
comments on threaded discussions. The teacher then uses the student responses as
part of his or her classroom participation and grades accordingly. It is
interesting to note that this communication tool may actually be decreasing the
amount of time teachers and students spend communicating — knowing that students
will have a chance to air their views online often results in teachers spending
more class time lecturing, rather than interacting with students.
Data Management. Instructors frequently move their grading and some other simple
data management functions to the CMS. The CMS, in this case, replaces
stand-alone software that teachers often use to maintain their grading. Overall,
a teacher who supplements his or her class by using a CMS to post reading
assignments, promotes student communication through a threaded discussion, and
uses the gradebook feature, seems to be extracting some value from the system.
However, we suggest that there is a better alternative.
CMS as Organizing the Course
The assumption we make in proposing this perspective is, once again, that
teachers have committed a lot of time and effort to prepare their classroom
activities. They have taught the course many times and have a good sense of what
information needs to be covered. Given their understanding of the content, the
first step would be to review all the functionality of the CMS and determine how
to distribute the content and student-teacher interactions across the CMS and
classroom experience. What d'es this mean in terms of making use of the CMS?
Rather than thinking of the CMS as a collection of individual functionalities,
the teacher should consider the CMS and classroom as a complete seamless
experience. From the organizing perspective, the instructor uses the CMS to
outline the course as if it were a table of contents, except it actually directs
the student to the different aspects of the course. All course material and
activities, including listing the classroom sessions, would be presented in
their proper sequence. Hyperlinks giving students access to the content itself
or to the areas within the CMS would be provided. There might also be text,
PowerPoint, audio or video created by the instructor to provide a context for
the readings and activities.
Using the CMS in this way enables students to have a richer experience with the
material. For instance, the CMS can direct students to read the first part of a
PDF and then go to a different section of the CMS that provides a hyperlink to a
simulation available on the Web illustrating what they just read. Students then
can be directed to a different text, provided by the teacher, which explains the
relation between the PDF and the simulation, and provides a transition back to
the original PDF.
The data capture of student input now can be used, or not used, more creatively
than an ordinary summative assessment. The course table of contents also can
include open-ended questions for student reflection on the CMS online notepad.
The notepad also would track the student’s own learning process throughout the
semester. Although conceivably the notes could be printed at the end of the
course and turned in as part of the student’s grade, it might be more effective
to keep the notes private, thereby encouraging students to take more
responsibility for their own learning. In addition, students could be asked
questions as they progress from one reading selection to another in the CMS, or
be told to go back to the CMS to answer a question before finishing a reading
assignment. The value of these questions would once again be to provoke thought;
perhaps more interestingly, the instructor could distribute some of the
students’ responses to the rest of the class in order to begin a discussion or
student activity. Because it is the students’ opinions that are being discussed
rather than the teacher’s, using the students’ responses for questions in the
CMS would be an effective technique for getting the students to participate more
actively in the discussion.
Since students would have much more participation in the actual class, the
threaded discussion and chat would be used to enable students to review concepts
from previous classes and prepare for future class discussions.
In this way, the virtual community functions actually would be used to create a
virtual community of students sharing information and learning from each other,
rather than participating just because they would be graded. In addition, the
virtual classroom functionality could be used by the instructor for selected
students as a reinforcement of the course concepts, as well as a way for
subgroups of students to get feedback from the teacher.
By using the CMS for the course’s organization, then the purpose of class time
would be almost exclusively devoted to discussion and student activities. Freed
from having to repeat past activities, instructors could become more engaged in
the process of sharing ideas. The students could become more active learners,
taking more responsibility for what they learn and becoming more important in
the dynamic of the classroom.
In summary, by using the CMS as a supplement rather than as the spine, teachers
are taking a technology that could help reinvent their teaching style and making
it fit into their old lecture-based teaching styles. Rather than rethinking what
happens in the classroom, teachers use the latest technology to defend the old
factory model of education. Although, using a CMS to its fullest extent would
enable us to redefine what happens in the classroom — essentially redefining
what a classroom experience is. Reorganizing a course in this light is
ultimately a political issue. Classroom activity that consists of a teacher
lecturing is a classroom the teacher dominates. However, classroom activity that
consists of a teacher and students in group discussion is a classroom where
power is to some degree shared.
References
Hall, J. 2003. "Assessing Learning Management Systems." Chief Learning Officer.
January. Online:
http://www.clomedia.com/content/templates/clo_feature.asp?articleid=91&zoneid=29.
Murray, B. 2004. "What Makes Students Stay?" eLearn Magazine 12 October 12.
Online: Click here.
Terry, N. 2001. "Assessing Enrollment and Attrition Rates for the Online MBA."
T.H.E. Journal February. Online:
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