To Use or Not to Use an LMS

Below are responses to a post regarding Moodle and the audience of a classroom.

“[When using Moodle], why would you say the target audience is the teacher?”

When educators (in mainly formal institutions where grades matter) set up a learning management system (LMS), such as Moodle, they are the target audience as a rule. Those who participate within the LMS are more of a group than a network (Downes, 2006, slide 8) where teachers tend to have more control over the content and degree of openness. And yes, external web tools can and are being used but they are being “siphoned” through an LMS because the intended audience is still the teacher. Students can interact with each other in an LMS but it is still within a contained atmosphere that requires anyone to see this interaction to join “the group”. Each teacher then must evaluate the type of course to be given, the maturity level of the students, etc. to determine which type of LMS is best suited for their teaching context or whether they will use an LMS at all.

As an alternative to an LMS, think of the entire Internet as an “LMS”. Imagine using Google Wave, blogs, wikis, twitter, multimedia tools, etc. in absence of any particular LMS to conduct a class. Now the audience begins to shift away from the teacher, and learning becomes more open. Learners as part of a formal class begin to interact more with the global society as opposed to mainly interacting with those within the LMS group. I recently saw a TED talk with Sir Ken Robinson where he discussed the importance of creating “organic” learning environments for students, and I see learning in a non-LMS environment in the same vein.

What are your thoughts?

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Subsequent response…

…the teacher may relinquish full control to the learner and allow the learner to drive and control the content and learning environment.

I agree with you as I suspect most would. The question becomes is this surrender of power best served within or outside a LMS. If my teacher were to give me full rights over the content and learning environment, I could then choose whether or not to use the LMS in the first place (I’m thinking CCK08, CCK09, Edfutures, etc.). And as a learner, I would still have this perception that even though I’m using outside web tools and that I’m in control of the learning environment (however one wishes to define “control”) that the main audience is still my teacher because all the content was being channelled through an LMS.

Can you envision what it would look like in an EFL/ETL class?

Yes, I can envision it becoming more common in the future through the ongoing development of a personal learning network (PLN). My current research, in fact, addresses PLNs and professional development among EFL/ESL educators. In developing a PLN, I see an LMS as a “stepping stone” in facilitating EFL educators (i.e., learners) to become more interdependent.

CCK08: Rhizomatic Education and language learning

I enjoyed reading Dave Cormier’s article on Rhizomatic Education.  The rhizome metaphor emphasizes the importance of diversifying instruction and assessment.  Curricular aims for language learning are typically based on certain behavioral patterns that provide reliable and valid evidence that the learner has achieved a desired level of communicative proficiency.  A rhizomatic education frames these common sets of curricular aims in terms of establishing individual learning progressions with distinct starting and ending points.  In my opinion, relying on traditional tests and quizzes and discrete activities alone will fail to develop the individual learner due to the assumption that an entire group of learners are starting from a single starting point and will end up (or should end up) at one common ending point.  

In contrast, establishing foreign language exchanges, for example, provide the means for developing individual learning progressions that promote individual interests, needs, and learning styles while at the same time respecting curricular aims.  Although preparation for the language exchange performance task can include teachers taking a didactic and facilitating role, the bulk of the actual performance task requires an active learner and a teacher as a coach.  During the language exchange common themes assist the language learner to focus on a certain lexicon while conversations take different directions based on the knowledge and experience of the interlocutors. 

The final discussion this week ended with George and Stephen providing an example of connectivism in a practical sense.  George provided an example very similar to a language exchange as discussed in this blog while Stephen, after writing off a connective-classroom environment as somewhat “artificial”, stated the importance of getting students out of the classroom and doing something for the betterment of society.  While I agree that the latter might be a preferred way of learning, I don’t see anything artificial about learning another culture through a connective-classroom.  Getting to know people from different cultures creates a level of respect for others that also contributes to the common good.