Institutional Learning Management System Research Articles

Monitoring Student Immunization, Screening, and Training Records for Clinical Compliance: An Innovative Use of the Institutional Learning Management System.

Clinical compliance for nursing students is a complex process mandating them to meet facility employee occupational health requirements for immunization, screening, and training prior to patient contact. Nursing programs monitor clinical compliance with in-house management of student records, either paper or electronic, or by contracting with a vendor specializing in online record tracking. Regardless of method, the nursing program remains fully accountable for student preparation and bears the consequences of errors. This article describes how the institution's own learning management system can be used as an accurate, cost-neutral, user-friendly, and Federal Educational Rights Protection Act-compliant clinical compliance system.

What Do Students Want? Making Sense of Student Preferences in Technology-enhanced Learning

This article, with its focus on university students as intended recipients and users of technological innovations in education, explores student preferences across three dimensions of technology-enhanced learning: mode of instruction; communication; and educational technology tools embedded in learning and teaching activities. The article draws on results of an exploratory case study, where mixed (quantitative and qualitative) data was collected from a randomized student sample generated through the institutional learning management system. An online survey (N=66) gaged students’ engagement with educational technologies, online and blended learning and social media as a learning tool. The findings confirmed previous research arguing that students generally use educational technology in a narrow way, rarely engaging with technological tools, unless it is presented to them as integral to their learning or if they are already familiar with a particular tool and/or perceive it as useful. Despite a well-cited characteristic by proponents of ‘digital natives’ that students need constant entertainment, this study found no evidence that this was the case.

A Methodology to Obtain Learning Effective Laboratories with Learning Management System Integration

Online laboratories are useful and valuable resources in high education, especially in engineering studies. This work presents a methodology to create effective laboratories for learning that interact with a Learning Management System (LMS) to achieve advanced integration. It is based on pedagogical aspects and considers not only the laboratory application itself but also related resources that complement it. The methodology is flexible, covers all possible cases, and it is structured in stages that can be used with any system architecture, standards, or type of online laboratory (virtual, remote, or hybrid) because it abstracts technical aspects at a high level. This methodology facilitates the creation of new online labs so that any teacher, even those without specialized knowledge, can clarify many of the questions that may arise and gain understanding of how to implement an effective online laboratory with LMS integration to assist learning. As an example and validation of the methodology, this work describes a laboratory developed as a Shared Content Object Reference Model (SCORM) package which is hosted in the institutional LMS at the University of Jaen. The laboratory was presented to 338 students taking an Industrial Automation class, and student evaluations were quite positive.

Laboratorio Web SCORM de Control PID con Integración Avanzada

Web laboratories (WebLabs) are education resources that are increasingly used in university technical grades. When they are presented integrated into a learning management system (LMS) several advantages for students and teachers are obtained, e.g. laboratories are shown in a familiar environment and the experience can be customized thanks to the user identification performed by the LMS. A Proportional-Integral-Derivative (PID) control WebLab has been created in this work, PID control is a fundamental content of the Automatic subjects found in all grades of Industrial Engineering. This WebLab was developed through an innovative methodology that generates an effective learning resource based on Shared Content Object Reference Model (SCORM). SCORM is the more used standard for e-learning contents; it is compatible with most LMS market, this way the WebLab can be easily reused in different LMS environments. The WebLab presented in this paper is based on a learning path that includes a series of useful learning resources such as PID control theory, assessment tests, a PID control virtual laboratory (VL) of a DC motor and customized experiments for each student whose results are stored in the LMS. This WebLab has been presented in the institutional LMS of the University of Jaén to 340 students of the subject “Industrial Automation” in the 2014-15 course. Several evaluations have been performed from the data obtained in the WebLab. Evaluations have shown that students who completed the WebLab have achieved excellent performance in the WebLab itself, they have achieved higher results than remaining students in the final evaluation of the course and they have highly positively valued the WebLab. It has also demonstrated the reusability of the WebLab in different SCORM-compliant LMS (Moodle and ILIAS) analyzing the problems that have arisen in this regard.

An Integrated Example of Laboratories as a Service into Learning Management Systems

Remote practical experiences are nowadays essential in the context of distance education, because students cannot use face-to-face traditional laboratories. These remote laboratories can be used by faculty within virtual classrooms, so that students can carry out their on-line experiments in a ubiquitous way – from anywhere and at any time. But these activities cannot be isolated from the learning process of students. Therefore, the services provided by a remote laboratory must be integrated into the institutional Learning Management System (LMS), in order to be employed during the whole learning process. In this work, a fully-functional example of the integration of service-oriented remote laboratories into a LMS is presented, where the Moodle platform has been chosen as a representative LMS

Hook, Line and Canvas: Launching a Professional Development Program to Help Librarians Navigate the Still and Stormy Waters of Online Teaching and Learning

ABSTRACTProfessional development is critically important for librarians trying to establish an embedded presence in online and hybrid courses. The institutional learning management system (LMS) provides a medium for enhanced visibility of both library resources and librarians as instructional collaborators and curriculum designers. This case study showcases one academic library's plan for developing an embedded presence in the LMS and scaffolding training and educational opportunities throughout the process. Important considerations and lessons learned from this initiative are also shared as well as future considerations for maintaining an ongoing and successful professional development program.

Crossing the divide

Learning management systems (LMSs) are a ubiquitous feature of the higher education landscape. As with any other technological system, change in LMSs is inevitable as advances in computer and communication technologies render older systems obsolete. In this paper we respond to the call for more research on the impacts of LMS change by documenting a relatively large scale and fined grained quantitative investigation of the changes in user perceptions (both students and academic staff) of the functions of an institutional LMS across the period of transition to a new system between 2011 and 2012. We address the question, “Did the new LMS dramatically change the student and staff experience of using the system?” To a large extent, the answer is, “No”. The median absolute difference between all 2011 and 2012 mean ratings (as a percentage of the 2011 rating) was only 0.21 % for students and 0.26 % for staff.

A case study for measuring Informal Learning in PLEs

The technological support for learning and teaching processes is constantly changing. Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) applied to education, cause changes that affect the way in which people learn. This application introduces new software systems and solutions to carry out teaching and learning activities. Connected to ICT application, the emergence of Web 2.0 and its use in learning contexts enables an online implementation of the student-centred learning paradigm. In addition, 2.0 trends provide “new” ways to exchange, making easier for informal learning to become patent. 
 Given this context, open and user-centered learning environments are needed to integrate such kinds of tools and trends and are commonly described as Personal Learning Environments. Such environments coexist with the institutional learning management systems and they should interact and exchange information between them. This interaction would allow the assessment of what happens in the personal environment from the institutional side. 
 This article describes a solution to make the interoperability possible between these systems. It is based on a set of interoperability scenarios and some components and communication channels. In order to test the solution it is implemented as a proof of concept and the scenarios are validated through several pilot experiences. In this article one of such scenarios and its evaluation experiment is described to conclude that functionalities from the institutional environments and the personal ones can be combined and it is possible to assess what happens in the activities based on them.

Students’ use of Facebook for peer-to-peer learning

This paper presents the findings from an empirical study of five non-institutional Facebook groups created and managed by students in Danish upper secondary schools. The objective of the paper is to study educational potentials of Facebook with a focus on students’ self-organized academic communication. The empirical study includes a questionnaire distributed to 2035 students and 182 teachers and a qualitative analysis of communication spanning more than two years within each of the five Facebook groups. The study provides an insight into how students communicate about school work without the participation of teachers. The findings from the questionnaire show that whereas students and teachers primarily use institutional learning management systems to communicate among each other, students clearly prefer social media when they communicate with fellow students. The study shows that students’ school-related use of Facebook is widespread. More than 80 % of the students in the questionnaire specified that they use Facebook as a communication tool in relation to their school work. Further, 67 % of the students state that they “almost all the time” or “often” use social media (which is primarily Facebook) to help each other with homework and other school-related work. Only 11 % answer “rarely” or “never”. Based on the findings from the questionnaire, a qualitative analysis of student communication in five Facebook groups is completed. The paper presents findings from the study that demonstrates students’ extensive use of Facebook groups to help each other with all kinds of school-related matters, including issues relating directly to academic subjects. The study rejects the claims that students do not wish to use Facebook for school-related activities. The empirical study demonstrates that students are using Facebook groups to help each other with all kinds of school-related matters, including issues relating directly to academic subjects. Based on the findings from the study, the paper concludes that there is an educational potential of Facebook groups in supporting peer-to-peer learning between students. The study has identified a usage of Facebook among students that differs from studies of Facebook being used as a learning management system, where the teachers is present and manages the groups.

Integration of Multiple Data Sources for predicting the Engagement of Students in Practical Activities

This work presents the integration of an automatic assessment system for virtual/remote laboratories and the institutional Learning Management System (LMS), in order to analyze the students� progress and their collaborative learning in virtual/remote laboratories. As a result of this integration, it is feasible to extract useful information for the characterization of the students� learning process and detecting the students� engagement with the practical activities of our subjects. From this integration, a dashboard has been created to graphically present to lecturers the analyzed results. Thanks to this, faculty can use the analyzed information in order to guide the learning/teaching process of each student. As an example, a subject focused on the configuration of network services has been chosen to implement our proposal.