Learning Management System Course Research Articles

Addressing inconsistency in use of the LMS

Inconsistency in the use of the learning management system (LMS) by academic staff is a source of dissatisfaction among university students in the UK. One solution is to establish a set of minimum standards (or baseline) for LMS use within an individual institution. Another is to supply templates – frameworks for LMS course sites – with a view to providing students with a seamless experience in their interactions with the LMS. This paper describes how the issue of inconsistency was addressed at a leading research university in the UK through an exploratory project, WebLearn Improved Student Experience (WISE). The widespread devolution of responsibility for site management to administrative staff, together with the ‘maverick’ creation of course sites by those academics who chose to engage with the WebLearn LMS, had resulted in unevenness in students’ access to learning materials. The project team engaged in close collaboration with 19 departments in order to achieve the immediate purpose of improving uptake of, and consistency in, their LMS presence. The ultimate aim was to develop a support package comprising LMS templates and ‘best practice’ guidelines that would enable departments in the future to achieve the same objective, either unsupported or with minimal assistance from the central team of learning technologists. The project was evaluated using a modification of the Innovation Histories method, which included interviews with 13 participants. The evaluation findings additionally threw into relief the complex social and cultural factors at play that can inhibit a consistent student experience in an institutional LMS.

Generating personalised profiles of student engagement to predict student performance and support student learning using LMS data

With the rising popularity of delivering educational content in the online space, this study set out to better understand how students are increasingly engaging with Learning Management Systems (LMSs) for their learning (Gupta, Muralidharan, & Raghavan, 2021; Henrie, Halverson, & Graham, 2018; Conijn, Snijders, Kleingeld, & Matzat, 2017). A data mining approach was used to investigate whether student activity data from LMSs could be used, first in generating profiles of student engagement and, second, in predicting student academic performance (Romero & Ventura, 2013; Tempelaar, Rienties, & Giesbers, 2015; Conijn et al., 2017). LMS activity data was collected throughout a semester for a cohort of undergraduate students (N=534) enrolled in a biomedical science subject. This activity data comprised of total views and downloads of lecture recordings and average time spent viewing lecture recordings, total number of page clicks, total number of LMS course and content page clicks (e.g., lecture lessons), total number of discussion forum posts and views, and total number of formative quiz attempts and reviews (Wang, Chen, & Anderson, 2019; Conijn et al., 2017). K-means cluster analysis was performed to generate profiles of student engagement using this digital LMS data. Measures of student activity derived from this digital LMS data were used to predict academic performance (students' final unit totals), using linear regression and ANOVA. We demonstrate the utility of LMS log data in constructing 'profiles' of student engagement, and in establishing predictors of academic performance. In line with existing literature, average time spent viewing lecture recordings was determined to be a significant predictor of academic performance. Clustering analyses revealed three distinct clusters, or ‘profiles’ of student engagement, each representing key differences in student engagement activity, with greater homogeneity in student engagement behaviour within clusters, and greater heterogeneity across clusters. The current findings provide valuable insights on how our students are increasingly engaging with LMSs for their learning. As delivery of education towards the online space continues to gain momentum, evidence-based approaches such as those utilized in this study will help inform and enhance teaching practices (Jovanovi?, Gaševi?, Pardo, & Dawson, 2020; Ullmann, Wild, & Scott, 2018; Conijn et al., 2017). A better understanding of how students are differentially engaging with LMSs will also help support the development of teaching resources that more closely mirror and complement online student learning behaviors (Dyckhoff, Zielke, Bültmann, Chatti, & Schroeder, 2013; Conijn et al., 2017).

Integrating Your New Faculty to Reinforce a Liberal Education

Recognizing a need to pivot new faculty onboarding from a two-day “information download” to a more meaningful and pedagogically sound delivery of information, the provost invited the Academic Support Division to reimagine new faculty orientation for 2022. Through collaboration, an asynchronous Learning Management System course shell was quickly created to “flip the classroom” to deliver best-practice content to new faculty in a space where they were able to interact with their LMS teaching technology (Canvas) as a student and establish relationships with their new faculty cohort while discussing teaching philosophies, DEI pedagogical practices, and authentic assessment. This prioritized faculty connection and a sense of belonging for the in-person orientation and ensured the notion of liberal education was woven into all our various programs as a dual mission, Hispanic Serving Institution. This new structure afforded new faculty across all disciplines and modalities to receive consistent onboarding to foster student success.

Canvas LMS Course Design: Create and Deliver Interactive Online Course on the Canvas Learning Management System : A Book Review

As online education continues to grow in popularity, instructors are increasingly seeking ways to design effective and engaging online courses. "Canvas LMS Course Design: Create and deliver interactive online courses on the Canvas learning management system, 2nd Edition" by Ryan John is a comprehensive guide to designing online courses using the Canvas learning management system (LMS). The book is an excellent resource for instructors at all levels of experience, providing practical advice and examples to help them design engaging and effective courses that meet the needs of their students. The book focuses on the practical aspects of course design. John provides clear and concise guidance on topics such as multimedia integration, assessment strategies, and student engagement, and provides numerous examples and case studies to illustrate these concepts in action.

Making Use of Your LMS for Student Staff Training & Support

Training and supporting student staff is a reiterative process that can run into several roadblocks that differ greatly from regular staff training and support - including creating work schedules around class schedules, training student staff individually and comprehensively while making sure student staff really understand processes, and making it easy to communicate (especially for switching shifts). This session covered some reasons why creating a student staff module inside your institution's learning management system (LMS) is a good idea and showed various ways Yale Divinity Library is using Canvas to connect to student staff, taking attendees on a “tour” of the LMS course itself.

Revealing the most and the least successful behaviours using two-phase clustering analysis

ABSTRACT Students using a Learning Management System (LMS) as a learning support have been observed to demonstrate different learning behaviours. Studies have reported students exhibiting different procrastination tendencies, distinct social behaviours and system usage patterns. Students can be clustered together based on similarity in their learning behaviours. The K-means clustering algorithm is a simple and effective way to group students with similar behaviours. The authors use this algorithm in a novel way. It is applied in two phases on an unlabelled dataset obtained from LMS course logs. In the first phase, distinct clusters are formed using K-means. In the second phase, K-means is again applied to clusters obtained in the first phase to obtain further insight into students’ interaction behaviours. The two-phase application of K-means clustering clearly revealed the most and least successful learning behaviours. The authors also establish a relationship between observed behaviours and course final scores.

Exogenous and endogenous knowledge structures in dual-mode course deliveries

Learning Management Systems (LMS) have facilitated any-time any-place learning; thereby enabling educational institutions to embrace dual-mode teaching by engaging with on- and off-campus student cohorts. This study examines how lecturing staff build on existing knowledge structures when tasked with delivery of the same course concurrently over dual modes. Exogeneous knowledge structures are constructed from one's environment, while endogenous structures are rooted in how lecturing staff assimilate their teaching and learning environments to meet the needs of dual-mode learners. Activity Theory provided the theoretical lens and has revealed how exogeneous structures are influenced by the outer triangle elements, that in turn inform on interactions occurring among the inner triangle elements to construct endogenous knowledge. Seventeen lecturing staff participated via open-ended surveys to share their pedagogic approaches for maintaining equable learning experiences across both student cohorts. Findings show that staff can be constrained by LMS functionalities, course curriculum, course structure and lack of technical support. Staff employed additional online tools, changed assessment methods and encouraged online discussions to bring more parity across both learner groups. Our study provides new insights on dual-mode teaching deliveries and shares how lecturing staff develop new knowledge structures from their teaching practice. It will further help in development of instructional strategies especially post Covid-19, when it is likely that teaching modes will have more online component compared to current times.

Engaged to Succeed: Understanding First-Year Engineering Students’ Course Engagement and Performance Through Analytics

The use of analytics in education provides researchers the opportunity to uncover student engagement habits by utilizing data generated through online platforms such as course learning management systems (LMS). Student engagement has been shown to vary based on student-instructor interaction. We examined LMS usage of first-year engineering students in a large research university in the United States to examine the following three research questions: 1) How do course grades vary based on the students' instructor and the overall number of LMS sessions per student, 2) How do course grades vary based on the students' instructor and the number of LMS sessions per student for different course tools, and 3) How does the timing and frequency of LMS tool usage relate to course grades and vary across instructors? We found a positive relationship between LMS usage and course grades; however, the relationship is dependent upon the instructor of the course, as well as for the specific type of tool used. We also found that the day of the week on which the LMS was used is a strong predictor of student course grades. The results empirically demonstrate that better engagement with a course leads to better outcomes and there are variations in how instructors use an LMS which ultimately influences student usage and performance. We also illustrate an opportunity for researchers and instructors to capture, analyze, and use LMS data to inform and improve teaching practices and policies.

Assessment, Analytics, and Analysis: Demonstrating the Impact of LMS Embedded Librarians on Student Learning

Librarians are committed to supporting teaching, learning, and research. They are equally committed to supporting student success and retention. Demonstrating the impact that learning management system (LMS) embedded librarians make on student learning has been difficult to correlate, however. Studies that assess this connection, using qualitative and quantitative data have been undertaken in recent years. In a university regional campus library study conducted in 2016–2017, LMS embedded librarians explored the relationship between student learning and information literacy instruction, relying primarily on a customized LMS embedded librarian page of library resources and learning objects. They used a rubric to assess student research papers and bibliographies, LMS course analytics, instructors’ grades, and student feedback. This article reviews the literature and their methodology, challenges, and findings. They wish to guide colleagues, committed to assessing how librarians contribute to student learning, in selecting assessment approaches and validate their instructional role.

Implementation Of Web 2.0-Supported Flipped Learning In The Learning Management Systems Course: An Experience From Turkey

Due to rapidly developing technology, the learning needs of the new generation have begun to vary, leading to an equally rapid renewal in learning and instruction. Renewal has emerged in the form of hardware and software integrated into education and the testing of new methods and models. Flipped learning is one of the new methods that have become popular especially in recent years. The model, which reverses traditional learning and instruction processes, is based on learning that can take place both, at home and in the classroom. Short videos and class notes prepared by the instructor to facilitate learning are shared with students through an online platform. In the classroom, individual and group activities are carried out to monitor learning and are focused on the areas that students are lacking in. Just as in flipped learning, Internet technologies are also a powerful tool for instructors in traditional learning. Thanks to the wide variety of Web 2.0 technologies that the new generation are familiar with, they are easily integrated into education. This study aims to encourage the integration of Web 2.0-supported flipped learning in the Learning Management Systems course and provide the views of students regarding the model. With this objective in mind, a content analysis through qualitative approach with an 11-week application was carried out with 55 thirdyear students in the Department of Computer and Instructional Technologies Education under the Faculty of Education at Trakya University, Edirne, Turkey. During the application, two Web 2.0 tools, Padlet and Facebook, were used to support instruction. At the end of the semester, students were asked to fill out a Course Evaluation Form which was prepared by the researcher and consisted of 6 open-ended questions. According to the result, majority of the students expressed positive views on the use of Padlet and Facebook in classroom. Findings indicated that flipped learning help students in sharing ideas and information with peers. Moreover, flipped learning generates an active teaching- learning environment which allows students to come to class with preparations on the lesson. The findings have been discussed through evaluation within the context of Technology Acceptance Model. Keywords

Machine learning methods in predicting the student academic motivation

Academic motivation is closely related to academic performance. For educators,it is equally important to detect early students with a lack of academic motivation as it is to detect those with a high level of academic motivation. In endeavouring to develop a classification model for predicting student academic motivation based on their behaviour in learning management system (LMS) courses, this paper intends to establish links between the predicted student academic motivation and their behaviour in the LMS course. Students from all years at the Faculty of Education in Osijek participated in this research. Three machine learning classifiers (neural networks, decision trees, and support vector machines) were used. To establish whether a significant difference in the performance of models exists, a t-test of the difference in proportions was used. Although, all classifiers were successful, the neural network model was shown to be the most successful in detecting the student academic motivation based on their behaviour in LMS course.

Analyzing the Functions and Benefits of Using Mobile Facebook as a Supplemental LMS in Higher Education

The wide implementation of social networking sites (SNS) in many fields, for instance, government, celebrities, schools, social groups, events promoted by national organizations or private enterprises, NPOs, businesses, etc., attests to its popularity. Currently more and more educators and students have integrated these online social communication platforms into their learning environment. Learning Management Systems (LMS) also have great features and functions that may serve as a bridge between learners and educators leading to better communication, in addition to helping students increase their learning engagement and teachers in evaluating learning performance. Although many studies have investigated the effects of adopting Facebook as an additional learning management system (LMS), its functions and benefits differing from the LMS have hardly been systematically analyzed. Besides, due to the increasing popularity of mobile devices among the younger generation, university students are obviously likely to use their smart phones to access both Facebook Mobile App and school LMS. Therefore, the first purpose of this study is to determine students’ opinions on mobile Facebook course groups and a mobile LMS course group, through a survey conducted after a 2-semester experiment. The other objective of this study is to evaluate the benefits of each function of mobile FB course groups that may strengthen the current weaknesses of LMS. In addition, regression analysis and t-test were used to reveal the relationships among variables: the FB functions and its benefits for FB course group. The findings might provide a clear notion for teachers regarding the functions and advantages contributed by a mobile FB course group which can be implemented as a supplemental learning system. The results of the research will provide university administrators with more detailed information for improving the LMS’ features or developing new LMS Apps.

Abstraction des fonctionnalités d'une plateforme de formation pour la mise en oeuvre de langages de scénarisation

The GraphiT project aims to help teachers in specifying of pedagogically sound learning scenarios that can be executed for automatically setting-up the related Learning Management System course. We intend to provide teachers with LMS-specific instructional design languages and editors. To achieve this goal, we have to raise the LMS semantics in order to enrich the pedagogical expressiveness of the produced models. We propose a specific LMScentered approach for abstracting the low-level concepts and turning these semantics into higher-level pedagogical building blocks. We present and illustrate our propositions focused on the Moodle LMS.

Embedded Library Guides in Learning Management Systems Help Students Get Started on Research Assignments

A Review of:
 Murphy, S. A. & Black, E. L. (2013). Embedding guides where students learn: Do design choices and librarian behavior make a difference? The Journal of Academic Librarianship, 39(6), 528-534. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.acalib.2013.06.007 
 
 Abstract
 
 Objective – To determine whether library guides embedded in learning management systems (LMS) get used by students, and to identify best practices for the creation and promotion of these guides by librarians.
 
 Design – Mixed methods combining quantitative and qualitative data collection and analysis (survey, interviews, and statistical analysis).
 
 Setting – A large public university in the United States of America.
 
 Subjects – 100 undergraduate students and 14 librarians.
 
 Methods – The researchers surveyed undergraduate students who were participating in a Project Information Literacy study about their use of library guides in the learning management system (LMS) for a given quarter. At that university, all course pages in the LMS are automatically assigned a library guide. In addition, web usage data about the course-embedded guides was analyzed and high use guides were identified, namely guides that received an average of at least two visits per student enrolled in a course. The researchers also conducted a qualitative analysis of the layout of the high use guides, including the number of widgets (or boxes) and links. Finally, librarians who created high use library guides were interviewed. These mixed methods were designed to address four research questions: 1) Were students finding the guides in the LMS, and did they find the guides useful? 2) Did high use guides differ in design and composition? 3) Were the guides designed for a specific course, or for an entire department or college? and, 4) How did the librarians promote use?
 
 Main Results – Only 33% of the students said they noticed the library guide in the LMS course page, and 21% reported using the guide. Among those who used the guide, the majority were freshmen (possibly because embedding of library guides in the LMS had just started at the university). Library guides with high use in relation to class enrollment did not significantly differ from low use guides in terms of numbers of widgets and links, although high use guides tended to have slightly fewer widgets. Of those guides, 55% were assigned at the course level, 30% at the department level and 13% at the college level. Over half the librarians with at least one high use guide conducted a library instruction session in which they used or promoted that guide. For 39% of the courses with high-use guides, the librarian was actively engaged with the faculty and students via the LMS, but others reported no specific involvement in courses. 
 
 Conclusion – Those students who used library guides reported the guides helped them get started on their research paper or assignment and find research materials, two areas for which previous studies show students have great difficulty. Since the majority of students did not notice the link to the library guide in the LMS, librarians could emphasize it in the news section of the course, which gets much more attention. Within library guides, simpler groupings of links might be easier for students to use, but this conclusion would require further research to confirm. In any case, nearly half of all high use guides were not promoted in any way by librarians, but simply automatically embedded in the LMS, a sign that passive embedding may provide an easy way for the library to reach a large number of students early in their academic career. Since the automatic embedding of guides began, guides have seen a dramatic increase in usage.

Identifying significant indicators using LMS data to predict course achievement in online learning

This study sought to identify significant behavioral indicators of learning using learning management system (LMS) data regarding online course achievement. Because self-regulated learning is critical to success in online learning, measures reflecting self-regulated learning were included to examine the relationship between LMS data measures and course achievement. Data were collected from 530 college students who took an online course. The results demonstrated that students' regular study, late submissions of assignments, number of sessions (the frequency of course logins), and proof of reading the course information packets significantly predicted their course achievement. These findings verify the importance of self-regulated learning and reveal the advantages of using measures related to meaningful learning behaviors rather than simple frequency measures. Furthermore, the measures collected in the middle of the course significantly predicted course achievement, and the findings support the potential for early prediction using learning performance data. Several implications of these findings are discussed.

Integrating a Facebook Group and a Course Website: The Effect on Participation and Perceptions on Learning

This study investigated how the use of two virtual platforms for learning—a Facebook group and a learning management system course website—affect students’ perceptions of learning and participation. The theoretical basis for the research relied on social–constructivist theory. It was found that Facebook, although not originally created for educational purposes, can be used as a virtual environment for discussion and sharing knowledge. Students reported being engaged in interaction and active participation in the Facebook group and appreciated its major contribution to their own personal learning experience. Most of them embraced a Facebook group for their future academic courses, without giving up on a course website, crucial as the main source of course materials and the support of individual cognitive learning processes. The Facebook group was perceived as a protected environment that fosters social learning processes while emphasizing learner involvement, active contribution, and frequent interaction with peers and instructor. The course website, on the other hand, was perceived as a learning content repository designed for traditional, individual learning processes, such as recalling and understanding the course content.

Clinical competencies and the basic sciences: An online case tutorial paradigm for delivery of integrated clinical and basic science content

Understanding the relevance of basic science knowledge in the determination of patient assessment, diagnosis, and treatment is critical to good medical practice. One method often used to direct students in the fundamental process of integrating basic science and clinical information is problem-based learning (PBL). The faculty facilitated small group discussion format traditionally used for PBL is a significant challenge for faculty and facilities with a large class. To provide inductive learning to a large class early in the preclerkship curriculum, a series of online, case-based tutorials was created using the method of inquiry-based learning. The tutorial paradigm is designed to challenge students through a guided inquiry process in which clinical skills and basic science information are seamlessly joined. The psychosocial dimension of patient care is added to the documented case presentation of the tutorials in the form of patient/physician history taking and physical examination videos. These videos augment the written case with additional information providing the student with visual exposure in methods of patient communication and appropriate professional patient/physician interactions that address competencies of patient care, communication, and professionalism. The tutorials were made available via learning management system course sites. The study tracked usage of the tutorials by 270 first-year medical students.