Who thinks staff particpation in LMS discussion forums is important?

The following chart is from a population of over 91,000 undergraduate university students studying via an LMS over a five year period. It shows the average hits on course sites for each grade for students whose teaching staff did and did not contribute to course discussion forums. The participation rate is higher and failure rate is 5% lower for courses where the teaching staff participated in course discussion forums. The limitations of this sort of de-contextualized data are well published and prevent the establishment of a causal relationship. However the distinct correlation is for me a very interesting indicator and is worthy of more investigation. In particular, I’m wondering if this can be linked to engagement and subsequently retention and attrition?

Staff participation in LMS discussion forums

What does LMS feature adoption tell us?

A learning management system (LMS) enables teaching staff to add resources or activities to an online course via a web interface with little or no knowledge of the underlying web (html) technology. Often the design and development of this course is the responsibility of the teaching staff and this is an important consideration when looking at the adoption of features within an LMS over time. If it is the teaching staff who are adding resources and activities to a course, then their experience with the teaching medium and their conception of teaching influences the features that will be used in a particular course. Additionally, Siemens (2004) says its only recently, and in limited ways, that LMS vendors have begun extending tools and offerings beyond simple content sequencing and discussion forums.

I realize that this is an over-generalization but let’s say that LMS tools and features tend to favour content dissemination type tools. The staff teaching via an LMS were themselves most often taught via a “lecture” or “sage on the stage” modality. Does this mean that pattern entrainment comes into play and they would tend to teach in a similar way that they were taught?

The following is a figure demonstrating feature adoption over time in one particular LMS. Whilst potentially another over-generalization, I’ve grouped features that support content dissemination and features that support communication to see if there is a trend.

Content and Communication Feature Adoption

LMS discussion forums

It has been said that for deeper learning to occur, learning must be social, active, contextual, engaging and student owned (Carmean & Haefner, 2002). Others have suggested that the learning process is transitioning from cognitive theories based on the individual to theories that stress the importance of the social nature of learning (Dawson, 2006) . Dawson et al (2006) states, numerous authors have espoused the importance for developing social learning opportunities where students actively debate, exchange and clarify ideas with other peers. Irrespective of learning theory, there is little doubt that social interaction plays an important part in learning and for the fully online student in a university course, the LMS discussion forum is the main enabler for social discourse and interaction during their course.

The following figures demonstrate the difference between on-campus and distance students in how they interact with the LMS.

What isn’t shown here is that when forum discussions are embedded into the course to meet specific course objectives as opposed to just providing a space for spontaneous student interaction, the proportion of the course that is forum activity increases.

Carmean, C., & Haefner, J. (2002). Transforming Course Management Systems into Effective Learning Environments [Electronic Version]. Educause, November/December 2002, from http://net.educause.edu/ir/library/pdf/ERM0261.pdf

Dawson, S. (2006). Online forum discussion interactions as an indicator of student community. Australian Journal of Educational Technology, 22(4), 495-510.

LMS content and communication

An quick extract from something I’m currently working on about LMS features that support content and LMS features that support communication. The following chart shows the evolution of these features over time in one particular LMS and indicates the dominance of content related features.

The following chart demonstrates the break down of distance student hits on these features.

This dominance of content features would appear to be a problem as it is contrary to research showing that effective learning occurs when students learn with computers rather than from computers (Oliver, 2005). Others have suggested that the learning process is transitioning from cognitive theories based on the individual to theories that stress the importance of the social nature of learning (Dawson, 2006) .

References.

Dawson, S. (2006). Online forum discussion interactions as an indicator of student community. Australian Journal of Educational Technology, 22(4), 495-510.

Oliver, R. (2005). Using blended learning approaches to enhance teaching and learning outcomes in higher education. Paper presented at the International Association of University Presidents’ Teaching Showcase, Joondalup, WA.