LMS teaching versus Community Learning: a call for the latter

Abstract

Purpose -Unlike Sisyphus -condemned by Zeus to an eternity of perpetually rolling a massive boulder uphill only for the boulder to roll back down -universities, students and academics seem destined to educational technology experiences ranging from futile and frustrating to effective and engaging. As technology evolves, related costs, applications, interoperability and purposes evolveas do the students. The purpose of this paper is to propose two contrasting ideologies of technology-mediated education, LMS teaching and Community Learning, to question the inexorable march towards the former. Design/methodology/approach -The approach used is a literature review and case study. Findings -Most traditional universities would embrace a Community Learning ideology, yet many of these same universities practice LMS teaching. This paper draws on the literature to contrast these two technology-mediated learning ideologies, and argue for Community Learning. These contrary ideologies help administrators and academics reflect upon, and then align institutional ideologies with their educational pedagogy and technology. The paper includes a short case study to illustrate aspects of Community Learning, a few simple ideas for shifting towards Community Learning and future research avenues. Originality/value -This paper answers calls for critical discourse of effective educational technology use, particularly LMS technology, and adds to a nascent research field that uses ideologies to help explain technology consumption. In addition, this is one of a few papers that reviews social media as a learning management system.

Massive Open Online Courses: Strategies and Research Areas

“…These universities and others proudly share more than 13,000 class syllabi, lectures, videos, and readings (Murphy, 2012). Almost half of MIT's users are lifelong learners, and more than half are international users (Murphy, 2012).…”

“…Today, online access to course materials and education ranges from severely closed to wide open. Most universities practice the former, learning management system teaching (Martin, 2012;Murphy, 2012). A learning management system, such as Blackboard or Moodle, houses all materials and restricts access to registered students during the term.…”

“…A fourth approach, community learning, incorporates social constructivism and connectivism into communities of practice (Murphy, 2012). A community learning class resembles Carse's (1986) religious model of an infinite game.…”

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“…This is particularly true for mobile-based technologies (Ko et al, 2015;Papamitsiou & Economides, 2014), which have become ubiquitous in today's society, especially for younger users. However, there is still a wide gap in the level of research and understanding about how best to implement the current technological tools into learning environments to maximize the impact for students and educators (Murphy, 2012). One of the most significant tools currently being used in higher education is the learning management system (LMS), an online suite of systems and functions designed to automate and augment the delivery of course material using the Internet.…”