When I first started looking into a learning management system (LMS) I had a couple concerns, the main one being “How would I ensure that my students were doing the actual work and not cheating the system?” Throughout the course I came to look at this question differently. Rather than worrying about something that I didn’t have complete control over, I asked myself what the harm was in the student cheating. Obviously there is the problem that a student is earning a grade that he or she didn’t deserve, but in the end it actually hurts the student more than the system. The student is losing out on the additional learning opportunity that I am giving her or him. The student will then either do poorly on the next quiz in class or will have to work extra hard later to make up for slacking off in that instance. Either way, I can’t worry myself sick about that, instead I need to do my best to ensure that as much learning as possible is completed with less opportunities to cheat, the rest is up to the student.
On this same topic, I also came to wonder, is it so bad to cheat online? Everywhere you go nowadays there is usually Internet access. So if a student is looking up the information for a quiz online, aren’t they also learning the (possibly more) practical way of figuring out information, a skill that they will use for the rest of their life? I asked myself this question after reading this article by Punya Mishra, the Director of the Master's in Educational Technology Program at Michigan State University, All you can cheat, the web and learning. It really puts into perspective which tool is potentially more useful; knowing how to look up quality information on the Internet or knowing the past tense of a verb in Spanish.
The most useful thing I did to prepare for creating an LMS was check out all of the different LMS’s and examples of completed work for each one. Many of the LMS’s have different features, and many people are looking for different key items, so no LMS is one size fits all. The most interesting thing for me was that, when I looked at great examples from other people, I was always impressed with the final outcome, but then when I got into the system myself it maybe was too complicated to figure out or it didn’t quite have what I wanted. It’s important to make a list of all of the must haves, and then all of the wish list items. Compare LMS’s with all of your must haves and then compare wish list items.
For example, one of my must haves was the same class but with different class sections. Thus I could always put up the same information, but then change the due dates and the calendar for each of the four sections that I have. I also wanted a site that I could leave up all of the information year round, but only let the students see which sections I wanted them to see. That way I wasn’t continually redoing what I had already done in the past. With both of these must haves I ended up choosing the Haiku LMS. Since then I have been very pleased with everything that I have been able to accomplish.
However, everything that I learned or figured out about the LMS didn’t come directly from exploring the LMS itself, but also from exploring other user’s work. It was through their work that I was able to expand my own capabilities, so it is very important to check out other people’s work as well.
One of the biggest things that I struggled with was thinking more in terms of face-to-face learning at first, and just transferring that onto my site. I limited myself by what I did in a classroom, rather than embracing all of the amazing tools that I had right at my fingertips on the web and the LMS. I also limited myself at first to what the LMS showed me and walked me through, because I was more comfortable with what I already knew. Through looking at other people’s work, pushing myself to try new things, and being pushed by my teacher to look at my work in different ways I was able to get more out of the LMS, though I still have more work to do. The longer I worked on the LMS the more comfortable I got and the more new things I tried. As I tried new things, I started to think outside the box and I started thinking more of online learning rather than face-to-face learning like at the beginning.
Really the best advice that I can give when creating an LMS is to not be too hard on yourself. Give yourself the chance to explore and become comfortable with it. Just like in the classroom, there is always modifications and improvements that can be made to any lesson. But you have to try it in order to know what to change and change takes time. So give yourself the time to improve and don’t expect a perfect and completely done LMS . . . ever. Just know that you are helping and encouraging a lot of different students by giving them one more tool for success.
To check out my Haiku LMS go here: https://www.myhaikuclass.com/busha/spanish1a/cms_page/view/5693728
To check out other thoughts on my LMS process check out my Developer's Notebook that I used throughout the entire process to brainstorm and receive feedback:
