Content management capabilities. By this feature administrators or instructors

Learning Management System 25

1. LMS as Supplement

The use of LMS within a training organization can be as supplement or as course organiz- er Ullman Rabinowitz, 2004. The use of LMS as supplement assumes that instructors have commitment to spend their time to prepare their classroom activities. Many educa- tors teach the same class year after year, and while they update their materials periodical- ly and learn from past experiences, the general framework of the class is set. Therefore, lecturers can use their university’s LMS as a supplement to their preferred teaching style. The instructor uses the LMS functionality as an add-on to the course. This includes the use of LMS as authoringpublishing tool, as a tool for creating virtual learning community, and as a data management tool. Typically, lecturers might use the LMS to put content on the site, including publishing their syllabi and class assignments. Students can then check the LMS for their assignments and due dates. Lecturers sometimes create PowerPoint presentations of their lecture notes which they can upload to their online classes. In addition, lecturers often post Word or PDF files for reading materials or links to online references from the Internet. This content provides support for the course experience, but doesn’t substantially affect how the class is organized or what happens in the classroom. The content is usually text-based and not intended to stand alone. Lecturers also sometimes use the test-authoring tool, mostly to generate a series of simple multiple-choice questions that can be graded automatically. Lecturers frequently ask students to write a number of comments on threaded discus- sions. The lecturer then uses the student responses as part of his or her classroom partici- pation and grades accordingly. Some LMS provide internal e-mail that can be used to per- son-to-person communications. Usually other one–to-many such as course announce- ment and many-to-many such as bulletin board and discussion forum communication are available within some LMSs. These communication tools are helpful to support the learning processes. Instructors may move their grading and some other simple data management functions to the LMS. The LMS, in this case, replaces stand-alone software such as MS Excel that lec- turers often use to maintain their grading. Overall, a lecturer who supplements his or her class by using an MS to post reading assignments, promotes student communication through a threaded discussion, and uses the gradebook feature, seems to be extracting some value of LMS. However, there is a better alternative use, i.e. LMS as organizing course.

2. LMS as Organizing Course

The use of LMS as organizing course also assumes that lecturers have committed a lot of time and effort to prepare their classroom activities. They have taught the course many times and have a good sense of what information needs to be covered. Given their understanding of the content, the first step would be to review all the functionality of the LMS and determine how to distribute the content and student-lecturer interactions across the LMS and classroom experience. Rather than thinking of the LMS as a collection of individual functionalities, the lecturer may consider the CMS and classroom as an integrated experience. From the organizing perspective, the instructor uses the LMS to outline the course as if it were a table of