Your School Needs a Learning Management System
- Written by Mark Brumley
When you look at the business world, especially larger companies, almost all have a way of deploying e-learning content and tracking progress. Instructional designers create learning objects (aka lessons) and load them to a learning management system, LMS. They trust their adult education to this model because it is effective, available 24/7 and has a high ROI compared to instructor led training. Why are schools not eagerly adopting this model?
I am convinced school districts could save tons of money by virtualizing routine professional development. For example, think of the technical training teachers new to the district receive. Actually, they may not receive much, are undertrained and constantly need support. Or, maybe this training is instructor led. This is expensive and can’t be repeated every time a new teacher is hired. Developing learning objects that are loaded into an LMS would take care of much of this training.
Did you know you can load learning objects into a free LMS, such as Moodle, and it will track who took the course and grade embedded quizzes?
You need some tools to make this a reality. First, you need authoring software such as Camtasia (great for screencasts), Articulate (PowerPoint-based) or Captivate (great for simulations). Next, you need an LMS that will load SCORM compliant learning objects. Some free options are Moodle and Haiku. This is important because SCORM learning objects will let the LMS track progress. By the way, SCORM is a whole other discussion and not really important in this post. Lastly, you need a list of skills teachers need to learn on a routine basis. I’m sure you can make a top 10 list in under a minute. You may need to contact to get it all done but the costs will be worth it in the long run.
Let me know if your district is moving in this direction.
Mark Brumley is an educational technology leader, presenter and founder of Teach Amazing, who has lived and worked around the globe in his commitment to provide authentic learning experiences to enhance the education of 21st Century learners.
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I set up Moodle on a private server a few years ago and it was great! My district has an attachment with Sharepoint, which is clunky and unwieldy at best as it is not made for teachers and students. Moodle has everything; blogs, journals, online tests, lessons, uploading, that teachers could and would think about for online use. Some may not be as glossy and easy as those services dedicated to a particular function (Edublogs), but having it all in one place far outweighs the inconvenience of being spread out all over the web.
I hosted 18 teachers with 40 courses delivered to 450+ students and I am, by no means, an computer wizard. Having security levels that fit all users was great as was the online gradebook that was accessible by the students 24/7. My only challenge as a high school teacher was to enter a grade once, then have Moodle change it again automatically and to give parents access to their childs work, ensuring privacy for the rest of my class. There is, however, a great big helpful Moodle community that would probably figure out all of these questions, given enough time.
I am a huge fan of elearning for PD. I try to promote it in my work as much as possible through online courses, but also through blended learning, which I think is a phenomenal model for PD. F2F to introduce new skills, then online components for teachers to practice and learn on their own, try things in the classroom, get support and feedback, and then come back together face-to-face to share experiences and learn next steps. A continuous cycle that promotes learning and changing instructional practice gradually, giving teachers time to try things in class, make mistakes but get support, ideas and encouragement. Change in instructional practice takes time, and elearning provides the time and support that encourages and creates the chance to change where it fits into teacher practice. One-stop workshops will never work, so agreed – elearning is a great way to promote long-term, sustained change as long as it is done effectively.
Rather than spending money on Camtasia, you can open Quicktime. File>NewScreenRecording>press go. Works great.
I got an email from a LMS called Schoology. It looks slicker than Moodle.
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I’ve been working on a trial period with Schoology for my math classes. I would love to hear more about districts who have tried to use Schoology as an LMS.
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