ISSUES AND CHALLENGES IN USING LMS FOR ONLINE POST GRADUATE STUDENTS IN OPEN UNIVERSITY MALAYSIA

Transcription

1 13 ISSUES AND CHALLENGES IN USING LMS FOR ONLINE POST GRADUATE STUDENTS IN OPEN UNIVERSITY MALAYSIA Dr. Purushothaman Ravichandran Department of Computer Science Kyeum, Malaysia ABSTRACT Online teaching and learning has been increasingly popular due to vast availability of Web-based teaching and learning tools. Open University Malaysia (OUM) uses Learning Management System (LMS) to facilitate online teaching and learning among the post graduate students of Instructional Design and Technology (MIDT) program. This paper discusses the basic usability issues and challenges in using LMS, while teaching Instructional Technology Development Tools (ITDT). It also reports teachers perception of whether the LMS impacted positively or negatively in their teaching process in the course and their recommendations to universities who may be considering restructuring their LMS framework. Finally, this article closes with recommendations for universities, educators and tool-developers for the development and use of LMS. Keywords: MIDT, LMS, ITDT Introduction Open University Malaysia (OUM) offers all degree programmes both in hybrid and in blended modes. In addition, a growing number of public and private universities throughout the nation are employing elearning methodologies either to offer academic programmes via distance or to support their full-time on-campus learners (OUM, 2004). Open University Malaysia (OUM) is one of the higher education institutions in this country practiced initially this integrated e-learning approach in its teaching and learning process. OUM was set up as the seventh private university in Malaysia on 10 August 2000, established as a unique model for managing a modern-day university under the stewardship of a consortium of 11 public universities. Being the first university to practice Open and Distance Learning (ODL) in Malaysia, the establishment of OUM with its motto, Education for All marked a new beginning for the democratization of education in Malaysia. This indeed allows a paradigm shift in the country s higher education environment permitting a larger number of working adults to continue their search for knowledge and higher levels of competency in OUM (OUM, 2004). Table 1: Item Enrolment ,614 Number of programmes 4 50 Number of modules (Printed, CD and Webbased) Number of Learning Centers Number of Tutors 100 7,440 (Source : To facilitate online learning for learners, facilitators use OUM s learning portal, mylms or Learning Management System. Further, to enhance the performance of its tutors, an intensive tutor training programme, which expose them to mylms, Online Mark Entry System (OMES), and online resources (Digital Library). The programme also trains the tutors in the area of academic advising and learner counseling. No tutor is allowed to teach unless he or she has gone through the mandatory training programmes. Wide recognition and acceptance among the local and international institutions of higher learning. Some of the local public universities have purchased and used mylms. To date, mylms is being used by more

2 14 than 100,000 users. MyLMS contains i-tutorial, i- Radio and learning objects which are very well received by our learners. In November 2006, OUM received The Asia Pacific ICT Awards (APICTA), initiated by the Multimedia Development Corporation of Malaysia (MDeC) for Best of Education and Training in E-Learning. At the same time, OUM is collaborating with the Ministry of Higher Education (MOHE) of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA) to establish a National E- Learning Centre in Riyadh using mylms as its e-learning portal. OUM s Tan Sri Dr Abdullah Sanusi Digital Library provides the necessary online resources to our learners. Currently, it holds more than 23 multidiscipline databases consisting of e-books, e- journals, e-dissertations and e-newspapers, which are accessible from anywhere in the world. It is very heartening to note that the use of this online library has increased almost six-fold from 33,516 hits in January 2004 Semester to 196,109 hits in September 2007 Semester. However, this study is to examine how far the system in September 2009 semester is providing support to the pedagogical community and understand the issues and challenges that were sensed during the conduct of the course in Instructional Technology Development Tools using LMS in online teaching. Research methodology This study was conducted via observations made from the online discussion forum in the LMS, discussions via and Skype chatting with the MIDT students of the Instruction Technology Development Tools course. Objectives of the study 1. To identify the components/applications of LMS predominantly used during the course 2. To record the issues and challenges while using LMS for content delivery The following questions guided the researcher in this study 1. How many student really made use of LMS 2. Where there any problems in implementation of LMS 3. How many students used instead of LMS Discussions and findings The approach to a Learning Management System is to empower students by giving them the ability to participate in discussion forum, monitor their learning activities and to gradually construct their knowledge by interacting with the facilitator(s)/peer-to-peer interaction in an online environment. However, it is important to stress that the argument for using separate tools instead of an integrated system is a pedagogical argument. The argument is that the learning activities of students cannot be structured or pre-determined. Choice of a variety of tools will better support the required flexibility of open-ended activities than any one integrated system. Further, Christian Dalsgaard (2006), in his article argues that instead of integrating all functions within a system it could be appropriate to use several separate tools to support different needs of students in other words, providing students with a tool box of different opportunities. Furthermore, the emergence of social software has questioned the use of integrated LMS. Today, only few social software tools are employed within existing LMS. The question is: Is the next step to integrate social software tools in LMS? Social software has initiated discussions about the extent to which tools should be separated or integrated in systems (see Levine 2004; Blackall 2005; Cormier 2005; Wilson 2005; Siemens 2005; Anderson 2006a; 2006b). However, the discussion will find no answer, unless it is placed within a context of pedagogy. Use and organization of tools within e-learning can be approached in different ways depending on the chosen pedagogy (Dalsgaard, 2005). Different pedagogies will have different things to say about the problem of integration vs. separation. However, a discussion of the online integration of the social software tools must use pedagogy as a starting point. Furthermore, usefulness of different tools in support of online pedagogy depends upon identifying for which learning activities the tools should be more appropriate. Therefore, the discussions made in this study would focus on some of the issues and challenges of the LMS used in the conduct of Instructional Technology Development Tools course at Open University Malaysia. Out of the 14 students enrolled for Instructional Technology Development Tools course during the September 2009 semester, only 12 students were able to successfully complete the course. Students of this course were assessed 100% based on their course work and online interaction in

3 15 LMS. Students of this course were exposed to Tools every week apart from which they used , Skype and discussion forum in the LMS. Although LMS provided with an inbuilt gmail account, still students did not prefer to use it. The reason could be that the students were not asked to communicate through the inbuilt account of their facilitator within LMS or could be because the facilitator of the course provided his which was not linked with LMS. Furthermore, students were contacted using and during the course, to provide them with frequent updates and information on their course work. Students also personally contacted their facilitator via s. However, not all s were opened by respective students. The following table shows the accessing details of the 12 students. Table 1. accessing details of the students. Name No of s sent No of s Opened No of E- mails Not opened Student Student Student Student Student Student Student Student Student Student Student Student From the above table, we can see not all students seem to have opened all the s sent to them. However, it was interesting to note even those who did not open all their s were still active in discussion forum of LMS. There can be two reasons behind the students involvement in LMS as against response. The first reason could be that s within LMS was not used by the facilitator. The second possible reason could be that the students had sufficient information in discussion forum offered by LMS than . However, there could also be reasons like the Skype chat facility was much effective then and LMS discussions as one of the student mention in her discussion in Skype as, Student 2: Well, may we not change this because, as far as sharing and discussing problems is concerned with such a course in which we have hands on activities it is much more convenient, quick and feasible to have real time discussions like right now on skype; I sometimes learn from you and at times from other course mates on skype and that address a lot of my issues. It was also evident from the Table 1, that the same student did not seem to have opened all her s sent to her from the facilitator, but had shown considerable participation in LMS discussion forum (See Table 2) despite mentioning in skype that she felt that it was faster to solve her problems in Skype than in LMS. However, a few students felt happy sharing their views and experiences in LMS as mentioned by this student during Skype interaction with the facilitator. Student 11: In fact, I was just in bed reading through an article on FTP and decided I would watch the video again having read the article. I have also posted a message in LMS, giving my understanding of FTP.Read it and tell me what you think. From the Table 1, we can see that Student 11 has opened almost all his s, this shows he was active in . Added to it, he also was frequently leaving messages in skype and LMS. This seems to shows the self-efficacy of the student towards the course. Looking into the above two cases, it seems that the argument is that the learning activities of students cannot be structured or pre-determined. However, looking into two cases alone would not provide actual usage of the system and therefore, students actual participation in LMS need to be measured. Therefore, three LMS usage variables were measured in this study to capture Actual System Usage. The variables were (a) LMS forum participation (b) accessibility (C) skype interaction. This is because Learners posting is an indicator for actual participation in the course, since it showed the number of times learners actually read, assimilate and respond in writing to online discussion forum in LMS. The following graph shows the detail of students actual usage of accessibility, LMS participation and skype interaction.

4 16 Percentage Student1 Student2 Student3 Student preference Student4 Student5 Student6 No of Participants Student7 Student8 Student9 Student10 Student11 Student12 response % Skype % LMS % Fig.1. Students preferences in online participation Looking into the Figure1, it is plausible to note that only 4 students (Student 2, Student 4, Student 10 and Student 11) seems to prefer all the 3 components namely, , Skype and discussion forum equally than compared to other students. This low level of students using all the 3 facility is not good news for online providers. Also it was interesting to note that Student 9, who seem to have completely ignored the use of (See Table 1) had highest posting in LMS discussion forum. This high participation by Student 9 was seen even under the issue of LMS downtimes. Thus this finding seem to negate the findings of Hashemzadeh and Wade (2004), who suggest that student experience can also be impacted by technology issues such as LMS downtimes. However, this finding does not take the frequency of LMS downtimes into consideration as against the findings of Hashemzadeh and Wade (2004). It would be certainly worth a try to insist both facilitators and students to use the facility provided within LMS, to find if that improves more facilitatorstudent interactions. However, the argument then could be how facilitator-student interaction would happen during LMS downtimes. Furthermore, research studies have shown that in discussion boards where the tutors are more involved, participants respond with more enthusiasm and regular participation (Harasim et al., 1995). Thus it would be worth for further examination, if there was any active participation by facilitator in order to stimulate student s LMS participation. This is because none of the 12 students seemed to have ignored LMS discussion forum participation. Further there are different views about the quantity of faculty interaction in online classes. A study by Shank (2001) recommends that tutors should contribute at least 10% of discussion postings. Therefore, it would be plausible to further examine if the contribution from the facilitator in this study exceed the range stipulated by Shank (2001). Conclusion The research carried out in this study had findings that not only were associated to students participations and interactions in , Online discussion forum and Skype chatting in LMS, but also gave an insight of the issues and challenges that were faced during the faculty interaction with the students in an online environment. It also gave a notion to further examine if facilitators interaction had any impact on student s participation, interaction and satisfaction levels. References Anderson, T. (2006a). PLEs versus LMS: Are PLEs ready for Prime time? [ Anderson, T. (2006b). Teaching a Distance education course using educational social software. [ g-a-distance-education-course-usingeducational-social-software/] Blackall, L. (2005).Die LMS die! You too PLE! 11/die-lms-die-you-too-ple.html] Christian Dalsgaard, Social software: E-learning beyond learning management systems, European Journal of Open, Distance and E- Learning, [ contrib/2006/christian_dals] Cormier, D. (2005). What is this whole school thing about anyway? [ p=31] Harasim, L., Hiltz, S. R., Teles, L. and Turoff, M. (1995). Learning Networks - a Field Guide to Teaching and Learning Online. Cambridge Massachusetts: The MIT Press. Hashemzadeh, N. and E. Wade (2004). Developing an online Economics course for MBA candidates. Paper presented at the Midwest Conference on Student learning in Economics:Innovation, Assessment and Classroom Research, University of Akron, Akron, Ohio USA, November 2004.

5 17 Levine, A. (2004). The word is out: Small technologies loosely joined NMC [ Shank, P (2001). Asynchronous online learning instructor competencies. Learning Peaks, Available online: com/instrcomp.html (accessed 7 Feb. 2007). Siemens, G.(2005). When learning goes underground. [ ca/ blog]