Thursday, September 24, 2009

Teaching with Course Management Systems

At each of the last three institutions where I have worked, we have had access to some form of course management system for on-line teaching and improved instructor-student and student-student communication. I must say, I have become a huge fan. I strongly encourage all of my teaching colleagues who haven't yet explored it to check it out!

Here's some of what I love the best:
1) Having an electronic submission option for student work, be that work submitted as a .doc file or just filling in a text box. The CMS time-stamps the submission so there is no disagreement on when it came in. No more "I slipped it under your door!" The best CMS applications allow me to view the submission, make comments, and select a grade, all at the same time. These grades are then available to the students immediately.

2) Open forums where students can post questions about course material to one another and have discussions. Some students have even used this as a way to form on-line study groups. I've used the forums to encourage studying by asking students to post review questions (multiple choice) that they have written, which may then appear on a test or quiz. This also helps me gauge their understanding of course material in yet another way.

3) Scanning work for originality and completion. One CMS I've used had the ability to compare student work submissions to other sources available on-line and not only told me how much of hte paper came from other sources, but highlighted it. You can use this as a teaching tool to help students become stronger and more ethical writers. Down with plagiarism!

4) Ability to organize and post assignments and resources for students. The best CMS applications allow you to organize these easily by date, and then provide buttons you can click to see just one category of posting.

5) Activity logs. It's a little 1984, maybe, but I like being able to see which students have checked upcoming assignments and when they last logged in. I can use this tool as an intervention to pinpoint students who aren't logging in, or, in some cases, to watch for obsessive use and then give the appropriate nudge to stop playing and start working or vice versa.

6) Email and news/announcement capabilities. It's nice to let all the students know of a new change I've made, or address a common question at once. One class I have meets once a week, so half-way through our meeting cycle I can drop a reminding hello. Some of the CMS also will keep and gather responses onto that website in case I feel my inbox is getting too jammed. In a high school CMS, email addresses were never displayed, and complete records of all emails sent or received were maintained by the system. The intention was to create a safe environment for student social networking.

7) Ability to personalize the CMS. Posting pictures and letting students submit files and links increases student ownership of the learning experience.

8) Group management with special pages for clubs or groups. The best of these allow members to sign themselves up, or allow for a leader to immediately subscribe members in a secure fashion.

9) Automatic enrollment and dropping. When linked to your school's admissions & records systems, many CMS have the ability to update your enrollment for you. No having to add students to the course or drop them. In a high school setting, this allowed for easy transfer of scores when students moved from one section of a class to another due to some administrative request. Other CMS allow the students to enroll with a simple code that you give to them so that the task of controlling enrollment is out of your hands.

10) Access to online resources from the publisher. I've mostly used this as a way to point out study aids to students, but my boyfriend uses a CMS that allows him to quickly create a set of online quizzes or activities in which the variables change for each student. Work is time-stamped, students have multiple chances to submit attempts, and scores are calculated (with a penalty for multiple attempts).

CMS systems I have used: MoodleRooms, MyCollege, Blackboard, Schoolloop, MyBiology (online resources only), Turnitin

Readers, I'd love to hear what you think. If you've used a CMS for an online or hybrid course as an instructor or student, what have you enjoyed about it? If you have used other on-line tools to ease workload, what has been helpful or what do you like?

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