I am a member of SIG Group 1, Challenges to Learning Management Systems. I have thought a LMS to be a great tool manage and store all of my electronic documents. As a document or lesson is created, it can be placed in the appropriate portion of the LMS program and can be found again by myself or a student. I use my computer at school, one of the several computers at home and numerous flash drives. A LMS will provide a common organizational program that can be accessed from any location. I won’t have to remember to bring a laptop or flash to school that has the lesson I plan to use that day. No more wasted time on emailing, uploading and downloading just to get the lesson on the computer I need to use.
My personal focus of LMS is exploring different ways in which traditional lecture and worksheets can be converted into electronic format. How we move from traditional methods into computer based lessons. I don’t think you can just throw away older, successful lessons just because they aren’t considered new. I will research what others have done for the conversion process, what has been successful and what may not have worked as well. A strong understanding of the process will assure a higher success of implementing an LMS in my program but other instructors programs as well.
The student will benefit by having the information, lessons and homework at hand. It will be laid out in a logical manner so that the student will be able to see the direction the curriculum is going and I feel will be more comfortable knowing what is expected now and what will be expected in the future. The student will be able move ahead at his or her own pace. The student will be able to find what is next in the learning process. Worksheets can be both online and printable.
The subject matter is Diesel Technology and the LMS will facilitate the academic lessons and provide instruction to the hands-on side. The subject matter can be organized in such a way as to provide a logical progression of learning. It will allow for independent study as well as remediation as needed. It does not rely on the teacher facilitating each and every step. Students can progress at their own speeds.
The LMS I will be learning and building through this project will be Moodle. The reason I chose Moodle was for the simple fact that our school has bought into the Moodle System and has a dedicated server for Moodle in the county. My focus will not be limited to the Moodle LMS, but I need to implement my research to show the validity of the findings and give myself a greater understanding of the findings. It always sounds easy until you try it.
I will be collaborating and sharing information with the rest of my group throughout the project.
Other group members will be researching applications of Blackboard and PeBL. We have a variety of class types in which we applying the LMS programs to. It will be very interesting to see the different approaches used to tackle the problems.
