In my "welcome" post, I shared some insight about Learning Management Systems...I like to think of it as a classroom in the virtual world that can be easily accessed by all students and their teachers 24/7. A place for collaboration, discussion, assignment descriptions and dropboxes, question and answers...the list goes on and on. At Olivet, we rely heavily on our in-class instruction to "get the job done" as we don't utilize Moodle, which is currently on our computers, or any other distance learning education site to enhance our student's experience. Moodle, another LMS, is something we have access to, yet only a few actually use it, if any. Why? Why aren't we taking advantage of this virtual learning tool for our students? We haven't been trained, shown the benefits, played around with it or seen it in action, so we stay away because what it really boils down to is just "more work". I fell into that category as an educator at Olivet High School. I gave it one chance, but got discouraged, had no training, except maybe a packet with the bare bones and just didn't want to do it. I didn't know what Moodle or an LMS could do for my students and my classroom if I implemented a hybrid-type learning experience because I never gave it a try and got frustrated....Good news! I now know the benefits of an LMS and suggest we get rid of Moodle and use another program. I am an advocate for using these resources in our classrooms and giving our students even more venues to learn in a hybrid-style classroom!!
My idea is simply this: We download and use Schoology in our classrooms. Our students get a login and have access to it at school-just in case they don't have internet at home. We set up a hybrid style course for our students where they still get their learning and instruction in the classroom, but they also collaborate and work/engage in Schoology. We, as the teachers, upload some of our assessments and assignments, begin and facilitate discussion forums, upload content and lets be honest- the amount of useful educational tools/sites/pages/pictures/everything on the internet is vast and needs to be incorporated more! This IS the future, technology is the future and our students...well they are the future!! After using it in my own online course via CMU, I feel very confident that our students will not only learn and engage while using Schoology, but they will enjoy it. They are SO knowledgeable with all things internet, so by incorporating an LMS, especially Schoology which is set up similar to Facebook, we are promoting learning in a style they know and love.
Students feel comfortable on the computer, and that is something very difficult for adults to grasp. We believe that our students shouldn't hide behind a computer screen, but the reality is that they do. They spend a lot of time on their devices. They use sites such as Twitter and Facebook for social networking to chat and interact with friends. They upload photos to Instagram and share more than we know online- the internet is their home, so incorporating an LMS will be easy for them.
One thing that you need not worry about is how this will affect your relationships with your students. We have it easy in our face-to-face classrooms because we can create and maintain relationships with our students. We can read body language, use eye contact and "read" each other more. At first thought, maintaining those relationships in an online format seems daunting, but building social presence in our hybrid-online classrooms is easier than you think. Social presence, according to Rourke, L., Anderson, T. Garrison, D. R., & Archer, W. is, "The ability of learners to project their personal characteristics into the community of inquiry, thereby presenting themselves as 'real people'." There are several ways that we as teachers can increase our social presence to assure our students feel connected. Little things like an opening discussion question describing yourself to the class and letting your students share about themselves, uploading pictures to give students an image-this can be extremely helpful if in a full online course. By being very open to questions and discussions, using emojis or smiley faces and being authentic in posts. Oliver Dreon posts about social presence in his article, Tips for Building Social Presence in Your Online Class. His 5 tips include, "Have your online students introduce themselves, introduce yourself to students, create a common area for off-topic discussion, use synchronous tools for office hours and don't be the center of every discussion." Does it take work, yes, a little, but the payoffs are great and our students deserve this!
There are several LMS out there, but I believe that Schoology would be the best for us and our current situation. I think it would best suit us as we begin to use it with out in-class teaching and eventually use it for hybrid-style learning/classroom. Verneshia Johnson shares a list of advantages to Schoology, in her article titled, Edmodo Vs. Schoology, Who Wears the Crown in k-12 Learning?. See the list below, but I encourage you to visit the link to that article as I think it shares a lot of high points into the world of online learning.
Schoology Advantages
- Attendance records
- Easier to delete accounts
- Ability to post comments/documents when providing feedback
- Time limit options
- Updates
- Templates for classes
- Google compatible: conference/edit with students and collaborative work
- Soft limitations
- Direct contact with teachers
- Teachers provide parent codes
- Album/galleries of pictures
- More parts - a bigger learning system
- Closer to BlackBoard used in colleges
- Blogging/class discussions
- Easier to add clubs and groups
- Whole school system set up
- Students see multiple classes/groups/messages in one place from multiple teachers
- Ability to create multiple courses and folders
- Structured, detailed, and organized
- More detailed option for creating student profile
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