{"id":251,"date":"2023-09-11T08:43:03","date_gmt":"2023-09-11T15:43:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/malat-webspace.royalroads.ca\/rru0280\/?p=251"},"modified":"2023-09-11T08:44:40","modified_gmt":"2023-09-11T15:44:40","slug":"25-years-of-ed-tech-the-lms","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/malat-webspace.royalroads.ca\/rru0280\/25-years-of-ed-tech-the-lms\/","title":{"rendered":"25 Years of Ed Tech – The LMS"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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As I read chapters 9 through 11 of Martin Weller\u2019s book, 25 Years of Ed Tech, I kept in mind the concept of \u201cgood enough\u201d, a theme that came up often in the first 8 chapters. While discussing the Web in Chapter 2, Weller (2020) stated that \u201cgood enough is usually the victor in terms of popularity if it can be made universal\u201d (p.18). The concept came up again with reference to the LMS in the chapter 9 of the book and related Between the Chapters discussion with host Laura Pasquini, and guests Laura Gibbs, Brenna Clarke Gray and Caroline Kuhn. The popularity of the \u201cgood enough\u201d LMS and our love\/hate relationship with it is a phenomenon worth exploring.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

First, the LMS has immediate relevance to me since I recently started using Kajabi to support my Child Mental Health practice. As a small business, we struggled to manage more tech platforms than we had time or capacity. Kajabi has proven to be a cost-effective and time-efficient way to manage our website, newsletter, blog, and other digital assets. In addition, it is allowing us to build online courses, a free membership platform with the potential of building an online community, providing a variety of ways to offer additional support to our in-person clients, and the ability to reach a broader, geographically diverse clientele. Another significant benefit is that it offers a very responsive help desk and online tutorials, which our old platforms, such as WordPress, lack. Weller\u2019s (2020) description of what the LMS offered in 2001 still rings true to me today,\u201cthe LMS offered a neat collection of the most popular tools, any one of which might not be as good as the best of the breed-specific tools but good enough (another example of the \u201cgood enough\u201d principle). It allowed for a single, enterprise solution with associated training, technical support, and helpdesk features to be implemented across an institution” (p. 63).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In contrast to my positive, liberating professional experience with the LMS as a simple, cost-effective, and time-saving tool to support our client and business needs, Between the Chapters episode 9 guests feel anything but liberated and supported by the LMS in higher education. Context is everything. They share their frustrations around the constrictive and rigid nature of the LMS, offering an excellent example of the tension between educators who support a more open approach to education through technology and the slow pace of change in higher education. According to Caroline Kuhn, as both a student and now a professor, the LMS has always felt like a straitjacket (Pasquini, 2021, 2:35). Furthermore, Laura Gibbs acknowledges that she was \u201cstruck by the horror of it from the start….the LMS is not linky, it’s not part of the real internet\u201d (Pasquini, 2021, 4:30). She continues sharing that she would like to see the LMS pared down so that it meets the institution\u2019s needs and then educators and students could have the freedom to connect, collaborate and create outside the LMS. I then found it so interesting to hear from the 3rd guest, Brenna Clarke Gray, that during COVID, she needed to move over 500 faculty members onto the internet, estimating that two-thirds of them \u201chad never used electronic tools in their teaching\u201d (Pasquini, 2021, 7:22). This tells me that most educators still lack the desire, motivation, or skills to embrace technology and use it innovatively to support student learning. She also shared that the \u201cgood enough\u201d, structured quality of the LMS made it possible for her small team to support changes that needed to be made quickly during COVID.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In watching my young adult children make their way through traditional University programs, I can attest that they engage in technology platforms outside of formal classes to support their learning and educational goals. Even if most educators and Universities are not yet ready, for various reasons, to incorporate tech in more innovative and creative ways, it\u2019s my experience and opinion that students are leveraging digital tools and spaces that resonate with them, and they are creating their own personalized digital learning environments outside but inclusive of their school\u2019s LMS. I think what\u2019s missing in the discussion is that education doesn\u2019t happen in a vacuum, and students are not given enough credit for using their own agency to connect to digital tools and environments that support their learning. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

It seems that context is in fact everything. Although the LMS is not a perfect solution to all our business and client needs, it is offering us a better option than we had before.  It is good enough for now.  In terms of the use of the LMS in higher education, that is a much more complex and contentious issue that I need to learn more about before I make any comments on a way forward. Through my own current experience and that of my children\u2019s in regard to the use of LMS in education, we are enjoying our respective learning journeys and have experienced growth in both knowledge and skills in our areas of focus.  I can only conclude that the LMSs supporting our learning are fulfilling their purpose and are good enough, for now.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

References:<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Weller, M. (2020). 25 years of ed tech<\/em>. Athabasca University Press. https:\/\/www.aupress.ca\/books\/120290-25-years-of-ed-tech\/<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Pasquini, L. (Host). (2021, January 7). Between the Chapters: #9 resistance & care for the LMS with @OnineCrsLady, @brennacgray & @carolak [Audio podcast episode]. In 25 Years of Ed Tech. <\/em>Spotify.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As I read chapters 9 through 11 of Martin Weller\u2019s book, 25 Years of Ed Tech, I kept in mind the concept of \u201cgood enough\u201d, a theme that came up often in the first 8 chapters. While discussing the Web in Chapter 2, Weller (2020) stated that \u201cgood enough is usually the victor in terms […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":297,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-251","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-lrnt523"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/malat-webspace.royalroads.ca\/rru0280\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/251","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/malat-webspace.royalroads.ca\/rru0280\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/malat-webspace.royalroads.ca\/rru0280\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/malat-webspace.royalroads.ca\/rru0280\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/297"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/malat-webspace.royalroads.ca\/rru0280\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=251"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/malat-webspace.royalroads.ca\/rru0280\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/251\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":257,"href":"https:\/\/malat-webspace.royalroads.ca\/rru0280\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/251\/revisions\/257"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/malat-webspace.royalroads.ca\/rru0280\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=251"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/malat-webspace.royalroads.ca\/rru0280\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=251"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/malat-webspace.royalroads.ca\/rru0280\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=251"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}