Are We Managing to Learn on Learning Management Systems?

LMS is an acronym for Learning Management System. It’s an online platform that enables educational institutions and organizations and to create and manage learning experiences. It allows educators to share and deliver learning materials, lessons, courses, assessments, and discussion forums. For organizations, LMSs allow the delivery of training and other learning content to employees or partners.

These all sound like things that you could easily deliver via social media. So then, why is a separate platform necessary? The value of the LMS is in the grade book and functions that track student achievement. Some LMSs now have the ability to adapt student experiences based on the learner data they collect. Kahn Academy, for example, will give you easier or harder problem sets depending on how many questions you’re correct answering and how quickly you’re working through them.

The major issue with most of these platforms is that, while they are great for management, they still fall short where learning is concerned. The design of many LMSs seem to benefit teachers, instructors, and administrators and fail to engage students in methods and approaches that enable deeper learning. So, based on what we know about best teaching and learning practices, what are the gaps for LMSs and what potential solutions are on the horizon?

We know that students learn best when experiences are personalized. This doesn’t just mean adapting the complexity of challenge for learners. Real personalization means creating learning experiences that are relevant, meaningful and connected to learner interests, goals, and needs. In the design of the How People Learn Course, the Harvard Teaching and Learning Lab demonstrate one solution to this problem by allowing learners to choose case studies that are relevant for them. This, however, doubles or triples the work for learning designers and requires resources that most education institutes or organizations can’t justify. One possible solution to the problem of personalization could be the use of aggregated open-source learning content tailored to specific areas students need support in. Lore is an interesting startup that is working on this.

We know that collaborative approaches to learning are important and LMSs don’t have the capacity to do this well. Chatting on a discussion board is very different to being in a classroom and building meaning together in groups. One emerging technology that might solve this issue is virtual and augmented reality. Educators are already harnessing collaborative VR apps like Oculus’ VR Chat and Rumii to teach students from all over the world in simulated spaces. Organizations are also quickly adopting VR and AR as a training solution for employees as it’s cost-effective and scalable.

When VR and AR hardware becomes cheaper and more ubiquitous (we might see Apple AR glasses in 2020), I think there will be a great opportunity to integrate the technology with learning management systems to make online learning more collaborative. In a VR collaborative space, unlike the classroom, you could replay important moments in the experience by time marking for later replay after a session (sped up or slowed down, viewed from different angles and perspectives, interactive). Youtube videos, for this reason, have become a go-to place for self-driven learners. In the coming years, as AR and VR become more accessible, I predict we will take a leap forward in online learning.