Adapt your course management system to fit your instruction
Blackborg: CC licensed image via Flickr by MikeLeSombre
The October 2009 issue of First Monday includes an article by Lisa M. Lane that encourages online instructors to plan the way they want to teach their course first, then choose a course management system (CMS) that fits their needs –rather than the other way around.
From the abstract:
Course management systems, like any other technology, have an inherent purpose implied in their design, and therefore a built–in pedagogy. Although these pedagogies are based on instructivist principles, today’s large CMSs have many features suitable for applying more constructivist pedagogies. Yet few faculty use these features, or even adapt their CMS very much, despite the several customization options. This is because most college instructors do not work or play much on the Web, and thus utilize Web–based systems primarily at their basic level. The defaults of the CMS therefore tend to determine the way Web–novice faculty teach online, encouraging methods based on posting of material and engendering usage that focuses on administrative tasks. A solution to this underutilization of the CMS is to focus on pedagogy for Web–novice faculty and allow a choice of CMS.
Lane argues that course management systems were originally designed to accommodate traditional instructional methods based in nineteenth-century pedagogical theory — namely, presentation and assessment. Over time, research has revealed revolutionary effective practices for online teaching, but few of these innovations have been incorporated effectively into the most common CMSs. These systems, according to Lane, often do little to encourage faculty creativity in course design or experimentation with constructivist learning tools.
Lane seems to argue in favor of Moodle rather than Blackboard as a more flexible CMS for instructors who are novice web users. Blackboard courses begin with default settings that might lead instructors to teach with the defaults in place rather than experimenting with the alternatives, whereas Moodle forces instructors to choose course activities from a list.
As someone who has used both Blackboard and Moodle, I think there are definitely some elements that Moodle does better (student profile icons come to mind) — but Blackboard may still have an upper hand with its grading system. I don’t know that there could be such a thing as a perfect CMS, anyway, as each instructor will likely have issues that cannot be resolved with one system.
Provided that your school chooses your CMS for you (and you don’t get to pick one from a list), how well do you incorporate the various features in that system beyond its most obvious settings (if at all)? If there’s something you haven’t been able to do with that system, do you bring other programs and software into your curriculum, like web 2.0 collaboration and networking websites?
How would you advise another instructor to improve course design, with or without CMS tools? Share your techniques in the comments thread!
Insidious Pedagogy: How course management systems impact teaching
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