Management Information System Prof. Kunal Kanti Ghosh Vinod Gupta School of Management Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur
Week - 10
Module - 05 Lecture - 50 Learning Management Systems (LMS)
Hi, welcome to the 5th module of the 10th week on our course “Management Information Systems”! Today, we are going to discuss about ‘Learning Management Systems’, abbreviated as LMS. And we will be introducing some basic concepts related to learning management systems. Now, what is this learning management system? (Refer Slide Time: 00:51)
Companies they need ways and means to keep track of and manage employee learning as well as integrate those learning in a comprehensive and total manner, in their knowledge management and other corporate systems. And, hence there arise the need for such kind of systems. (Refer Slide Time: 01:46)
. So, learning management system provides the tools, which are necessary for management, delivery, tracking and assessment of various types of employee learning and associated training. Once again I repeat a learning management system provides ways and means that is the tools for management, delivery, tracking, as well as assessment of various types of employee learning and associated training.
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A learning management system also supports multiple modes of learning including CD-ROM, downloadable videos, web-based classes, online or live instructions in classes, as well as group learning in online forums and chat sessions with which all of you are familiar, because you are everyday interacting with the computer systems, you are watching the various videos in the YouTube various lecture sessions. So, all of you are quite familiar with the knowledge based system of learning particularly the learning management system. Basically talks about that only it is very simple concept. (Refer Slide Time: 04:33)
So, learning management system basically consolidates mixed media training, automates the selection and administration of courses. The systems assemble and deliver learning content and as desired it also measures the effectiveness of learning that is very important. It is one of the most important thing that has been observed in various learning management systems is that it has the ability to find out, whether the teaching or the learning that has been imparted on to the students, whether they are effective or not. (Refer Slide Time: 05:43)
And, there are measures for that. Corporate houses or businesses run their own learning management systems, they have developed it over the years and widely deployed in their premises. So, that employees can quickly become productive, but nowadays even businesses
are also turning to publicly available massive open online courses, which is commonly known as MOOC to educate their employees. Now, what is MOOC? A MOOC is basically an online platform, online platform where courses are made available via the web to a very large number of participants and business houses are taking advantage of that. (Refer Slide Time: 07:02)
So, a learning management system is basically a software application for the administration, documentation, tracking, reporting as well as delivery of educational courses, training programs, or say learning and development programs. So, please note this software supports administration, documentation, tracking, reporting and delivery. All these things related to educational courses, training programs, as well as different learning and development programs, particularly business houses they take advantage of learning management systems. And, nowadays educational institutes the students, they are also widely using, this learning management systems and particularly. Nowadays, during this COVID situation this learning management systems have got wide usage and it has gained lot of popularity. (Refer Slide Time: 08:50)
The learning management concept originally emerged from this concept of e-learning. The first LMS appeared in the field of higher education systems or sectors. But today majority of the business houses or the corporate world is taking advantage of these systems.
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These web based systems facilitate “anytime, anyplace, and any pace” access to learning content and administration of the same. Mind the words any time whenever you are free or whenever you want to know about things, wherever you are any place and at your own pace. So, these are 3 very important things. Anytime, anyplace and any pace, there is no hurry, you can relax comfortably at your own pace, you can learn something. This is the main reason, why such kind of systems are becoming highly popular. (Refer Slide Time: 10:54)
So, to summarize learning management system can be defined as a software application, which is mainly based on web based technology and used to plan implement and assess a specific learning process. (Refer Slide Time: 11:41)
Through learning management systems, teachers may create and integrate various types of course materials, teachers, they may articulate learning goals, they can align the content of the course the systems help them for proper assessments; they can track the progress of the students. And, these systems also help the teachers to create customized tests for the students. Learning management systems thereby allows the communication of learning objectives and organize learning timeliness.
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Learning management systems delivers learning content and tools straight to the learners. And, it can also reach student groups through special settings. These systems have built in features, which are tailor made, customized, as per the need of the students, and they include facilities for assessment as well as tracking of the progress made by the students. (Refer Slide Time: 14:56)
Thus, the learners can see in real time their progress and the instructors in turn can monitor and communicate the effectiveness of learning. One of the most important features of such systems is trying to create a streamline communication between the learners and the instructors. (Refer Slide Time: 15:59)
So, such systems besides facilitating online learning, tracking learning progress, providing digital learning tools, managing communication, selling content, may also be used to provide different communication features; that is very important. (Refer Slide Time: 16:42)
There are 6 major advantages of learning management systems. First of all interoperability in a seamless fashion, the different modules can communicate with each other, accessibility that is very important. Reusability, you can use the system again and again durability, maintenance of the systems are very easy and one can adapt as per the need while using these systems, so adaptability. (Refer Slide Time: 17:53)
Other advantages that are associated with the use of such systems include number one, the content of these systems. May be organized or arranged in various formats, say text, video, audio and so on. One can access this content, anytime, from anywhere, and everywhere, and the teachers can modify this content as per the need and the students thereby can see the updated material. The evaluation of students becomes much more easier and also the evaluation is fair based on the students’ attendance and their performances in online quizzes. Students as well as the teachers can reuse this material every time they need. So, reusability is one of the major advantages associated with such systems. (Refer Slide Time: 20:22)
But, there are certain limitations in using LMS, because for small organizations, sometimes it might be prohibitive, because these systems requires a well-built technology infrastructure. Until and unless organizations have this well-built infrastructure, technology infrastructure, this system cannot be implemented. And, the most important thing is that, teachers they need to have the will to adapt their curricula from face to face lectures to online mode, but in today’s context in this pandemic
situation they have to do it. Because, this is the only way through which this learning or their teachings can be imparted to a wider base of students. (Refer Slide Time: 22:16)
Learning management system is basically a software that administers training events. This system registers their users, track courses in a catalogue and records data from their learners. And, also periodically or any time it generates reports for the management to really see, that whether their employees are progressing as per the need of the organization. (Refer Slide Time: 23:35)
Now, we will talk about one particular learning management system which has become very popular, which is called MOODLE. Moodle stands for Modular Object Oriented Dynamic Learning Environment. It is a very popular learning management system. Moodle is a free open source software package that helps teachers or educators to create effective quality courses and thereby helping the students to learn as per their pace, their convenience and whatever support they require. (Refer Slide Time: 25:04)
One advantage of this open source format is that it enables the students to download a variety of learning modules as per their needs customizable. The teachers or the educators can add email, discussion boards, live chats, online quizzes, and the variety of other modules that differentiate their system from commercially available content management systems that is another advantage of Moodle.
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So, Moodle is an open source system, that users can where users can add new features and as well as enhancements to the existing features at no additional cost. (Refer Slide Time: 26:36)
Information about everything that is added to Moodle is saved in a database. This information includes the name of all the students and teachers, their individual quiz items, journal entries all the activities that the students have done and related to all those things. The user interface the front end of module, what the students actually see or through which the students interact is a database driven website. As opposed to traditional static site, that is same regardless of who looks at it. (Refer Slide Time: 28:00)
So, Moodle allows teachers to keep abreast of all the activities that their students are performing. They are able to see what their students have been doing through the logs that are captured in the system as well as they can see in detail how students have done in the various tasks given to them by their by those teachers? So, performance of the students in the various assignments can be seen and accordingly the teachers can monitor their learning.
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Teachers thereby can use Moodle to keep in touch with their students by adding text, images and sound. When they are preparing the content of the learning management systems? (Refer Slide Time: 29:42)
More specifically there are modules within Moodle for example, email, chat, and so on that are specifically geared to facilitate communication between students and teachers and between students and students. (Refer Slide Time: 30:07)
What is more important is that, Moodle manages all these modes of communication. That includes forums bulletin boards, which can be set to automatically send out emails to subscribers informing there that some new postings have been made in the Moodle. (Refer Slide Time: 30:36)
Moodle is designed to help educators create online courses with opportunities for rich interaction. Its open source license and modular design means, that many people can develop additional functionalities through this system.
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These are the references that have been used to prepare this lecture. You can go through these books for more knowledge on the topic. And thank you all for your patience!