April 20, 2011 9:30 AM

I've been examining e-learning methods over the past two months for a client. As a student and teaching assistant I have experience from both ends of e-learning. I've found that there are a lot of ways to online educational opportunities. But e-Learning platform appear to be gaining popularity as a comprehensive and integrated solution.

An e-learning platform (also called an online learning management system or LMS) is a website that embeds various Internet media and educational processes. The basic unit for an e-learning platform is an individual course, but a student's entire course load can be offered within the same website.

An e-learning platform comprises three main components, each with various functionality and access levels (often called a view):

1) Student view - students can read, view and/or interact with course content and communicate and collaborate with teachers and fellow students.

2) Instructor view - instructors can structure courses, post content, interact with students, receive assignments, and post grades for their designated courses.

3) Administrator view - a more technical role, administrators run the LMS, which includes both front-end decisions such as granting access rights and archiving, as well as back-end work such as ensuring the platform integrates with other necessary technology.

There are other types of access levels such as guest (i.e. can only view designated areas) and teaching assistant (i.e. similar to instructor but with reduced privileges).

Options
Most e-learning platforms have a core offering and optional additional functionality (which may be add-on or plug-in software). Within the core offering instructors choose which tools to use and how to structure their course.

Leading Products
There are two dominant leaders: Blackboard and Moodle.

Blackboard is a for-profit company. Blackboard will either enable users to install and run the system on their own servers or offer a hosted solution (i.e. that is the software and database resides on the company's servers and is maintained by them). For extensive information on Blackboard the University of Toronto's Blackboard pages are helpful.

Moodle is open-source, which means a global collective of people jointly develop and support the software and make it available to others to use for free. You can download the software and install it on your server and run and customize it for yourself. Alternatively, there are companies that will host the software for you on their servers and maintain it. To get a sense of Moodle, there is a demo that allows you to see a sample of it from a student or teacher view.

Other main LMS organizations include Desire2Learn a commercial service based in Kitchener, Ontario, Haiku, and Sakai an open-source solution.

Goals of a e-learning platforms

1. information - offer course material
2. communication - news and discussions amongst instructors and students
3. collaboration - jointly-authored assignments or presentations
4. evaluation - grading by instructors, feedback from

• Lessons - instructor-supplied text or multimedia content (e.g. podcasts, videos)
• Resources - instructors or students can post webpages, PDFs, images, audio, or video files
• Glossary - a course-related terms appearing as links or a list

• Announcements - posted by instructor to the LMS homepage
• Updates - course news or recent discussions received via RSS feeds or emails
  
• Forums - threaded discussions
• Chats - live text-based chat room

• Wiki - collaborative document editing
• Calendar - team and/or class-based scheduling
• Blogs - individual text-based articles
  
• Groups - instructors can divide classes into smaller units

• Quizzes - with automatic grading (if multiple choice)
• Assignments - allow students to upload a file and receive grade & comments
  
• Grading - instructors assign grades and manage class averages
• Surveys - poll the class on course topics or offer their evaluation of instructor
• Ratings - students can provide assign their value to a lesson

• integrated, all-in-one place solution, which allows:
  • connections and cross-linking of various course materials
  • only one interface for students and teachers to learn
  • simplicity of finding all course material
• web-based administration
• can ensure all course content follows academic institutional policies and jurisdictional regulations (e.g. accessibility, privacy, security) - if not using a hosted solution
  
• no advertising appears (except with some free, hosted solutions)
  
• extensive functionality
• streamlined grading processes

• requires some IT knowledge and skills (if not using a hosted solution), such as
  • installation
  • integration with web server and database
  • quality assurance and trouble-shooting
  • back-ups and archiving
  • user tech support
  • customization
• hosted solution may entail data being stored outside of Canada (and therefore not subject to our laws, e.g. privacy)
  
• high cost for commercial software or for hosted solution
• likely more functionality than most instructors need or students will ever use
• cloistered environment, which omits participation and exposure to other interested people or ideas

Blogger Profile: Glen Farrelly
Glen's experience in the Internet has covered the full spectrum from coding to content, and from planning to promotion. This gives him a unique ability to help direct a company’s online strategy, while also having the know-how to lead a project to successful completion.

Posted by Sue Ansell at April 20, 2011 9:30 AM

Categories: eLearning

Comments

Tim email - www.coursepark.com

Hi Glen:

You seem to have researched a lot on this paper/article, you posted. Quick question is did you have a chance to look at CoursePark.com?

Tim

Glen Farrelly email -

Hi Tim:

Thanks for the comment. I hadn't heard of CoursePack.com - although I am familiar with the concept. I checked out the website and was wondering if there are plans to make coursepacks available as e-books?

Thanks,

Glen

Logu email -

Hi,

Pleaze brief me about the measurement and analysis system used for Continual improvement of E-learning.

Glen Farrelly email -

Hi Logu:

Were you thinking of continual improvement of the e-learning software or continual improvement of the educational goals?

I do not have direct experience with either formalized system per se. I believe that online student surveys, however, should form the bedrock of both goals.

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