To LMS or not to LMS, that is the question!

 The eternal question! To LMS or not to LMS.

A Learning Management System (LMS) is software (or a software package) or Web-based technology used to plan, implement, and assess a specific learning process. Typically, a learning management system provides an instructor with a way to create and deliver content, monitor student participation, and assess student performance.

With me so far? Good chance that if you're  viewing this blog you've had experiences with an LMS of some sorts. Good chance if you have, you've got some mixed feelings about LMSs.

The question of whether to LMS or not has long bugged me. Why? Because when you stack up the reasons for and against there is no clear winner.

Reasons FOR	Reasons AGAINST
It helps manage everything in one place It can often automate workflows (e.g. self-marking quizzes) You can provide a single training and support model You often get vendor support for an LMS You can share objects with others using the LMS You can have connections with other school software (e.g. timetable data) You can have single sign-on options and ease of use opportunities.	You are locked into a single system for managing files and workflows There are often better tools for workflows It makes people reliant on central training and support models You have to pay It stifles people with technical abilities who want to explore beyond the LMS The LMS often drives the pedagogy and not the other way round

So where do I sit? 

Well, let me tell you the story of the last LMS I implemented.

I wanted to do something different with Stage 6 Studies of Religion. I went looking at contemporary models of pedagogy and got stuck on the idea of delivering a blended model that employed flipped learning. So I then sought out an LMS which suited the pedagogical model I was attempting to employ.

That is, my pedagogy drove the LMS decision.

And that is not always the case. Actually, that's almost never the case. 

Very rarely do educators say "That's what I want to do!" and backward map to their reality. The start with "That's what I've got!" (often in exasperation) and move forward to their dreams. 

I am a firm believer that as educators we are, as Ian Jukes and Simon Breakspear were at pains to point out last week at FutureSchools, 'future makers'. We have an eye on a possible future and an eye on the ground in front and we map out the path to the future. 

However, when that eye on the ground in front recognises that not all educators are ready for a post-LMS world, the question of how to get there often brings us back to an LMS reality.

My hunch is that the LMS is the scaffold upon which a digitally rich pedagogy can be built. The question is how comfortable educators are to unlearn an LMS when it is time to leave the nest and fly solo. And of course we could add the further question of how willing systems, like mothers everywhere, are to push them out the nest when the time comes. 

Working with surveys

Surveys. Love 'em or hate 'em, they are everywhere. In way of a disclaimer I previously worked for a very large multinational cooperation that was arguable the largest private industry collector of data in the country.

In schools, surveys seem to pop up frequently. Yet more frequently than not the survey represents a destination rather than a question. And therein lies the problem.

Surveys are a form of quantitative data collection. Even in their simplest form, they are a form of research. And research is be definition a process of three steps

1. Pose a question.
2. Collect data to answer the question
3. Present an answer to the question

Creswell, J. (2012), Plannning, Conducting, and Evaluating Quantitative and Qualitative Research, Pearson: Boston

The issue is that so many surveys are about "getting support" or "receiving a mandate". Perhaps we should blame federal politics...

The point is, all research - even the information question to parents, students or staff - should start with a question.

Collecting the data is the easy bit. However, this is also an area where people struggle. For most schools they can use the paper format, but today I'd like to look at SurveyMonkey. Its a fairly simple tool to use, but does cost around $300AUD for its most useful plan.

Alternatively, things like Google Forms are available and offer a simplistic yet effective way of collecting data. And there are several free online survey tools available. You can even create forms in emails (difficult) or use the paper based option (simple!).

Just remember the the following:

• How will your data be collected? If it's only online, will that create a selection bias?
• How will your data be stored? How long for? How will you maintain confidentiality? 
• How will your data be used? Is data aggregated or will individual data be used (E.g. comment data)?
• To whom will the data be send? What is the intended audience?
• Who is responsible for the data?

All of this needs to be clearly communicated to participants before they commence a survey. 

Furthermore, when creating your survey consider:

• The wording of questions and how that impacts an audience's perception (referendums!)
• The pacing and order of questions (consistency and clarity)
• The scales used (consistency and clarity)

There are plenty of online resources to help you out!

How fast is your internet?

In the increasingly 1:1 environments of our schools there has been a whole sale adoption of cloud based storage. While this presents a plethora of opportunities for security, safety and collaboration, it also has a few downsides.

Currently in Australia, if you live in a town like I do, the NBN is a distant dream. While I achieve slight-better-than-the-rest speed of 11Mbps, the national average is 6.9Mbps. What is worse, is that this figure is based on combined metropolitan and rural/regional data. Why is it worse? Is because the NBN (fixed line) and 4G (wireless) density in urban areas is significantly higher. Many students in our diocese are unable to get any kind of service that would qualify as broadband.

Late in 2009, an IT company in South Africa sought to point out the sorry state of affairs, It loaded up a carrier pigeon with 4GB of data and flew it 60 miles to its destination. In the same time that it took the bird to complete the journey, only a quarter of the data had arrived via the internet.

To put this in perspective, At the current 6.9Mbps that Australia 'enjoys', that same carrier pigeon would be neck and neck with the same 4GB at 60 miles.

Yet this isn't 2009.

And SD cards are no longer 4GB or even 128GB. They are 512GB!

What does this mean for the carrier pigeon flying 60 miles? The humble carrier pigeon has a transfer speed of over 800Mbps! That's well over 100 times the speed of our current internet.

Or better still, if you had 512GB of data to transfer, you could either use broadband to transfer it taking 6 ½ days or you could get the card, pop it into the new Australia post two-days-later-40%-more-expensive letter delivery service and still shave days off the trip.

Ok, all of this is just funny analogies. However...

This is the reality - long or short term - in Australia. Our average internet speed is 44th in the world, about where Thailand is. Even our cross-Tasman cousins enjoy better speed. What's worse is its slipping rather than gaining.

If you are expecting your students in your 1:1 device program to be able to be effective learners using digital tools and online storage and workflows, will the internet that they have be able to cope?

Equally, what structures and process will you have in place for students unable to access the internet or unable to access it in a suitable fashion?

And just in case you were wondering, if you were attempting to send that same 512GB data file(s) from Sydney to Melbourne, the carrier pigeon would complete the task in a touch over 10 hours. This is 108MBps, or 8 more than our current fastest NBN broadband.

Side note: The reason for this widening gap isn't bad policy. The bulk of the different is that internet speeds have not increased at the same rate as storage capacity. Storage capacity has been roughly working at Moore's law (doubles every 18 months) while internet speed is far more incremental.