In the Update on the k-12 LMS Histiorical Market, Ménard highlights the huge leap in the use of Learning Management Systems across the world. (See Figure 1.) After the pandemic, Learning Mangement Systems, or LMSs, have become much more commonplace in the k-12 public education sphere. This expansion was done almost overnight by educators across the world. Before the pandemic, educators were certainly using a vareity of Learning Management Systems but there is now an expectation that educators in the k-12 space are to continue using them. There are certain advantages to using an LMS, but some drawbacks that could be detrimental to some student’s ability to learn. By using a LMS, a university or high school could offer more courses which can be done multimodally. There can be a steep learning curve for professors and teachers who are new to a LMS, and students share in the learning curve. Using technology does not necessarily mean innovation, as many educators use an LMS in a very didactic and traditional format that does not necessarily provide authentic feedback, collaboration, or students having input into their own learning. 

Figure 1. Percentage of New k-12 LMS Implementation for the past 10 years (October 2022) Menard (2022)

Using reviews, users guides, grassroots sharing among educators, platform information and looking to review how they may incorporate AI in their future updates, my research has produced a wide variety of sources from peer reviewed work to teacher made youtube video tutorials. This video does a good job of explaining the basics of what an LMS is and how they are to be used within a classroom setting. (See Video 1.)

Video 1. What is an LMS? A Guide to Learning Mangement Systems. (Tovuti LMS, 2021)

The first administrative update offered several articles to read and one on Learning Management Systems (LMS) which caught my attention. I have to navigate a few different systems for my various positions and I find them all a bit frustrating but also easy. As a high school teachers, I’ve used Google Classroom with ease. I had not used it before the pandemic, but took to it very quickly when required. As a state wide instructional coach, I have experience with Moodle. As a college professor, I have used Canvas in both the dual credit courses I teach and at the university I teach at. Each of these LMSs have some benefits with Google Classroom being the easiest to integrate with students from my experience. Now that the COVID-19 pandemic is over, Learning Management Systems are a critical component of education, online or in person, but most educators and students have no choice in the LMS they are to work with. I am interested in learning the best methods for using an LMS that involves the students doing collaborative work, offers students to dive into their own areas of interest, and supports them in their learning. 

This article had me wondering how I can incorporate new learning in my own classrooms when I have various platforms to master along with the actual development of curriculum and pedagogy choices on a daily basis. With the advent of AI, most educators are only interested in making sure students don’t use AI to cheat. The Cope and Kalantzis discussion of using AI to inform instruction and help students with recursive feedback intrigued me. I wanted to research this topic to see how I could apply new learning to my own classroom by using AI in a recursive feedback manner and how I would develop this component in the LMS I use. The cartoon in figure 2 is a commentary on how many educators feels about developing a course using an LMS while hoping it is interactive and educationally sound. It sums up the struggle between using an LMS as an innovation but not necessarily embracing or incorporating new pedagogical skills. 

Figure 2. Cartoon on Poor LMS design. (Tom, 2023)

Figure 3. Drive my own learning cat. (Gibbs, 2015)

As we begin to look at the background in the development of LMSs, there is no denying that the internet has enabled a wild west of LMSs and courses that are available worldwide. The cat in Figure 3 is a comment on educational courses being so avaible to the world that even cats can get in on the action and do their own learning. Before we get to indepth on the current state of LMSs, let's look back on their development. 

Early Analysis

Initially, the research was mostly dated from the early 2000s when the internet was really becoming more accessible and computers were more affordable. Lim discussed the components of “online learning” as having four characteristics:

1. Learning processes mediated by network technologies.

2. Making possible successful knowledge management to leverage the intellectual capital of the learning environment.

3. Harnessing the strengths and addressing the weaknesses of network technologies to create a conducive learning environment.

4.Providing interactions among the students and their communities to build and share knowledge. 

With each new decade, there have been a variety of fears that technology will replace teachers: radio, television, videotapes, (Lim 2002) the internet, and now AI. None of these have removed the need for educators, as each of these technologies need to have a person create a pedagogical structure to implement the technology. Lim’s article was helpful in developing a basic understanding of the history of LMS and some of the early trends in online learning. Lim's research focused on three areas; online learning into reusable learning objects, blended learning, and the importance of instructional design. Reusable learning object is essentially the breaking down of content and curriculum into smaller segments which she uses LEGO blocks as a structural example. These components are put together in a variety of ways to create the overall unit or lesson. This sounds great but it is overly simplified that every learning object will translate into an educational combination that is fruitful. Lim notes that not all learning objects fit with one another, sometimes one may actually cause confusion when paired with another (2002). Educators need to carefully plan out the learning objects they wish to use and consider how they will build off of one another and play into the larger lesson at hand. This is similar to how a teacher constructs a lesson plan for a classroom period. However, a teacher has the ability to pivot if a learning object isn’t clear, if students struggle to understand the objective, or if they need assistance in making connections. This real time pivot is lost in a LMS and may lead to confusion.

Blended learning, according to Lim, is using technology to extend a classroom or bring a greater impact to a classroom. Adding in a digital reading assignment, CD-ROM, or lab would enhance the learning, but it isn’t completely dependent on the technology. Blended learning is trying to make the best of both worlds by using some face-to-face instruction and student interactions to improve upon a strictly online LMS that lacks interaction. The benefit of students being able to learn anywhere at any time is only enhanced by interacting with others and giving them the time to process and make choices. However, this is dependent on the student being self-motivated, which many students struggle with.

Lim’s final point is on the importance of instructional design and learning theory with any LMS. She points out that any LMS is going to be better if the educator “starts with an understanding of how people learn-from behaviorism to social constructionism (Lim, 2002). She further breaks down this instructional design into five phases: analysis, design, development, implementation, and evaluation. These phases work to provide “a guide for how to achieve the goals of the learning program” (Lim, 2002).

Lim finishes her analysis with a discussion of the implications for schools and how to use the LMS that it chooses. Her list is long and a bit overwhelming as it includes the development of learning objects, defining the roles of teachers and students, choice of curriculum and the forms of assessment that will be used, and also training the teachers how to use the LMS as they begin to create their learning spaces. Just one of these is a huge undertaking for a school or a teacher. Her guidelines are helpful when one considers that her article was written in 2002 before the use of widespread LMS in the k-12 public school setting.

Manuela Aparicio, Fernando Bacao and Tiago Oliveira provided an excellent literature review of e-learning across the 20th and 21st centuries. They focused on three main areas: identifying e-learning, examining e-learning from various angles, and a broad literature review. This article was useful in how it examined the evolution of Learning Management Systems and mentioned often the use of a didactic approach to learning. Most educators simply took their lectures and recorded them to post. Paper assignments or essays became posts or discussion boards. Research papers were simply submitted as a final paper digitally. Figure 4 charts out the chronology of e-learning related to various concepts (Aparicio, Bacao & Oliveira, 2016). The development charts learning from early computer assisted learning to MOOCs and DOCC or Distributed Open Collaborative Courses. These later classes have moved away from the didactic patterns of the past to new learning where the participants work together to create their own learning, comment and share their research, and provide feedback to one another.

Figure 4. Timeline of e-Learning related concepts (Aparicio, Bacao & Oliveira, 2016).

Expanding the concept of blended learning, or b-learning, to be a combination of in person and virtual content and has been widely adopted by high schools and universities. This is different from Limm's initial view of just adding digital materials but actually moving a portion of the materials online and having either in person meetings or virtual meetings. At first, virtual content was not warmly embraced by educators and was only used as supplement. With improvements to technology, educators gaining more digital skills, and more resources being made available online, more high schools and universities have embraced b-learning. The didactic approach is still supported by some educators as they “insist that physical attendance in class is crucial for active learning (Alomri, El-kanj, Alshdaifat, & Topal. 2020). Many educators are seeing the benefit of utilizing b-learning as it “supports traditional education in terms of management, evaluation, monitoring, and administrating courses by using technology” (2020). Learning Management Systems have come a long way and students and educators are benefitting from their constant development. Educators are able to constantly improve their courses, create a variety of learning environments, bolster student’s academic performances, and improve their computer skills (2020). The human dimension in LMS has greatly improved over the years and educators are taking more risks. However, educators still need more training to fully understand the ways they could use the LMS and develop more activities and opportunities for students to interact. The human factor in e-learning or b-learning will improve the experience for students when educators adopt a variety of strategies and invest in learning ways to create new learning for their students.

Cope and Kalantzis provided a short history of Learning Management Systems dating from 1920s through the COVID-19 crisis. They include a discussion on platforming and how that has developed into a mega business for the sake of data mining and capitalism. Then they shift into the business of creating platforms and spell out the concern that the LMS has created an investment of obtaining student data, which the LMS then monetizes. This is a new angle of the LMSs and something most educators are not concerned with in their initial use. However, it is important to note as this is one part of why there is a growing market for a variety of LMSs.

Cope and Kalantzis then give a deep dive into the history of platform learning and how what is new is actually just the old in a slightly different form with a new name; “video lecture is given a fancy new name-the “flipped classroom” (2023). This leads into a lengthy discussion of the platform that they created at the University of Illinois called, CGScholar. This is a different type of platform using reflexive pedagogy instead of didactic. This detailed description of CGScholar included how students will recursively respond to other students and will rework their writing throughout the course. The analytic portion of the platform helps to engage the students in their work and provide almost real time feedback and scoring using big data and artificial intelligence. (Cope & Kalantzis, 2023) This will be further discussed in the application portion.

Figure 5. Obi-wan using LMS meme (Jellyfish, 2020)

Star Wars is a sci-fi film that is set in the future where a young Jedi is learning about the ancient craft of a Jedi warrior. The meme in figure 5 does a great job of capturing the experience of most educators and students as they struggled to jump into technology with the pandemic and how even the most basic lesson was difficult. Using technoogy was supposed to be evolutionary and magical, but there was a great deal of cognitive dissodence in the process as well. 

One of the main criticisms of LMSs and online learning is when educators simply replicate a didactic approach and do not consider ways in which they are teaching or how a class may need to be changed to fit a digital format. Instead of giving a lecture, educators record themselves giving the same lecture overlaid with the slides, they upload the assignment, and recreate their tests using the LMS format. They do not necessarily understand all the components of the LMS and often do not utilize much of the functions within the LMS. This subsection will review three different critical perspectives of what goes wrong within a Learning Management System within e-learning or b-learning in general.

Aaron Barth "Why e-learning is killing education" TedTalk Youtube

Barth outlines how most educators are using a LMS to simply copy exactly what they are doing in their classrooms: talking in front of a white board, assigning worksheets, and giving tests. Now they do these all online. None of these are particularly effective or engaging for the learner. His discussion moves into the history of education and how we need to use storytelling to engage the learners. By making connections between the human and the information, we are able to make the learning relevant and the science says that story based learning works. Story based learning is more engaging, creates empathy and creates personal learning. He states that scenario or story based learning is the "best way to teach complex skills like problem solving, collaboration, and creativity." He used an example of how a person can be trained about personal bias, take the quiz at the end, no less than 12 times to get a perfect score, and that information doesn't translate into their lives. He makes some great points about the need for purposeful pedagogical decisions by educators when using an LMS. We can't just try to replicate the classroom setting. E-learning needs to offer compelling examples and offer students choice in their focus.

Leigh A Hall "Why LMSs are the worst for online teaching" Youtube

Hall describes how Learning Management Systems present a "shell" and are trying to mimic the traditional classroom setting. She describes them as "walling off" courses from one another and does not offer a way to build on what the students previously learned. She points out that they are creating structures, but are not being creative. LMSs are restrictive of what apps can be integrated, limit the options to create the courses, and limit the tools available. Discussion boards are unauthentic experiences and everyone is going through the motions; there is no real dialogue. She ends her rant by telling educators to not use LMSs and to go outside the lines; use twitter, instagram, pinterest etc. to connect with students. She makes some good points about how an LMS can be limiting, but she does not offer much in how to improve ones use of an LMS. Her original point, that an LMS is a structure, is key. Yes, they are a structure, but it is necessary to consider the curriculum and the pedagogical approach that will give the student's' a voice, choice, and invest in their own learning.

TalentLMS "10 ways to enhance the LMS experience for your learners"

Video 2. 10 ways to enhance the LMS experience for your users (TalentLMS, 2016). 

The title of this video is a bit misleading in that it does explain ways to enhance the LMS experience, but it does so by noting how educators are doing it wrong at each level. The video highlights areas that should be addressed such as a reduction of content, less is more, always find ways to add to the course without repetition, typography is key to understanding, have a sense of humor and use storytelling, use a variety of media, gamification is always great, consider the speed of the platform by not using massive media files, make sure the content meets the learners, and find ways to reward the learners. These are great ideas that can improve any LMS and any classroom.

In "Success and Failure Aspects of LMS in E-Learning Systems" the authors note that Learning Management Systems "limit opportunities for social and informal learning, restricting its potential to enhance teaching and learning." (Ahlazmi et. al., 2021) This leads to the learner's role being limited to being a person who gets or recieves information instead of sharing or creating information. This creates a system where the teacher is at the center, thus didactic, and limits the interaction between students. Within their analysis of LMS failures, Ahlazmi et al. noted five areas of the Learning Mangement System. Below is a list of the areas, their concerning failures and possible improvements they suggest.

1. Content creation and sharing: Student and teacher roles are limited to just working with uploaded materials and documents. A LMS should be more dynamic and "students should be involved in developing the giving feedback on course content and activities, with tools modelled on wikis and blogs avaialbe to enrich the content and motiavete them to search for and contribute more knowledge under instructors' supervision" (2021).

2. Communicative feature design: Often collaborative tools are poorly implemented or rarely used by educators. This reduces the role of the learner to just a receptical of information. Instead, designing the LMS to be actually advance communication between students will advance collaboration and communication between students (2021).

3. Teacher-centered structure: Most educators use the LMS as a way of storing or presenting their academic information. This is very much a one-way use of the LMS which should be supporting more learner-centered approaches and using innovative pedgaogcal practices (2021).

4. Learning disengagement: Due to limited use of the functions of Learning Mangement Systems, educators do not encourage complex engagement with matierals or with other learners. This can be improve upon by including more collaborative based functions of the LMS. 

5. Assessment: Most educators are simply taking a pen and paper assessment and making it a digital assesment and not necessarily implimenting newer learning outcomes with various levels of cognitive domains (2021).