LMS and its implication in the information age

Watson (2007) addressed that LMS goes beyond a simple content delivery. Since the society might not require people to do mass production in educational situation, nor see all students have same idea from delivered instructions, LMS would propose active functions besides a management function. The chances are that LMS will impact upon the 4 key features of blended learning mentioned above: ubiquitous, collaboration, access, sharing. Reigeluth etc. (2008) pointed out four main function of new age of LMS. That is, recording, planning, giving instruction, and assessment functions. Amongst them, I would see giving instruction as an essential part of LMS function.

As web 2.0 allows learners to create, modify, remix, and share the contents through open source and free software such as podcasts, weblogs, and videos, same diversity would be occur in this function. The instructional development tool could create customized instruction. Reigeluth further mentions that to obtain an efficient application of learning object standards will be beneficial and vital for education in order to better share and evaluate their suitability (p.36). I suppose nowadays the chunks of contents are widely shared through open course software and other free website and they are powerful learning tool. If instructors and parents side will be able to manage the instruction as sharing and modifying, possibly those learning contents would be more effective learning sources; additionally, the learner could stop and think and leading to obtain meta-cognition thorough LMS which has management function that provides self-pacing learning.


Cited work:

• Reigeluth, C. M., & Watson, W. R. & Dutta, P. & Chen, Z. & Powell, N. D. P. (2008). Roles for Technology in the Information-Age Paradigm of Education: Learning Management Systems. Pre-publication draft.

• Watson, W. R., & Lee, S., & Reigeluth, C. M (2007). Learning Management Systems: An Overview and Roadmap of the Systemic Application of Computers to Education. Hershey: Information Science Publishing.