LMS OrganizationHow To Best Organize Your Learning Management System
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Keeping Your Learning Management System Organized
A learning management system is a software application for the administration, documentation, tracking, reporting, automation and delivery of educational courses, training programs, or learning and development programs. The learning management system concept emerged directly from e-Learning. When considering using online platform, to deliver content, it is important to think about how you want to present material to students.
There should be a rhythm or flow of materials. Careful consideration needs to be given to the way you create Units or Topics so your students get used to the way content is provided. Showing students how where and how to find things is an important part of classroom management. The more organized you can be, the easier your class will flow.
There should be a rhythm or flow of materials. Careful consideration needs to be given to the way you create Units or Topics so your students get used to the way content is provided. Showing students how where and how to find things is an important part of classroom management. The more organized you can be, the easier your class will flow.
Google Classroom
Google Classroom is a great free LMS that has a lot of nice features. I you are already using Google Drive to create and store files, the two work hand in hand. Google takes suggestions from educators and is constantly working to add new features. Recently they added a nice rubric feature that makes grading much easier. If your district pays for some advanced features you can even handle email within the system between students and parents.
It's not great on exporting grades to specific grading systems although it does have a grading platform that works nicely. While it's much easier to grade projects, I still have to hand copy grades to my gradebook.
I have taught exclusively out of GC for the last 6 years for my Digital Design classes. This past year I began to do the same for my ceramics classes for delivering content. Of course students can't do ceramics projects digitally, but I do have a photobooth set up where students need to take photos of their work and upload them to assignments. It allows for easy grading and I no longer have to make any paper copies of lessons.
Over the years I have developed a system for my classes so students know exactly how my work flows. I do this specifically so students will know what to expect. This is exactly where I think GC falls short. There isn't a landing page or dashboard to work from. GC has a stream where you can set it so only your announcements are posted. If you don't set this way everything you announce and post shows up in a chronological stream. Students sometimes try and work from the stream and get lost easily in the long line of communication coupled with assignments and materials.
It's not great on exporting grades to specific grading systems although it does have a grading platform that works nicely. While it's much easier to grade projects, I still have to hand copy grades to my gradebook.
I have taught exclusively out of GC for the last 6 years for my Digital Design classes. This past year I began to do the same for my ceramics classes for delivering content. Of course students can't do ceramics projects digitally, but I do have a photobooth set up where students need to take photos of their work and upload them to assignments. It allows for easy grading and I no longer have to make any paper copies of lessons.
Over the years I have developed a system for my classes so students know exactly how my work flows. I do this specifically so students will know what to expect. This is exactly where I think GC falls short. There isn't a landing page or dashboard to work from. GC has a stream where you can set it so only your announcements are posted. If you don't set this way everything you announce and post shows up in a chronological stream. Students sometimes try and work from the stream and get lost easily in the long line of communication coupled with assignments and materials.
Schoology
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I don't use Schoology because my school district committed to the Google platform for now however, I do have a Schoology account and I have experimented with setting up a class.
Some of the features I thought were nice was it integrates nicely with a lot of the popular tech tools such as Nearpod, Edpuzzle, Google products, and many others. Schoology definitely feels more like an authentic LMS. There is a recent activity area where users see all their required work in one place. Create posts and communicate with students and choose the classes you want to communicate to. |
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