June 2008 — eLearning
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One-Stop Shopping With Learning Management Systems
All course scheduling is done through Course Manager, so students select their classes online. Once they have received approval, the information is uploaded to a separate scheduling system that works in tandem with the LMS. Next year, Swift says students will be able to use Course Manager to send electronic transcripts to colleges.
"There's a place where documents can be uploaded and shared. There are discussion boards. There's an area called a 'drop box' where students can submit work in an organized fashion rather than e-mail it to the teacher and plug up the teacher's inbox."
One of the system's most useful features is its ability to perform online surveys. Swift recently e-mailed a survey to recent Red Bank graduates asking them what was the best advice they were given, or wish they had been given, about choosing a college to attend. Swift gathered the responses and forwarded them to students she is currently working with.
"It's a learning tool, but not in the typical sense of e-learning,'' she says. "But I'm certainly teaching them something."
Positive Results
The worth of a learning management system ultimately is measured by the same yardstick as every other educational tool: student performance. Both Waymack and Ross say they don't have sufficient data to quantify the impact of their respective systems, but Ross says anecdotal accounts from educators in his district indicate that the environment in the classrooms of teachers who use the LMS is superior to what is reported in nonparticipating classrooms. "The climate of the classrooms is better," he says, "the attendance of the students and teachers is better, and the overall feeling of being engaged is better."
Waymack says the Gwinnett County online program is too small to get an accurate gauge on its impact on test scores, but he notes that the school's students meet or exceed county scores in state end-of-course and advanced placement exams. The school also has a roughly 85 percent course completion rate among enrolled students.
Waymack, too, is gratified by what he has been able to give a large number of students through online learning, and how the trend is growing at a rapid pace nationwide. "I'm thankful I work in a school system which 10 years ago recognized that rather than burying its head in the sand, it needed to embrace online learning," he says. "We have been able to provide the opportunity to graduate to about 125 seniors who may have otherwise gone by the wayside."
Esther Shein is a freelance writer based in Boston.
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