I am constantly bombarded with questions of ownership when professors put material on our Learning Management Systems. Since I didn’t know the issues of ownership or authorship, I decided to do my last media project on copyright issues pertaining to educators in higher education. I hope this helps get conversations started.
Created for my MET master course, Curriculum Issues in Cultural and New Media Studies – Summer 2010
On a recent class survey, a professor received feedback that the students prefer to have documents emailed to them rather than posted on the school Learning Management System (LMS)
The professor asked me if I could comment and/or offer any suggestions/arguments where the LMS would be better than email.
Here is my response.
Emails can be easily lost or worst, accidentally deleted by the students. When documents are uploaded into content on the LMS, they stay on the LMS and the students have access anytime and anyplace.
Emails can easily get disorganized. On the LMS, students can find documents whenever they want them and don’t have to go searching through a pile of emails.
From a IT systems point of view, emails slow down the system and cost money. The original attached document becomes 2 documents. One for the student inbox and one for your sent box. That is, if you only have 1 student. If you have 50 students then the one document becomes 51 documents. This is all saved on the school email servers. The more files on the server, the harder the server has to work and the longer it takes to do things on the LMS or any of the college’s network systems. To speed things up the school has to spend money for upgrades to the servers and purchase more servers.
You have the right pedagogical approach. We are entering the knowledge-economy, or so the experts call it. Employers are looking for employees to be digital literate so they can compete in the new knowledge-economy. That means, we, at the college, have a responsibility to facilitate the students to become digitally literate. Part of being digital literate is knowing where to find and access information. By posting things on the LMS, you are teaching the students digital literacy skills. The students have to go get/find the information they need to complete a task. It is a real world experience… not all information is delivered to us, we have to go find it.
SUMMARY: By storing documents on the LMS:
You have the documents available 24/7
You save the school money $$
You are teaching digitally literacy skills for the new knowledge economy.
Fear of Wikipedia
Wikipedia is the greatest democratizing force in the world right now. If you are afraid of letting your students peruse it, it’s time you get with the times.
The 21st century is customizable. In ten years, the teacher who hasn’t yet figured out how to use tech to personalize learning will be the teacher out of a job. Differentiation won’t make you ‘distinguished’; it’ll just be a natural part of your work.
It’s not really a matter of whether teachers will become obsolete; it’s a matter of whether the institutions that currently support learning will become obsolete.
School need to become Centralized Institutions, ‘homebases’ of learning… not the institutions where all learning happens. Buildings will get smaller and greener, student and teacher schedules will change to allow less people on campus at any one time, and more teachers and students will be going out into their communities to engage in experiential learning.
“The new technologies have highlighted the ENORMOUS importance of human interaction in teaching/learning processes”
Sarah Guri-Rosenblit, Education and Psychology Department, Open University of Isreal
