IV. Conclusion: Our Take-Aways!
Our personal takeaways from this project…
Takeaways for Marie:
My key take away from this assignment is that the these open source content management systems can be utilized as effective learning management systems. Rapid technological changes and the knowledge economy has created the necessity for many adults to become life-long learners. The ability to use digital space and the internet as an informal and formal learning space by providing content and materials in a more cohesive and organized manner that can be designed around adult learning principles provides exciting digital learning venues. While there can be problems with authentic assessment in this type of open source environment, using these content management systems as learning management systems provides more information and learning for adults seeking to enhance their knowledge through the use of digital learning.
Takeaways for Sandra:
After doing instructor-led training on Adobe products for 15 years, since leaving Adobe Systems as an Application Engineer. it was a natural transition to find ways to bring my classes online. I tried DreamWeaver and Adobe Connect, afterall they were Adobe products, both robust yet difficult and cumbersome. Then there was Adobe Business Catalyst, but it had a limited number of themes and somewhat proprietary to design any. Then I looked to CMS’s or Content Management Systems, Joomla was my first stop, but themes and layouts looked very techie looking. Until someone years ago at an ASU Skysong incubator told me try WordPress, my first thoughts were, but it’s a blogging platform. Several sites later, after building clients sites with various needs, I learned how to develop in wordpress without programming. As a student using Blackboard, I’m not impressed with how we have to dig through folders to find assignments and submit them, things should just be easily found or readily available. Besides, Blackboard installs are very costly. I’ve created websites and membership sites where you allow access to digital media. But until I discovered how to create a learning management system, commonly called an LMS, with lessons, videos and quizzes, inexpensively, using an open source platform, namely WordPress, was I impressed. The difference than posting random YouTubes is you can have lessons ordered and connected to courses with ease and simplicity. Plus, you can monetize this. Afterall, if it didn’t make sense than why did LinkedIn by Lynda.com for 1.5 billion? Or $65-million funding round for online course provider Udemy, all this shows is that the online education space remains hot. Let’s not forget, Google’s announcement of its new skill-based degrees in partnership with Udacity, the interest in online education continues.
Besides, having the passion training students, watching them light up when they learned something new, my new passion is helping teachers, trainers even universities get their courses online. We have so much to share, and there is so much to learn. Impressed with WordPress. Sandra Burns, Trainer, Website Developer, Student, and now EduPreneur
Takeaways for Brendan:
The development of these “amateur learning management systems” has been a very significant step in learning various topics, hobbies, and DIY-style projects through the internet. In my primary field, music, there’s a multitude of tutorials for music instruction but it’s difficult for the learner to know what’s going to be good for a challenge without being confusing and overwhelming. Additionally, these LMS-style sites force the instructor to put in some instructional design, and inform the learner with an educated prediction of the best order to tackle these tutorials. The instructor can also eliminate some redundancies in tutorials that often explain the basics in every video or text since there will now be an expectation that the learners know these already from a previous lesson in the series. Plus, with all of the functionalities capable of being embedded in these sites, it saves the learners’ time by having a series of videos embedded in a single site or area, potentially followed by assessments and surveys to test their understanding and allow the learner to reflect on what information they absorbed or missed. [55 sec]
This concludes our presentation on Using Basic Website Builders to create an LMS for Adult Learning. Thanks for listening, and we’re happy to answer anyone’s questions