2.4.2.1
The LMS in use at Unisa is the Open Source LMS Sakai. It was deployed in Unisa in 2006 and became known as myUnisa. SAKAI is an open-source collaboration and courseware management platform
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42 that allows institutions to modify the software to meet their own needs. The myUnisa platform is recognised in Unisa as the core of the academic network and is supposed to be the academic, administrative, support and social space to give students a single point of entry in their communication with Unisa. The purpose of an LMS is to allow academic lecturing staff to rapidly create online course content, develop learning activities, post resources, initiate discussions, provide the mechanism for submission of work and facilitate communication between academics and students. myUnisa is intended to be the communication link between the lecturer, the student and the university in an ODL environment (Ice, 2013).
There are several problems associated with the quality and features of the general LMS e.g. poor usability for lecturers, as well as students, poor customisability of the system that makes it intricate to adapt and accommodate specific needs, poor reusability and time consuming (Avgeriou et al., 2003). Vrasidas (2004) recommends the following learning principles for effective online learning combined with academic needs for LMS support:
An LMS should support various kinds of interactions between students and lecturer.
An LMS should provide tools that enable academics to integrate practical activities effortlessly in order to link the content to real world contexts.
The LMS could integrate automated feedback with the use of Intelligent Agents to help the lecturer to monitor student progress.
Additional to this, an evaluation done by Beatty and Ulasewicz (2006) reported that the ease of use of the LMS’s user interface for facilitation of online learning, contributes to the UX of the lecturer, which tends to impact the student experience as well. This evaluation also disclosed that different subject matter experts have different preference in tools and ways of presenting courseware. Vrasidas (2004) states that the lecturer needs extra support in order to focus on quality teaching and learning so that the online teaching offered to the students will have a positive educational impact. The use of the technology should synchronise with the instructional design and subject matter to support knowledge construction in a distance learning environment.
The pedagogical appropriateness of the system
2.4.2.2
There are four inclusive e-learning objectives that define the principles of the education system and its challenge to the technology, namely personalised learning, inclusion, flexible learning opportunities and productive time (Laurillard, 2007).
E. de Kock - MSc Dissertation
43 The principles of effective teaching as described by Chickering and Gamson (1987) are also applicable to online learning, in that online learning:
encourages contacts between students and faculty;
develops reciprocity and cooperation among students;
uses active learning techniques;
gives prompt feedback;
emphasises time on tasks; and
respects diverse talents and ways of learning.
However, in order to conform to these effective teaching practices, the LMSs should accommodate the pedagogically effective practices by integration of features in the LMS as proposed in the study by Wang et al. (2013). They found that the extent of configurability of the LMS could influence effective teaching practices amongst lecturers and postulated that the configurability should be on the following three levels:
Interface configurability - how the software permits change of look and feel.
Interaction configurability - how the software permits enabling of different communication mechanisms.
Content configurability - how the software permits flexible options to modify or arrange content and easily distribution of content (Wang et al., 2013).
It is emphasised that there is a close relationship between the development paradigm and the construction of the product. Therefore utilised learning theory should be in sync with the underlying theoretical ethos, the development environment and the instructional strategies (Winn, 1999).
As this research’s focus is on the academic lecturing staff members that have to prepare the educational content through an e-learning platform, an acknowledgement of the different schools of thought is relevant for this overview. Dabbagh (2005) outlines three schools of thought regarding learning theories. These theories of learning inform the goals and models associated with instruction, which in turn, influence the perspective of the use of technology in teaching and learning (Dabbagh, 2005; Dede, 2008) and entail the following:
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44 Table 2.5: Three schools of thought on learning that influence teaching (Dabbagh, 2005; Dede, 2008) Objectivism/behaviourism Cognitivism/pragmatism Constructivism/interpretivism
Reality is viewed as objective and external.
Knowledge is seen as gained through experience. Reality is mediated through cognitively developed representations. Knowledge is negotiated through experience and thinking. Reality is internal. Knowledge is constructed. Goals of instruction Communicate or transfer behaviours representing knowledge and skills to the learner (does not consider mental processing).
Instruction is to elicit the desired response from the learner who is presented with a target stimulus.
Learner must know how to execute the proper
response, as well as the conditions under which the response is made.
Learner acquires skills of discrimination (recalling facts), generalization (defining and illustrating concepts), association (applying explanations), and chaining (automatically performing a specified procedure).
Communicate or transfer knowledge in the most efficient, effective manner (mind-independent, can be mapped onto learners).
Focus of instruction is to create learning or change by encouraging the learner to use appropriate learning strategies.
Learning results when information is stored in memory in an organized, meaningful way.
Lecturers are responsible for assisting learners in organizing information in an optimal way so that it can be readily assimilated.
Build personal interpretations of the world based on
individual experiences and interactions (constantly open to change, cannot achieve a predetermined correct meaning, knowledge emerges in relevant contexts).
Learning is an active process of constructing rather than acquiring knowledge.
Instruction is a process of supporting knowledge construction rather than communicating knowledge.
Do not structure learning for the task, but engage learner in the actual use of the tools in real world situations.
Learning activities should be authentic and should centre on the problematic or puzzlement as perceived by the learner.
The focus is on the process not the product.
Role of lecturer is a mentor not a teller.
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45 Objectivism/behaviourism Cognitivism/pragmatism Constructivism/interpretivism
Encourage reflective thinking, higher-order learning skills.
Encourage testing viability of ideas and seeking alternative views.
Table 2.5 reflects three main schools of thought on learning theories. These are not unified theories, but rather a collection of theories that are distinct from one another, but are linked together by a common set of fundamental assumptions (Dede, 2008). Other frameworks on learning that influence teaching do exist (Mayes, T. and de Freitas, 2004; AlQudah, 2014), but are beyond the scope of this study. The LMS needs to adapt to accommodate each of the three schools of thought on learning as those would influence how the lecturer thinks about teaching and eventually how they facilitate their course work.