CMS = See a Mess?

The term “Course Management System” sounds more ominous than educational, as though it were designed to shuffle students mechanically through a chute, rather than to facilitate their learning. This, in a sense, is what Erna Kotkamp argues in “Digital objects in e-learning environments,” when she writes that the primary function of a Course Management System (CMS) is to facilitate administrative tasks, such as grading, rather than facilitating learning. San Francisco State University (SFSU) uses its own CMS, which was created to save the university money and to hopefully be more responsive to faculty and student needs than other systems. But, the question remains: are students boxed-in by ilearn? (judging from the ilearn logo, which features a person crammed into the “I” of ilearn, boxing students in, seems to be the goal!)

To begin with, ilearn itself has a rather dull, bleak interface. Many teachers try to spruce it up with content-related images, but the effect is often like adding tinsel to a dead Christmas tree – it just doesn’t make enough difference. It might even make the tree look a little sadder than before. The impact of ilearn’s aesthetics is difficult to assess precisely, but my sense is that it has a dampening effect – and creates the impression that whatever can occur in this site will likely be dull, gray, and institutional instead of lively and engaging. Likewise, the site’s emphasis is clearly not on visual learning or engagement but primarily on written, static communication.

In addition, there is a uniformity of appearance to every course’s ilearn site – each course is always organized into three columns, with only minor changes possible, even by teachers. The site also contains an explicit hierarchy – for example, only the teacher can post to the “news” forum and every participant is “forced” (yes, forced is actually the word that ilearn uses!) to subscribe to that forum (meaning they will receive email updates whenever something is posted there). Each “news” post appears in the right-hand column on the course site’s front page, while other (read: student) forum posts remain buried within forums. Thus, the information from the teacher posts is separated as “news” and privileged as important and urgent. In contrast, the student’s contributions must occur within the boundaries set by the teacher; students cannot start their own forums, but may only post within teacher-created forums. However, students may add their own topic “threads” within forums or reply to other students’ “threads.”

As you may have noticed, the language of the site, like its gray background, is quite formal and impersonal: everyone in the course is labeled a “participant,” discussions are called “forums,” class materials are “resources.” This encourages an impersonal, scholarly, but cold and rigid learning environment, rather than one of personal, lively, interaction. On the one hand, this encourages students to be thoughtful about their contributions to the class site, but on the other hand, it may discourage them from engaging fully or comfortably in learning by participating in the site.

Contrary to Erna Kotkamp's assertion, my anecdotal experience of ilearn in 3 semesters is that the main use for the site (when professors choose to use it at all) is to use it for the discussion forums. The most successful discussion forums I've seen were organized by week, with a requirement (from the professor) that each student participate by posting 1-2 thoughtful questions in response to the week’s reading. These posts were expected to include ideas of possible answers or ideas, quotes, etc. to consider when trying to come up with an answer. Most importantly, replying to other students’ posts was encouraged and accepted in lieu of starting a post. The result was that each week there were many postings, with many replies. Most posts had at least one reply and some had upwards of 5 or 6 replies.

This forum format, which is called “discussion,” obviously differs quite a bit from in-person classroom discussion. The type of discussion which is possible in the ilearn forums and which occurs there is more often more formal, lengthy and thoughtful than spur-of-the-moment discussion in a classroom. It is less directed by the professor (despite the professor being the one who sets up the “forum” for discussion), in that comments and replies are made from student to student rather than student to teacher. It allows longer one-to-one interaction between two students than might be comfortable in a classroom. It gives students time to think over, or digest material and questions and formulate responses to one another and the texts. It allows for including links to other pages and texts that are interesting and related. It is more durable than in-class conversations in that your comments remain on the page throughout the course, and can be a resource, reminder, or jumping off point for yourself and others throughout the semester. These forums even persist beyond the semester – you can return to previous ilearn course pages as long as you are enrolled at SFSU. Also, these forums provide a space for students who are not comfortable speaking up in class to “speak up” as it were online, to contribute in that way. And, as opposed to blogs or other open web resources, the ilearn course is a relatively “safe” space for these students to participate in. If for example, a student is shy about speaking up in class, I would imagine that speaking to the world-wide web wouldn’t be much more comfortable. The ilearn site strikes a balance in that it is more public than just turning in an assignment to a teacher, but still more private than posting it for the whole web to read.

Using the discussion forum in successfully can make learning feel more like a cooperative and interactive process. Although it is somewhat hindered by the clunky features of ilearn, it nevertheless offers a learning process that involves preparation, thoughtfulness, creation of your own ideas, and responding to others’ ideas as well as your own. It structures learning as something that doesn’t happen just in a classroom, but something that each “participant” is engaging in and creating with the class. It encourages students to come to class with ideas to discuss, rather than expecting to be told what ideas to have about the reading, or coming to class having read the material but not yet formulated any ideas about it.

Still, the success of the discussion forums depends both on the engagement of the students – their willingness to think, work, write, and post – as well as the guidance of the instructor. Instead of functioning well, like I described above, these forums can become mere means of turning in assignments when instructors aren’t thoughtful about their purpose. This is most likely to happen when: an instructor fails to encourage replying to posts, or actively discourages replying; a professor doesn’t require (thoughtful) participation; the post is focused on a grade more than on a conversation; the forum is structured more for ease of grading than for thinking and communicating; or the instructor uses the posts as free lesson-planning. Of course, even in well-structured forums, there are downsides and risks – one is the sense of being left hanging – of posting and getting no response online or in class, from peers or the instructor.

Outside of discussion forums, the uses of ilearn tend to be limited, but with creativity can be worked around. One such very successful project I experienced (as a TA) was an ilearn Virtual Coffeehouse for an 18th century literature unit, in which students were asked to create 18th c. avatars and “visit” several coffeehouses and engage in conversations with their peers about literature and events from the period. Despite the inconvenience of navigating from one “Coffeehouse” forum to another, this assignment was wildly successful. Many students went above and beyond our expectations in researching and creating their online personas and crafting their conversations; they added pictures and photos, inserted stage directions, wrote in dialects, and even made up their own 18th-century-style poetry. They seemed more engaged in this project than with any other assignment, not only in the thoughtfulness of their literary analyses, but also in their imagination of the historical period, and the connections they recognized among culture, gender, class, literature, politics, economics, etc. Their enthusiasm for the project spilled over into class discussions as well, enlivening these and encouraging many more students to participate in-person in addition to participating online.

What successes or failures have you experienced (as student or teacher) in online education forums? What made the difference between success and failure?