Jottings on science, religion, technology, pop culture and faith from the Antipodes.

Academic Admin, eLearning/Distance, Teaching/Education, Technology

Insidious pedagogy: How course management systems affect teaching

This article is a little old now, but it does point out how the learning management systems we choose to use (or have thrust upon us by our institutions) shape how we actually teach, rather than being shaped by pedagogy that is appropriate to the topic and material being covered. And to which, I’d add the decisions about those pedagogical structures are often determined not by the teachers themselves, but rather by the institutional administrators in their quest for a uniform, efficient delivery of “content”. (And I’ve been guilty of enforcing that myself).

Course management systems (CMSs), used throughout colleges and universities for presenting online or technology–enhanced classes, are not pedagogically neutral shells for course content. They influence pedagogy by presenting default formats designed to guide the instructor toward creating a course in a certain way. This is particularly true of integrated systems (such as Blackboard/WebCT), but is also a factor in some of the newer, more constructivist systems (Moodle). Studies about CMSs tend to focus on their ease of use or how they are used by faculty: their application, for good or ill. Few discuss the ways in which they influence and guide pedagogy, and those that do only note their predisposition for supporting more instructivist methods.

See Insidious pedagogy: How course management systems affect teaching | Lane | First Monday