At the end of term, teachers need to spend hours tallying student scores and charting their progress. However, with the modern data-driven era, where automation and software are leading the industries, we need to wonder if our ways are now outdated. A teacher’s time could prove more valuable in preparing and planning the curriculum and imparting knowledge rather than in analytics. This is where a Learning Management System comes into play.
An end-of-term analysis isn’t all an LMS does. It also expands the reach and opportunity of traditional classrooms and teaching. With an entire year spent in online schooling, during the pandemic, we can see great potential for such a system. So, let’s see what the experts in the field can tell us about how LMS can be useful to teachers.
Convenience in Teaching and Learning
“I’ve spent most of my professional life conducting classes online to a wide cast of characters from all over the world in my previous job as part of the HR Department. I can confidently say that LMS software has made my life as easy as it can be.
Convenience is King: The most significant positive factor of LMS for me is the sheer convenience of access to the learning materials and lectures that all my students have. I’ve had students literally not pay attention to me during my lessons but still perform well in their duties simply because they loaded up the lecture recordings and materials in their free time. Admittedly it’s frustrating when I found out they don’t listen to me, but the mere fact that they were still able to learn from the same lecture (albeit at a different time) was still incredible!
Convenient for the teacher as well: LMS’ also made my life easier as a teacher because it removed the most tedious aspect of teaching, grading papers. I can easily set the system to auto-check multiple-choice questions, which leaves me more time and brainpower to double-check essays without wishing I could do something else. It also gave instant feedback to the students on how they performed during the test, so there’s no anxiety waiting for the test results to come out. LMS does quite a lot, not just for educators but for learners as well. If set up and executed correctly, these systems can significantly help students learn as it allows for more freedom in terms of when they can learn and what they are learning.”
Nancy Martin, an Education Consultant and SEO Manager at FTKnowledge.com
Digital Assistance for Students and Teachers
“Completion Rules (i.e., in Schoology): This prompts a student to finish certain activities before moving on. Great for Hybrid learning, and a way for a teacher to track where a student is in their learning process.
Automated Graded: This allows a teacher to assess students without bringing a lot of grading home. Even for short answers – certain LMS’s can search for keywords in students’ responses to assist with grading written text.
Use of links, embedded videos, and file attachments: This is great not only for core learning content, but for supplemental materials. Some students may want to explore a topic further for either personal interest or they have finished their assigned work early. You may have a gifted student that needs to be challenged more, or you may have students that need remediation. Having a repository of supplemental resources is helpful in all these instances and more!
Online Rubrics: You can create a few templates for yourself or use pre-populated templates to assist students in understanding expectations. If you want full credit, you know what you must do!
Attaching standards to your lessons: This along with automated grading features, assists teachers in assessing mastery of standards.
Teacher evaluations: by having online rubrics and associated standards, in conjunction with automated grading, this allows tracking of student progress/performance to provide data for teacher evaluations (depending on the state) and have the data to justify the work a teacher has been doing.”
Dr. Jennifer N Calito, the Founder and CEO of Education Under Construction (EUC2), a curriculum development, educational coaching, and consulting company.
Recording, Automation and Organizing
“A Learning management system helps teachers manage digital teaching in an effective manner. By using these platforms teachers can create online lessons, draft and give assignments to students and provide grades. Now, given below are three important ways these learning management systems can help teachers save time:
1. Recording lectures: Learning Management Systems enable teachers to record the lectures they deliver. As a result, students can easily access recorded lectures, preventing the need for teachers to repeat the same lesson over and over again. So, this is one big way how learning management systems help teachers save time.
2. Automating the gradation process for objective-type assignments and tests: Learning Management Systems can help teachers save plenty of time by automating the gradation process for objective-type assignments and tests. They no longer have the need to check each test or assignment by themselves. They can input the right answers in the learning management system and then leave the task of checking student assignments or tests to it.
3. Helps in organizing materials and resources well: Teachers can have a hard time organizing materials and teaching resources. But, with the availability of learning management systems, teachers can organize materials and resources with their help. Once they organize this information, there are no chances of losing it and then, spending time to find the resources or teaching materials. So, this is another way how learning management systems help teachers save time.”
Jessica Robinson is an educator and Content Manager for The Speaking Polymath
Customized Learning
“I think the time savings when using an LMS are huge: – all data about each student (from name to grade for the current lesson) are automatically pulled and accumulated; learning materials are downloaded once and can be used several times or even more. Depending on the capabilities of the LMS we can get recommendations for training and learning materials for each student individually, which frees teachers from having to analyze students and choose the best curriculum for them.”
Tatiana Gavrilina, a Content Marketing Writer DDI Development
With teachers having to juggle so many tasks and roles, LMS could prove valuable by helping them not only personalizing and customizing the learning and teaching process but while doing so, also saves the valuable time of educators. Students are all about their digital world and this method of digital education fits right into their setup.
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