4.1.1 Trend Impact

In my opinion, the trend that will make the most impact on digital learning over the next five years is Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs). This model for delivering online courses provides free, universal access to high-quality education, and it's provided by the world's best universities and colleges. MOOCs' greatest potential seem to go in the direction of training and professional development within the corporate world. As they continue to grow, higher education organizations are doing more research and investing significant resources seeking to improve MOOCs' reach as well as the number of learners that successfully complete their courses. It seems likely that, in the near future, corporations could start shifting from the use of Learning Management Systems (LMSs) to MOOCs in order to satisfy their training needs. This could probably lead to mutually beneficial partnerships between higher education institutions and corporations. 

3.2.1 Tools for Deciding on an LMS

After researching several of the most popular Learning Management Systems (LMSs) associated with K12 education, I have selected the five top LMS options that seem to better fit the needs of all K12 stakeholders. All these five options offer features and tools that completely fulfill K12 requirements and help create an engaging, effective learning environment. Another criteria that I've considered when making my selection are reliability and technical support. Additionally, as a principle and in order to minimize cost, open-source solutions are always preferable in the K12 setting. All the LMSs included in my selection are open source.

1. Moodle
   
2. Schoology
   
3. EDU 2.0
   
4. ILIAS
   
5. CourseSites by Blackboard
   
   
   

3.1.4 LMS Reporting

Schoology, the LMS that I have explored during the Navigate skill, presents individualized and course-wide analytics in an easily read format. Graphs and assessment data are available at the individual, class, and system-wide levels. Although the system-wide level is certainly very important, in my opinion, the levels that are most valuable for the online instructor in regard to student performance are the individual and class levels. For instance, with Schoology, instructors can generate reports that detail how students performed on each question during a test or quiz. This way struggling students can be quickly identified, as well as concepts or skills that need to be revisited and retaught.

3.1.3 Tools within the LMS

Schoology is the LMS that I chose for my Navigate quest. The following are the academic features offered in this system:

• Personalized Homepage 

Schoology aggregates all the academic information in one easy-to-use, familiar interface.

• Course Profiles 

Schoology makes creating unique and flexible course profiles simple with a whole suite of student-centric content creation and learning tools and an easy-to-use, intuitive interface.

• Flexible Instructional Tools

Schoology empowers instructors with the tools to easily differentiate instruction, pace students individually, and implement group-based learning.

• Badges

With the ability to create custom badges using a choice of shapes, colors, and any image or animated GIF available on the web, educators are better able to build incentive and reinforce positive behavior in a fun way.

• Calendar

Schoology's calendar is an easy-to-use, robust way to manage personal and course events, ensuring communication for all. Schoology’s calendars are color coded, provide automatic updating, and can synchronize with other web-based calendars such as Microsoft Outlook or Google Calendar.

• Online Assignment Submissions

Schoology's Assignment Submissions feature simplifies and centralizes the process of submitting, annotating, grading, and returning assignments so there's no unnecessary repetition.

• Create Assignments and Events

Schoology’s robust content creation tools and user-friendly interface make creating diverse assignments and events simple. Created assignments and events are automatically organized in the course, group, and personal calendars.

• Create Tests and Quizzes

Schoology’s assessment creation tools provide instructors with simple ways to create media-rich assessments using new, repurposed, and standards aligned content.

• Extended File Support

Schoology supports Common Cartridge, Web Content, QTI-compliant content, and other ZIP files to ensure that educators and administrators can use their existing third-party content in Schoology without losing its formatting.

• Make Learning Mobile

Native mobile apps extend this award-winning LMS to all iOS, Android, and Kindle Fire mobile devices for free, enabling cost-effective 1:1 and BYOD initiatives. Everything from assessment creation, submission, and grading to media-rich discussions are easily achieved from a mobile device.

• Online Gradebook and Attendance

Schoology’s Gradebook and Attendance save time by automating the redundant tasks of inputting grades and taking attendance. The gradebook offers custom grading scales and easily editable settings.

• Customized Grading Options

Schoology provides the tools to create custom grading scales. The easily editable settings make it possible to create rubrics as well as customize percentage scales and point-based scales.

• Standards and Outcomes Alignments

Schoology enables instructors and curriculum specialists to easily align content, assessments, and rubrics to Common Core, State Standards, or custom learning outcomes. Standards or outcomes-aligned test and quiz questions can also be archived for quick and efficient assessment creation.

• Track Student Usage and Course Analytics

With individualized and course-wide analytics presented in an easily read format, Schoology helps better understand students’ needs and develop strategies that improve their engagement and comprehension.

• Application Marketplace

Schoology's App Center provides educators and institutions with access to high-quality instructional and management applications that are seamlessly integrated into the platform.

• Email Address and Username Support 

Schoology lets students choose whether they would like to login with a username or an email address. This makes it easy to use Schoology with students that might not have an email address.

This LMS also offers valuable social features that are necessary to effectively host and facilitate an online course:

• User Connections (Professional Networks) 

Schoology lets educators collaborate and share instructional resources with colleagues in your school and other schools around the world.

• Messaging

Schoology facilitates better communication by providing instructors a way to send messages and share resources efficiently with their students and peers, and by providing students a simple and safe way to contact their instructors.

• Customizable Notifications

Schoology makes staying connected simple with email and SMS text notifications so everyone is always up to date.

• Announcements

Schoology's announcement feature turns any update into an announcement with one click, pinning it to the top of the activity feed so everyone gets the message.

• Discussions

With Schoology, instructors can create interactive discussion pages, engaging students on a more personal level. Discussions are threaded to allow for easy replying and organization.
A wide range of files (including documents, pictures, audio, and video files) can be attached to any post. Instructors can also connect their discussion pages with other class sections and courses for a more widely interactive experience.

• Group Workspaces (Collaboration)

Schoology’s learning environment facilitates collaboration on a number of different levels. Students and instructors can collaborate easily with each other and their peers by participating in live discussions, sharing resources and ideas, and much more.

From a language teacher's perspective, of all the tools listed above, the most valuable ones in an online learning environment are those that maximize student interaction and engagement. When students have more opportunities to participate in discussions and collaborate together using the target language, they gain a deeper understanding of the language and its culture.



References
https://www.schoology.com/home.php

3.1.2 Creation and Investigation into Courses

The process of creating a course shell and adding content is something I am very familiar with. Among all the LMSs I have worked with, Schoology is, in my opinion, the easiest and most intuitive management system. 

After creating a new course, which I named TOOL Section 1, I clicked on Add Materials and then on Add Web Content. I attached the zipped package provided in the 3.1.2 quest, and I finally clicked on Submit. These are all the simple steps that are necessary to complete in order to fully load a zipped package and make it viewable. 

3.1.1 LMS Tool Categories

From an online language teacher's perspective, the most relevant features offered in a Learning Management System (LMS) are those that provide more opportunities for students to interact and demonstrate their mastery of the target language. One of those tools are blogs. I utilize blog tools to provide students a mechanism to create journals as well as post reflections and long-form responses. Students greatly benefit from using an online journal to communicate with their classmates using the target language. Blogs also have great academic potential in second language instruction. They can be used to integrate content vocabulary in a meaningful way when analyzing facts, summarizing events, and expressing opinions.

Discussion forums have also many benefits as an interactive way of assessing students' level of understanding. This formative assessment helps me guide and differentiate my instruction according to students' needs. Often times, the discussion tool allows me to identify what students might benefit from specific remediation activities, and what students could deepen their knowledge through enrichment opportunities.

Another LMS tool that can contribute to increase the effectiveness of online instruction is the calendar. Calendar tools are mainly used to communicate upcoming dates and timelines for course events. However, I also have my students utilize the calendar as a virtual agenda to help them complete their assignments by the due date. This tool can help them greatly as they work on their organizational skills as well as their time management skills.

2.1.4 Lecture Capture

Lecture capture software systems allow teachers to digitally record lectures and make them available for students to watch via the Internet. This feature makes of lecture capture a perfect tool for flipped teaching and learning. However, in the online classroom, which is predominantly asynchronous, the only effective practice I could think this resource could facilitate was to deliver and review course content.

While doing some research to learn more about how the integration of lecture capture would function and modify teaching methods in the online classroom, I came across the article Flipping the Online Classroom – One Professor’s Unique Approach, by Kelly Walsh. In this article, Walsh tells the story of Dr. Marshall, a college professor that decided to flip her online classroom. It is quite a fascinating story about how she created a robust set of regular synchronous working sessions, which turned the class into a truly dynamic digital classroom. Here is an excerpt from the article:

Students were assigned lectures she had recorded as their out-of-class work, which is common in flipped on-campus classes. Marshall’s recorded lectures were often rather lengthy, in contrast with common recommendations, but it is important to remember that this is also a graduate course. In some cases, they were split into two parts and/or students chose to view them in two parts, as there was usually only one lecture per week.

During the synchronous meeting sessions, students would log in and complete a “sign in” activity, based on the material from the lecture, while also serving as a record of attendance. Within the Adobe Connect platform, students would break into groups, each working on activities in their own digital breakout rooms. Marshall can ‘roam’ for room to room and observe or participate. Each group also has its own online collaborative whiteboard, and its own chat functionality. Everyone returns to a main meeting room to work together afterwards.

This practice seems to indicate the direction that online teaching and learning might take in the future. According to Walsh, increased use of synchronous elements is going to become more common as online learning continues to evolve. Using a tool like lecture capture will not only help flip the online classroom but also, as Walsh suggests, it will help emulate elements of the on-campus classroom which can strengthen the engaging social aspect that is often challenging to replicate in distance learning formats reliant solely on course management systems.

References

Walsh, K. (2014) Flipping the Online Classroom – One Professor’s Unique Approach. Retrieved February 27, 2015, from

http://www.emergingedtech.com/2014/08/flipping-the-online-classroom-professors-unique-approach/

2.1.3 Commercial versus Open Virtual Classrooms

I created this double bubble map to compare the similarities and differences between commercial versus open source software in virtual classrooms.

2.1.2 Recorded Sesion

As I mentioned in my previous post, Blackboard Collaborate is the application I use to teach in my virtual classes. I always record all my synchronous sessions, which has proven to become an excellent way to support and enhance asynchronous learning. Students who were absent or struggling with the lesson can always refer back to concepts and skills explained or reviewed during synchronous sessions. Having this possibility is extremely important in online language learning, particularly when trying to get additional practice and fine tune pronunciation as well as intonation. 

2.1.1 Delivery Methods and the Synchronous Vendor Market

Synchronous learning is an important piece of the online learning environment. It enables invaluable, simultaneous instructor-learner interaction. From my virtual teaching experience, Blackboard Collaborate, although it is not free, is one of the best resources in the market for synchronous learning. Blackboard Collaborate offers a wide variety of tools such as a whiteboard to present and share data, desktop sharing, video sharing, VoIP audio, a chat tool for instant messaging, polling, and break-out rooms to group participants. It can also record sessions for later playback.

Open source software packages present a free option for synchronous learning. However, there seem to be IT costs involved in the usage of open source tools. BigBlueButton is an open source web conferencing system that offers basically the same features as Blackboard Collaborate. It also has the additional advantage of being available in Schoology. This is what the BigBlueButton interface looks like:

1.3.1 Learning and Content Management Systems: LMS & CMS

Learning Management Systems (LMSs) and Content Management Systems (CMSs) have similar roles within online education. Their differences seem to be connected to the origins of both management systems. LMSs were initially created to address workplace training needs in order to build knowledge for immediate application. It is for this reason that LMSs can handle a large number of training events. On the other hand, CMSs were originally designed to support learning in academic settings. CMSs are ideal for managing academic courses that are taught asynchronously.

LMSs, generally with an elevated cost when compared to CMSs, seem to be a more appropriate choice for larger organizations with a significant projected growth that will require a more robust management system for their eventual learning needs.

1.2.1 Roles and Functions in Online Learning Environments

In every Learning Management System (LMS), there are two distinct views of the online learning environment: the administrative side and the viewer side. Individuals play very specific roles and have also well-defined responsibilities aligned with their roles.

Server administrators, enrollment associates, LMS administrators, instructional designers, and instructional technologists ensure that all major areas and roles of a LMS, including the Student Information System (SIS) functionality, are addressed and functioning efficiently.

The role of the student support services as well as the role of the instructor act as the bridge that connects learners to the course content, being the instructor in charge of facilitating the delivery of the digital learning materials. It is for this reason that instructors' management and organizational skills are crucial in order to maximize students' learning experience. Instructors should always write concisely and clearly and organize information in an easy-to-follow order, chunking materials into weekly sessions. Instructors should also manage asynchronous discussions effectively, increasing the interactivity of the online learning environment.

1.1.1 Delineating Between Synchronous and Asynchronous Content

 The main difference between synchronous and asynchronous learning is that synchronous learning implies a real-time, instructor-led, online learning event in which all of the participants are logged on at the same time and have the ability to communicate with each other. Some synchronous tools that are commonly used are telephone and Skype conversations, instant or chat messaging, virtual classrooms, and video conferencing.

On the other hand, in an asynchronous learning environment the instructor provides the materials and assignments for the online class and students complete them during a time frame. The online learning resources used to support asynchronous learning include email, electronic mailing lists, threaded conferencing systems, online discussion boards, wikis, and blogs.