Photograph taken in Honduras, CA and
Contributed by Fernando Carranza
A Vast Green Field of Opportunities:
Understanding
Why Student LMS Results Show Success or Failure
By Prof. Jonathan
Acuña-Solano, M. Ed.
School of English
Faculty
of Social Sciences
Universidad
Latina de Costa Rica
Saturday, September 24,
2016
Post 296
Though I am currently working more with
online learning scenarios that include WASs, mostly faculty members of various
universities around the world, I do have my F2F language courses with pupils
who want to learn English for various reasons. Somehow, most of F2F students
are newbies in the use of an LMS with a Blended Learning orientation because
former language trainers encouraged LMS work as a mere eWorkbook and not as the
tool it actually is. As soon as they became my learners, I changed the whole
dynamics of blended work on the platform though it was perceived as a mandatory
statement coming from me, their instructor. When confronted with their final
grades in the course, a big disparity between LMS results vs. final exams and
course grades was noticed. And all this made me think of the reasons why this
happened: 1) task completion is not a synonym of learner autonomy, 2) learning
consolidation is not guaranteed by time invested on the platform, and 3) student
cognitive capacity can be affected by time on task in the LMS.
To start with, task completion is not
a synonym of learner autonomy. In Blended Learning, the LMS is a place to
foster autonomous learning; however, it is commonly perceived as a
grade-oriented practice scenario. Traditional pupils come to work on the
platform not just because they want to continue practicing what was studied in
a F2F session but because they feel they need to get a series of language tasks
correct to get a percentage in their final grades. With this kind of attitude, learning and its
consolidation is undervalued by language performers and by their instructors. The
constructivist rationale of language learning aided by Blended Education is
easily defeated by this kind of behavior present in the school’s language
trainees and trainers. As a consequence, autonomous learning is not achieved
because students are just grade-oriented rather than language learning
success-oriented looking for opportunities to demonstrate how much they have
been learning and how they can use what they have acquired in class and on the
platform.
As a second point to be considered, it
is essential to comprehend that learning consolidation is not guaranteed by
time invested on the platform. Time fully devoted to self-reviews and language
expansion activities of thematic units in a course can be minimum and not productive
for language learners’ construction of their knowledge in the target language
or for the expected CEF level when they finish a course. Pupils in a course
cannot be just circumscribed to what books state and what is covered in class
aided by their teachers; they need to go beyond these boundaries to look for
their learning consolidation elsewhere and on the course platform. The LMS is
meant to replicate –up to certain extend- coursebook tasks for student further
analysis and practice. If these practice exercises are not done timely and conscientiously,
can they be counted as guided, instructor-led hours that can contribute with
language development, CEF level attainment, and then language consolidation? A
platform being used as a mere eWorkbook will not contribute to either language
development, or CEF attainment, or consolidation since LMS exercises are
regularly done on automatic pilot by language performers or without full
comprehension of the subject-matter (thematic unit, syntactical structure, lexical
expansion, and the like). This way of interacting with the LMS can lead language
trainees from frustration to incomplete tasks and to zero consolidation of the
content and conversational strategies covered in the coursebook.
Frustration, which is a sign of an
alteration in students’ affective filter, may be an indication that learners’
cognitive loads are affected. As explained by Prof. Olenka Bilash (2015), cognitive capacity “to think at any time is
finite,” and that has consequences in a persons’ learning. “And in other to get
something done, we use parts of that capacity” (Bilash,
2015) ;
But when things go beyond an individual’s cognitive capacity in language
learning, information contained in a platform can become too much content for
learners who are not used to a blended learning orientation in their language
studies. Based on Dr. Glick’s (2016) research findings on blended learning
applied to language learning in a Mexican universtiy, “Students taking
blended English language courses […] outperform students taking the same course
in a face-to-face format.” This can be true up to certain extend, too, but if
all conditions for Blended Learning are not fully met, pupils’ platform use
will not produce the desired effect especially when simply used as an
eWorkbook. Cognitive capacity will not be strengthened, either, and outperformance
may not be tangible in grades but a sort of statistical hallucination.
In the end, why did learners achieve
so low scores on oral and written tests when compared to LMS / platform performance?
Though this is not a conclusive qualitative research analysis, based on the
statistics analysis (see chart), on interviews with language performers, and on
personal memoranda, the inconsistency can be explained as follows. Learner
autonomy does not equal platform work for the sake of task completion. That is,
to do homework is not the same as profiting from a platform to consolidate
learning; a grade is not that meaningful when it comes to learning. The time
invested by language performers does not amount to learning consolidation,
either. Just because a language trainee takes time to work on the LMS does not
mean that learning consolidation is going to take place. eWorkbook-oriented
platform sessions cannot be compared to instructor-led platform assignments
when it comes to language development and consolidation with a Blended Learning
philosophy. Finally, too much information handled by the student cognitive
capacity can be way too overloaded when time on task is not enough or when
language trainees lack the proper understanding of what is being studied. Once
again, consolidation cannot happen surely and properly.
To sum up, the accurate and precise
use of an LMS is a vast green and fertile field of opportunities for both the
trainees as for the language instructors. Trying to understand why student
platform results show inconsistencies can be the way to see why they fail or
why they succeed. Just because a learner gets 100% of LMS work performance, it
does not mean that they are really acquiring and consolidating what is being
given to them in textbooks and on the platform. Furthermore, the three reasons
presented here may just be particular relevant to the teaching environment
where I am currently working; it can perfectly differ from others. But what
needs to be borne in mind is that these learners were not properly introduced
to blended education and are now forcefully transitioning to a more blended
learning-oriented use of the language platform they are using along with their
textbooks.
References
Bilash,
O. (2015, December 8). What is Cognitive Capacity? Retrieved from
YouTube.Com: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SczbF6UYiLk
Glick, D. (2016, August 16-19). Maximizing Learning
Outcomes through Blended Learning: What Research Shows. 21st Century Challenges ABLA 2016
Convention Program.
Monterrey, Nuevo León, Mexico: Instituto Mexicano Norteamericano de
Relaciones Culturales.
Saturday, September 24, 2016
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