This week’s been an interesting one in which I’ve been challenged to think more deeply about what might be possible with regard to improving curriculum design during the implementation of an LMS. I believe there is an opportunity to have academics think about their teaching (how they might achieve better learning outcomes & improve student engagement) during the time of transition and preparing/revising their materials in the migration process between two systems. In response to a tweet I posted regarding the possibilities of change afforded by new tools in our new LMS, Dean Groom tweeted to remind me that the tools won’t change a teachers perspective. I appreciate this, but I don’t want to explore what opportunities there might be to make incremental change (if only small) in the way academics teach.
At one level the implementation of a new LMS is fraught with risks – it’s a process that needs to be planned and managed so that there is a smooth transition and teachers and students can get on with their teaching and learning. So, should we be happy to accept this model of ‘let’s just get the course material migrated, the staff and students trained, and it’ll be business as normal’? I’d like to think not, but there a number of institutional pressures to have things working properly – and we’ve become risk adverse as we don’t want to distress our clients (students) and staff with a poorly implemented system. So, I understand we may want to work on an implementation process that provides a robust and working system and then focus on what we can do improve learning and teaching.
On an another level there is an opportunity to work with, and encourage staff to re-think their curriculum in light of the affordances of the new tools available in the new LMS. I see a challenge in helping academics come to understand the potential of different ways of designing learning activities & experiences to achieve outcomes using the functionality of the LMS. Maybe there’s a need to be subversive in all this – change won’t happen en mass – it requires a slowly slowly approach understanding that academics are time poor and looking for efficiencies. There also needs to be an understanding that this will involve some cultural change if new modes and models of teaching and learning are used. The level of resourcing required to develop a framework (and hopefully policy) as well as materials for professional development to support systemic change, will need addressing. It is only by stepping back, and zooming out to see the bigger picture, that we might be able to better understand the context and demands of university education. This includes; teaching, research, service, having work ready and beginning professionals as graduates, and as well as other things, achieving government and institution priorities. I hope that there is some institutional recognition of this and that appropriate resource might be directed to supporting not just an implementation but ongoing curriculum renewal.
So, my mission (that I wish to accept), is to support the introduction of a range of new tools available via the LMS that are intrinsic to holistic learning processes. This will lead to the development of better learning experiences while encouraging teachers to think about how they could adjust/ their curriculum design to develop higher order thinking and engage students more fully.