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 AcuĂąa-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” [ CITATION Bil15 \l 1033 ]; 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 instructorled 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 Leรณn, Mexico: Instituto Mexicano Norteamericano de Relaciones Culturales.