Learning Management System

Question: Discuss about the Learning Management System. Answer: Introduction I am currently undertaking an academic course in the domain of engineering management and would thus like to gain knowledge regarding the practical application of management theories in engineering works. Since I completed my bachelors degree in IT, I am willing to explore the use of management programs and policies in some of the leading information technology service providers of the market, the HCL Technologies being one such example. I have realized the importance of applying the concept of management and compliance it with the development in field of engineering professionalism. The project report has been made to incorporate the analysis of the engineering management and following them for realizing the importance of the learning management for the employees of an organization. The following report would help in reviewing the project of learning management system for the employees. The report consists of a section of literature review in which the topics related to learning management system would be critically evaluated for formation of an appropriate project report. Background and definition of the issue/problem The study has been done for analyzing the role and impact of the learning management system for the development of employees in an organization. The employees play a fine role for the development of the operations and proper functioning of systems in the organization. The learning management system would help in forming a compliance with the progress of the professional aptitude of the employees (Arends, 2014). Learning in business organization plays the most significant role for the development of the operations and formation of the better solution for their operations. The learning and development are dependent on each other and the absence of learning would result in chaotic implementation of the innovative operations. The proper and systematic development of operations has resulted in forming progress of the business organization. According to the authors like (Bednall, Sanders, Runhaar, 2014), the role of the learning management system has not being limited to benefit the organ ization with process development. However, the system has helped in forming an incredible formation of system management skills and functions. Definition of the issue The development of technology has brought out many new and innovative ways for completing any process or operations in the business organization. The development of operations has made it evitable for the employees to understand and form better acceptance for the new system. It has been seen that due to the lack of knowledge and prior information, the employees are not able to adjust with the new technology or system in the organization (Cavus, 2013). It has resulted in making them unfit to carry on their services in the organization. The employees need to be adaptive and understanding for developing better understanding about the innovative technologies and processes. The lack of learning process in the organization would make it incompatible for supporting the operations of the organization. The competition among the organizations has resulted in development for finer means of producing higher quality products and services. The lack of learning system would result in making the ope rations of organizations incompatible to support innovative functions (Chung, Pasquini, Koh, 2013). It would also result in increasing the overall expenses of the organization. Justification for selecting the issue The use of learning information system would help in forming processes and procedures for the compatibility of the employees and their learning process. It would help the employees for developing a habit of self evaluation and development to adopt to the latest operation processes in the organization. The development of technology can be accommodated with the operations and the employees that are already been in the organization (Cigdem Topcu, 2015). The use of learning management system would be helpful for the easy addressing to the challenges and problems for providing more beneficial opportunities in the organization. The learning process would help individuals for developing extra attention to the internal and external operations. Aim and objectives of the project The project has been done to consider the learning management system and its benefit for the employees. The development of the project would help in realizing the importance of the implementing the learning management system in an organization. This section of the report would explain the aims of the research and point out the objectives for completing the project. Aim and objectives The primary aim of the research is to find out the role and importance of the learning management system for a business organization. The study would critically evaluate the formation of the research for developing the role of the learning information system. The topic has involved some terms related to the information learning process like e-learning, information, ICT and many others (Du, Fu, Zhao, Liu, Liu, 2013). The research aims to clarify all these terms to the readers for forming an appropriate technology system for the implementation of the learning management system. The objective of this report is to highlight the issues of lack of prior knowledge and development of the technology to adjust the innovation in the operations. The other objective of the report is to use some appropriate literature to analyze the development of the learning in the project of implementing the learning management system. The objectives of the report are pointed out below: To understand the importance of the learning and issues resulted due to lack of learning among the employees of the organizations To understand the aspects of learning management information system for the operations of an organization Research Questions The research project is based on the analysis of significance of learning management system in business organization. The research questions are based on the objectives of the project and formation of the research analysis. The research questions include: What are the issues of lack of learning among the employees of the organization? What has been done so far in the research of significance of the learning management system? What are the benefits of implementing learning information system for the employees? Literature review of Learning Management System The literature review for the topic of significance of the learning management system has been done for critical evaluation of its role in the business organization. The points included in the literature review are definition of the topic, history, purpose, comparison with same technology, and technical aspects of the system. Definition of the Learning management system According to (Emelyanova Voronina, 2014), learning management system can be defined as a software application that can be used for documentation, administration, reporting, tracking, and delivery of the electronic media based educational courses and training programs. The system ranges from the management of training to the educational records keeping software for online distributing in the organization. The use of hybrid courses and augmented learning knowledge can be used by the Internet platform for delivering the most suitable and comfortable system development for the Internet based learning. The business organization utilizes the learning management system for delivering online training in the training departments and to use the automatic data recording along with employee registration. History of Learning Management System The development of learning management system has been initiated and developed from the computer based development. The computer based development has been flooded with instructions (computer based and computer aided) and learning process (computer assisted). The learning process includes sophisticated tutorials, practice programs, and individualized instructions (Emmer Evertson, 2016). The computer based learning process started with computer managed instructions and then shifted to integrated learning system. It offers the additional functions to the instructions provided. The Integrated learning system provided the ease of management and tracking along with integrated operations and personalized instructions. Jostens had coined the term Integrated learning system and the system of computer instruction was originally based on PLATO learning system (Holman, Aguilar, Fishman, 2013). The PLATO learning system was content free and separate computer based instruction. Purpose of Learning Management System The learning management system and other educational system had the difference of understanding the systematic nature of the learning management system (Horvat, Dobrota, Krsmanovic, Cudanov, 2015). It provides the framework for the development of all the learning processes in the organization. The learning management system infrastructure handles and delivers the instructional content, manages the individual training, assesses the organizational goal, collects and presents the data for the learning process, and tracks the progress for the meeting the goals of the organization. The handling of course registration, administration, gap analysis in skills, and reporting of tracks are all done with the aid of learning management system (Horvat, Dobrota, Krsmanovic, Cudanov, 2015). The learning management system is web based for supporting the faster access to the system and development of the online learning process. The role of the learning management system in the business organizatio n is for developing the content based learning, enhancing the solutions, and supporting the teachings. Learning management system is useful for compliance training in regulated industries. The self service in the e-learning process is helpful for forming an self registration and similar processes and it would help in forming the affective process for business organization. Comparison with Content management system The learning management system should not be confused with the content management system. The virtual learning environments by content management system has similar functions like tracking of performance, online course materials, mixed learning processes, and communicating with students (Islam, 2014). However, the systematic nature of the learning management system does not have limited functionality as course management system. The content management system is made for creating the contents of the course and this function is not available in learning management system. The content management system is a software technology for providing the technology of multi user environment and the delivery of the digital education technology. It focuses on the development of the content for the e-learning materials. It also involves the management and publishing of the learning management system content. The users can create and reutilize it for reducing the efforts for duplication development ( Krumm, Waddington, Teasley, Lonn, 2014). The content management system provides the ease of instance connections and access to any particular course content for a number of audiences. Technical aspects of Learning Management System The learning management system are based on the web content and they are built on various platforms such as Microsoft .NET, Java/J2EE and PHP. The database that supports the learning management system is developed in MySQL, SQL Server, and Oracle (Sahid, Santosa, Ferdiana, Lukito, 2016). The software developed has the commercial license or open source license. The organizations require the learning management system in multilingual form to support the various languages of the content. It helps in providing the services around the world. The standard of SCORM or sharable content object reference model supports the learning management system for business organizations. The study of the above points on the learning management system has helped in developing a prior knowledge about the learning management system. The software application that can be used for documentation, administration, reporting, tracking, and delivery of the electronic media based educational courses and training programs (Wright, Lopes, Montgomerie, Reju, Schmoller, 2014). The use of hybrid courses and augmented learning knowledge utilizes the learning management system for delivering online training in the training departments and to use the automatic data recording along with employee registration. The learning management system had provided the framework for the development of all the learning processes in the organization and it handles and delivers the instructional content for developing the content based learning within the business organizations. Research Methodology The research methodology has been helpful for compiling the most appropriate structure for the adoption of the learning management system in business organization. The research methodology can be helpful for providing the ways for the importance analysis of the learning management system that can be used in business organization. However, (Sailer, Kiefer, Raubal, 2015) have stated that the more detailing of the research process would result in generating some errors and flaws for the system. The research methodology for the significance of learning management system in business operations consist of selecting appropriate philosophy, approach, strategy, choices, time horizons, and technique used. In this research study, the philosophy selected for the analysis of the topic is subjectivism as it evaluates the benefit of the learning management system for business organization. The approach used for the analysis is inductive and the research design selected is descriptive. There are no t much practical data available on the use of learning management system. Hence, the inductive research approach would be helpful for forming the solution for the research project. The descriptive design is used because the topic has to be discussed broadly for finding out the overall impact of learning management system in business organization. The data collection method used for accumulating the data for analysis of the significance of the learning management system is from various online sources and journals. The time horizons for the analysis include the longitudinal approach as it forms the appropriate consideration for the limited operations of the organization. Findings from secondary information analysis The secondary analysis of the learning management system has been done from various online educational sources for evaluating and highlighting the webpage features of the learning management system. The research process is helpful for forming a critical analysis of the web based e-learning process that is helpful for the training programs and learning processes in education (Shin Kang, 2015). The applications of learning management system includes the administrations of the teacher and student data, e-learning programs, online courses, built in communication, documentation, report tracking, support portability, and provided SSL security system. The learning management system can be used for managing online content and administrating the learning process in distant education program. The use of the learning management system would help in forming a number of operations and system for the employees to train and become resourceful for the development of the machine co-ordination in the operational processes of the business organization. The online user interface of the learning management system consists of a main interface that acts as the portal for accessing (Sahid, Santosa, Ferdiana, Lukito, 2016). The portal has been deployed by the organization for supporting the learning process of their employees. The page consists of user accessed to the video libraries and study materials for the employees. The webpage is accessible with the help of logging in at the main page of the organization. The user would get into the account and would be able to watch and download the study materials from the portal (Raman, Don, Khalid, Rizuan, 2014). The organizations would also be helpful for forming the aptitude tests and skill proficiency tests for checking and evaluating the learning process of the employees. Discussion of findings The final discussion has been based on the comparative analysis of the literature review results and the analysis of the secondary information analysis. The literature review has been useful for forming an analysis of the various aspects of the learning management system. The study has shown that the learning management system had been used for documentation, administration, reporting, tracking, and delivery of the electronic media based educational courses and training programs. The hybrid courses and augmented learning knowledge can be used by the Internet platform for delivering online training in the training departments and automatic data recording along with employee registration. The analysis of the pasts technologies of learning management system has shown that the technology has developed from simple computer based learning to integrated learning system and later on shifted to learning management system. On the other hand, the analysis of the secondary data analysis has shown the webpage development and structure for the learning management system. The webpage of the learning management system consist of a portal from where the employees can access the crucial information and study materials for the learning management system. The study materials can be in forms of videos, PDFs, and DOCs. The use of portal for the business organization is useful for forming and calibrating the optional development of the business organizations. The facilities of learning management system are development of an infrastructure that handles and delivers the instructional content, manages the individual training, assesses the organizational goal, collects and presents the data for the learning process, and tracks the progress for the meeting the goals of the organization. Conclusion The project report had incorporated the analysis of the engineering management and realized the importance of the learning management for the employees of an organization. It can be concluded from the project report that the learning management system had a major role and impact for the development of employees in an organization. Learning in business organization had been useful for development of the operations and formation of the better solution for their operations. The role of the learning management system had not being limited to benefit the organization with process development. However, the learning management system had helped in forming an incredible formation of system management skills and functions. The final discussion of the literature review and secondary data analaysis had shown that the learning management system had been used for documentation, administration, reporting, tracking, and delivery of the electronic media based educational courses and training program s. The analysis of the secondary data analysis consists of a studying a learning development portal from where the employees can access the crucial information and study materials. The structure and the processes included in the webpage of the learning management system had been explained in the system. The overall summary of the report is that the learning management system not only helps in building career of students through distance education but it had been allowing business organizations for the training of their employees. Bibliography Arends, R. (2014). Learning to teach. McGraw-Hill Higher Education. Bednall, T. C., Sanders, K., Runhaar, P. (2014). Stimulating informal learning activities through perceptions of performance appraisal quality and human resource management system strength: A two-wave study. Academy of Management Learning Education , 13 (1), 45-61. Cavus, N. (2013). Selecting a learning management system (LMS) in developing countries: instructors' evaluation. Interactive Learning Environment , 21 (5), 419-437. Chung, C. H., Pasquini, L. A., Koh, C. E. (2013). Web-based learning management system considerations for higher education. Learning and Performance Quarterly , 1 (4), 24-37. Cigdem, H., Topcu, A. (2015). Predictors of instructors behavioral intention to use learning management system: A Turkish vocational college example. Computers in Human Behavior , 52, 22-28. Du, Z., Fu, X., Zhao, C., Liu, Q., Liu, T. (2013). Interactive and collaborative e-learning platform with integrated social software and learning management system. Proceedings of the 2012 International Conference on Information Technology and Software Engineering , 11-18. Emelyanova, N., Voronina, E. (2014). Introducing a learning management system at a Russian university: Students' and teachers' perceptions. The International Review of Research in Open and Distributed Learning , 15 (1), 62-78. Emmer, E. T., Evertson, C. M. (2016). Classroom management for middle and high school teachers. Pearson. Holman, C., Aguilar, S., Fishman, B. (2013). GradeCraft: What can we learn from a game-inspired learning management system? Proceedings of the Third International Conference on Learning Analytics and Knowledge , 260-264. Horvat, A., Dobrota, M., Krsmanovic, C., Cudanov, M. (2015). Student perception of Moodle learning management system: a satisfaction and significance analysis. Interactive Learning Environments , 23 (4), 515-527. Islam, A. N. (2014). Sources of satisfaction and dissatisfaction with a learning management system in post-adoption stage: A critical incident technique approach. Computers in Human Behavior , 30, 249-261. Krumm, A. E., Waddington, R. J., Teasley, S. D., Lonn, S. (2014). A learning management system-based early warning system for academic advising in undergraduate engineering. Learning analytics , 103-119. Mtebe, J. S., Raisamo, R. (2014). A model for assessing Learning Management System Success in higher education in sub-Saharan countries. The Electronic Journal of Information Systems in Developing Countries. Radwan, N. (2014). An adaptive learning management system based on learners learning style. International Arab Journal of e-Technology , 3 (4), 7. Raman, A., Don, Y., Khalid, R., Rizuan, M. (2014). Usage of learning management system (Moodle) among postgraduate students: UTAUT model. Asian Social Science , 10 (14), 186. Sahid, D. S., Santosa, P. I., Ferdiana, R., Lukito, E. N. (2016, August). 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Learning Management System Question: Write an essay about the learning management system. Answer: Learning management system (LMS) is an internet based application to monitor a particular learning process. It is a way to develop task, monitor employee participation and evaluates the performance of the individual. It gives a chance of interactive communication by way of group discussions, video conferencing and discussion forums. It helps in efficient administration, tracking, documentation and implementation of educational technology programs. This system may range from managing vital records to distributing the data online. This method is useful in universities, schools, business organizations, etc. Corporate training department uses this system to give online training as well as to keep track of records and employee performance. LMS manages all aspect of the learning process. This system is used for analysis and management of human resource at the workplace. The system is utilized by business service industry or pharma industry to give compliance training to their staff. Some providers include performance management aspect of learning management system. It helps in employee appraisal, management of competency, a gap in skills analysis, succession planning and multi-dimensional assessment. The advanced system has now introduced competency-based learning in many organizations. It helps to discover gaps in learning and selection of appropriate training material. In the case of commercial marketing, this system helps in recruitment and functionality of rewards. It is a valuable tool in increasing effectiveness of training and improving organizational efficiency (Galliers and Leidner 2014). Despite numerous benefits of learning management system, there are many issues and complaints about the system too. The primary purpose of LMS is to give support to the implementation of efficient training. But if the primary objective is not working for particular organizations, then it will create the problem. Therefore selecting the right LMS is crucial. It helps in efficient management of human resource and preventing any confusion. Before selecting any LMS, one must analyze existing administration system and the amount of workflow and employee. According to these criteria, the LMS must be implemented (Kaplan and Atkinson 2015). There is browser incompatibility in LMS. Many employees and training department finds it difficult to the browser or its future. It leads to unnecessary confusion among employees. There are problems of scalability and hardware. Any LMS should be compatible with business needs. No matter how well a system works, it is useless if it does not work for the company. It is best to implement LMS that is compatible across all platforms by testing on multiple browsers. It helps in continued and efficient learning (Coronel and Morris 2016). There are issues of pricing. The hardware for learning management system are very expensive, and they need to update and maintained regularly. It is a great drawback for self-hosted learning management system. Due to the cost involved, people cannot update it on a regular basis. This restricts the flow of information and stops the work process or workflow. The problem generally occurs when organization hardware infrastructure does not support it (Armstrong and Taylor 2014). The advantage or disadvantage of learning management system was analyzed by a study on Facebook users. Facebook being popular social networking sites, it has a potential for teaching and learning through its online content. The learning management system in Facebook is an inbuilt system that variety of scopes of learning related to different aspects of life. It offers many social and technological choices in the study. In this study, the Facebook was used as a platform for learning managements system in two courses. It gave new course news, shared materials, offered weekly tutorials and conducting online discussions at an institute in Singapore. The study used the Facebook group as LMS and analyzed student's perception about introducing it in the course (Senge 2014). The results showed that maximum students were satisfied with Facebook as a function for LMS. It had the advantage of easily being implemented in the Facebook group. There were some limitations of using Facebook group too. Many format files could not be uploaded directly and the discussion did not take place in an organized manner. Apart from these difficulties, students did not felt safe using LMS by Facebook as they were concerned about security issues like privacy getting hampered. Before this study, it was already known that Facebook is popularly is used by youngsters, but many don't prefer teachers as their friends on Facebook. It was also known that teachers interaction on Facebook promotes classroom atmosphere, credibility and helps in building student-teacher relationship (Beetham and Sharpe 2013). From this study, we got to know that Facebook group can be used as an LMS too. It eases social and technological affordances. We found that maximum students are satisfied with Facebook as a platform for LMS. It revealed that only younger people who use technology more often were comfortable with the idea of the Facebook group as an LMS. It showed limitations of LMS such as it does not support other file formats, its discussions are not organized in threads and the environment is not perceived as safe. Many found it risky in term of breaching privacy. The implications or recommendation of this finding in practice is that Facebook group can also be used as the substitute for LMS, and individual approaches can minimize its limitations. One recommendation is that third-party application is needed to extend features of LMS. It also recommended that it is not necessary that teachers be students friend on Facebook and Facebook for LMS is beneficial mainly for youngsters but not adults (Boud et al. 2014). The significant challenges in human resource management in LMS are discussed in this section. In the implementation of LMS training, change management is a challenge for personnel management. A particular focus on training is needed to redevelop added competencies to deal with change management. Another issue is leadership development. These parts are individuals strategic initiative. HR professionals are expected to provide the detailed structure, tools and objectives of LMS implementation in the organization (Arends 2014). It is a complicated process and cannot be done properly. But if it is properly managed, it will provide LMS users option of the best selection and efficiently utilizing the system for learning the process. Through the evaluation of employees by LMS training, right employees are retained, and it enhances the performance of the company as a whole. It helps the organization to build their reputation and position in the market. Therefore, an efficient manager is nece ssary to handle the LMS system (Siemens 2014). The data collection feature of LMS minimizes the time and concentration of trainers. This gives them enough time to deal with each trainee individually. There should be a feature in LMS that allows trainees to assess individual trainees difficulty level quickly. It makes the overall purpose of training more beneficial. In a case of wise group training for different subjects, LMS could track how interactive employees are and how often do they interact in chat sessions for learning. This reduces the burden of the instructor to analyze the content and quality of participation, rather than keeping records of each student involvement in class (Kolb 2014). Introducing LMS requires a lot of investment. But the cost can soon be recovered. This savings can be utilized in expenditure on infrastructure and location for holding training and providing printed materials. LMS reduces the administrative cost associated with organizing training. It has the advantage of both trainers and trainees participating in training provided they have access to the internet. It gives the trainees advantage of participating in training according to their preference of timing. It does not lead to loss of training. It gives the chance of one point access to address all the aspects of learning for downloading reading material, videos and taking a test (Ferguson 2012). One drawback of LMS is that training has many ways, and all aspects are not covered in training. Certain jobs require the acquisition of physical skills, which cannot be learned online. Certain professions like salesmanship require skills like facial expression, body language and ways of interpersonal interaction. These can be heard online, but many people prefer practical training in their field of work. This gives them more exposure and experience rather than online learning (Mitchell 2013). Another disadvantage is that it provides trainee restricted vision. Such person may not identify learning opportunities outside of LMS. People don't realize that they can learn a lot of things in classroom or interaction session or by asking a direct question to senior managers. LMS does not promote informal learning by networking or mentoring. Different types of learning style cannot be incorporated in LMS. Certain trainer has their particular dynamism where they show their expertise by teachi ng in the classroom. Their dynamism cannot be displayed in the online video (Ulrich 2013). Therefore, we can conclude that LMS is beneficial for employees and their business. There is very little gap between effective implementation and faulty implementation of LMS. Therefore, the primary solution is to have detailed interaction with those who are using the system both online and offline. The feedback available from them will be an accurate report for deciding particular organization's LMS. Social media tools can be a useful means to get feedback about the system. Based on the feedback modifications can be done and change incorporated accordingly. LMS can be utilized in all varieties of business, and it is extremely useful to get maximum performance out of employees. Reference Arends, R., 2014.Learning to teach. McGraw-Hill Higher Education. Armstrong, M. and Taylor, S., 2014.Armstrong's handbook of human resource management practice. Kogan Page Publishers. 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Senge, P.M., 2014.The dance of change: The challenges to sustaining momentum in a learning organization. Crown Business. Siemens, G., 2014. Connectivism: A learning theory for the digital age. Ulrich, D., 2013.Human resource champions: The next agenda for adding value and delivering results. Harvard Business Press.