How to Support your Learning Ecosystem with an LMS

 

The learning ecosystem has been changing with the ever-evolving technologies. There was a time when traditional pedagogies sufficed students' learning needs, but with the advent of modern technologies, the learning ecosystem underwent a tremendous paradigm shift. Technology has changed the process of teaching-learning and has also altered how teachers manage and deliver education to learners. One such technological innovation is the learning management system or LMS that lets educators and schools provide lessons with the help of technology and administer, track, and manage the learning process. Here is how you can support your learning ecosystem with an LMS. 

Why is LMS Important for Schools? 

The present-day classrooms are based on the concept of blended learning. This style of education incorporates modern as well as traditional methods of teaching. Today, most schools prefer blended learning to cater to the needs of advanced learners. And the learning management system helps educators to streamline the process of education delivery. This entails everything, right from administering, to tracking, managing, reporting, and documenting educational courses. 

Instead of maintaining several records on paper, teachers can effortlessly manage different documents and course material with the help of a learning management system. It is the remarkable features of an LMS that make it critical for schools today.

 

Ways LMS Supports Learning Ecosystem 

Below are some of the most outstanding ways LMS supports the learning ecosystem. 

•            Provide Immersive Learning to Students: Learning management system is capable of providing an immersive learning environment for students. The latest technologies, such as augmented reality, and 3D, can be used to give lessons to learners. With the help of these technologies, students are immersed in the learning process and quickly understand what is being taught. There are lesser to no distractions, and learners understand even the most complex topics without any difficulty.

•            Easily Customizable: LMS is basically a software that can be customized as and when required. Hence, if there is a change in the syllabus, or a need to add some new feature, everything can be easily done without affecting the other features of the LMS.

•            Mobile Learning: This is one of the most incredible features of an LMS. Students can learn anywhere, anytime. Once they have been provided access to use the LMS, they can quickly log in and study on the go. On the other hand, teachers can perform different operations, irrespective of their location, and time.

•            Content Management: Gone are the days when teachers had to carry multiple documents to view the syllabus, timetable, schedule, and content of a textbook. Teachers can easily upload and manage learning resources such as videos, images, and text, alongside essential documents.

•            Discussion Boards: Yet another brilliant feature of an LMS is the discussion board. With this feature, learners can interact with each other and discuss relevant topics. They can also converse to teachers to understand different concepts and clear doubts if any.

•            Attendance Tracking: Schools don't need any other software to track and manage the attendance of students. Teachers can easily update the daily attendance on the learning management system. It saves a lot of time and eliminates the chances of errors. They can also send notifications to the students absent on a particular day.

•            Evaluation: One of the crucial aspects of the learning ecosystem is evaluating the performance of students. This can be easily done with the help of LMS. Teachers can upload assignments and projects on the software and ask students to share upon completion. After assessing the performance of the students, teachers can share the results on the LMS itself.

•            Personalized Learning: As every learner is unique and learns at his or her own pace, schools must focus on providing personalized learning. And this could be done with the help of an LMS. When students receive access to the LMS content, they can learn the way they want. They don't have to rush or go too slow to match the pace of their classmates. Instead, they can learn according to their capabilities and prowess.

What is Experiential Learning Theory (ELT)? Importance and Benefits of Experiential Learning

 

Experiential Learning Theory draws on the work of prominent 20th century thinkers who may experience a central role in their theories of human learning and development. David Kolb synthesized the work of these foundational scholars to develop a holistic model of Experiential Learning theory. Learning is the process whereby knowledge is created through the transformation of experience. This is ELT in a nutshell.

 

The theory is built on six propositions that are shared by the foundational scholars.

 

1.     Learning outcome is not an endpoint, but simply a resting point of an ongoing learning process.

 

2.     As we learn new ideas, we also modify and dispose of old ones.

 

3.     Effective learners are capable of balancing the opposing modes in the learning cycle.

 

4.     Learning never ends. It encompasses all life stages, from childhood to adolescents to middle and old age.

 

5.     When learners in the environment interact, both are changed.

 

6.     We do not simply respond to the environment, but we recreate it to meet our needs.

 

Every field requires unique skills and a special learning process. Learning to develop skills and empathic listening is different than learning skills and engineering. Since its emergence in the early 90’s & 70’s, there have been over 90,000 experiential learning citations, and ELT has been used to create countless educational courses in multiple fields. Since 2000, alt research in many fields around the world has more than quadrupled. Experiential Learning Theory is highly interdisciplinary, addressing learning and educational issues in at least 30 academic disciplines.

 

More and more institutions and educators are experimenting with experiential learning practices beyond higher education. In recent years, K-12 institutions, business organizations, and non-formal organizations have embraced ELT to respond to the learning needs of their clients and constituents through recursive cycles of experience, discussion, feedback, and practice and application. In real life context, learners report increased levels of critical thinking abilities and the capacity to apply and connect theoretical knowledge with real life application.

 

Like Kurt Lewin said, there is nothing so practical as a good theory, and like David Hunt said, there is nothing so theoretical as a good practice. Let continues to be renewed and enriched through the collective experience of those who apply the theory in their practices around the world.

 

As the workplace, marketplace and global environmental continue to evolve, experiential Learning Theory is designed to respond to the educational needs of the 21st century.

 

 

Importance of Experiential Learning:

 

we would have realized that plans to have life just by reading it, would we have realized that oxygen is must for combustion just by listening to our teachers? of course not, we wouldn't have realized these without experiencing.

 

Academic and non-academic concept would etch in child's mind, if it is taught through practical activities and experiments. The experiential learning is not only effective but also makes children to take active part in their learnings instead of teaching a child on watering plants. Let him or her water the plants in garden. Gets more emotionally involved and enjoys too.

 

The learning becomes part of an activity and continuous support for activity-based learning from the very first day of schooling can you believe small children performing the activity of measurement. Yes, that's true children are introduced to measurements and different units of measures.

 

Examples

Through different activities children use the measuring tape to measure the length and weight of different materials trying out how many 250 ml bottles of water is needed to fill one litre bottle instead of just learning them theoretically. This helps in reinforcing these concepts in children's mind this method is not limited to fewer subjects.

 

Clay molding is used to introduce the Chinese and Matras in Kannada and Hindi subjects. Environmental science deals with most obvious things of one's life and hands-on learning makes perfect sense to learn this life sciences instead of bringing awareness on reduced plastic usage through classroom sessions. Children are made to prepare paper bags themselves children are learning about windmills by crafting the paper pinwheel.

 

So, to summarize this method makes children to actively participate in learning than just listening passively and of course makes the learning more enjoyable.