The voice of the students: needs and expectations from learning management systems
Conference Publication ResearchOnline@JCUAbstract
Today, many education institutions are exploiting learning management systems (LMS) as part of the learning delivery process. The accessibility of the Internet and the ubiquity of digital devices has made the LMS a popular platform for online learning, blended learning, or face-to-face learning delivery among education institutions. As the LMS plays such a key role in the learning process of the students, it is essential to reflect on the issues students may have faced in their use of the LMS and to understand their needs and expectations from the LMS. Adopting the voice of the customer (VOC) process, which is used in new product or service design to determine customer requirements, this study attempts to investigate the issues, needs, and expectations of university students from the LMS by listening to their “voice.” Using a mixed-methods approach, this study first gathered LMS-related issues in a focus group from students who were studying in a blended-learning environment at a local university, followed by a large-scale questionnaire survey to collect data on students’ LMS needs. After ranking the students’ needs in order of importance to them, a follow-up focus group study was then conducted to examine students’ expectations for each need. Findings showed that seven needs were important in relation to students’ use of the LMS. These seven needs, in order of importance, were: “LMS allows easy enrolment of subjects”, “LMS allows easy access to learning materials”; “LMS provides fast access to learning materials”; “LMS allows download of multiple files all at one time”; “LMS operates normally most of the time”; “Learning materials are available on LMS one week before lectures”; and “LMS can be accessed from a mobile app.” However, the students did not convey a strong need to have control over the types of notifications they receive from the LMS; to have a more attractive LMS design; to have a reasonable website response time; to have a live chat feature to interact with lecturers; and to have a uniform web interface across subjects. Findings from this study would help LMS developers to design the LMS better, and lecturers to use the LMS more effectively to meet the needs and expectations of university students.
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16th European Conference on e-Learning (ECEL 2017)
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2049-0992
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Pages Count
8
Location
Porto, Portugal
Publisher
Academic Publishing International
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Publisher Location
Reading, UK
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