What is ActiveLearning LMS?

ActiveLearning LMS is a Cloud-based Learning Content Management System, works with clients to develop and implement technology that improves every aspect of education. It enables clients to engage more students in exciting new ways, reaching them on their terms and devices and connecting more effectively, keeping students informed, involved, and collaborating.

ActiveLearning LMS as a Research Product

Active learning is an antonym of passive or traditional learning, describes a process whereby students take greater responsibility for their education, seek out information and are more motivated. Moreover active learning includes intelligent systems for quizzing, assessment, and evaluation” Imran Aziz, Lead Researcher and Developer of ActiveLearning LMS

ActiveLearning LMS team, together with its partners and associates, has developed state of the art LMS named “ActiveLearning LMS” based on research and educational strategies to deliver quality education online. LMS is the combination of two products called CMS (Content Management System) and LMS (Learning Management System). It could be seen as one equation LMS = LMS + CMS [RLOs], where RLOs (Reusable Learning Objects) are making it fully object-oriented.

Research Forum LMS is a system that is used to author, approve, publish, and manage learning content (more accurately referred to as learning objects).

LMS combines the administrative and management dimensions of a traditional LMS with the content creation and personalized assembly dimensions of a CMS.

• Instructional designers would create either new RLOs targeting specific performance goals or new courses by assembling already created RLOs
• Editors (senior instructional designers/ learning officers) would view the submitted RLO/course, and either approve or reject it. If approved, the RLO/course would be made available to all to use; otherwise, it would be sent back for revision
• Personalization rules would set in, targeting the new RLOs/courses to those who fit (or, have subscribed to) its profile
• RLOs and courses that have outlived their usefulness would either be backed up and archived or just deleted from the repository

ActiveLearning LMS, like WebCT and Blackboard, has also been evolved through educational practice and experiments done to integrate technology with teaching and learning. Initial prototypes have been deployed with quizzing technology named Intelligent Quizzing. As the name of the product shows, it is based on Active Learning theory. It focuses on the use of technology as a cognitive tool in the social constructivist learning environment.

Initially, the primary purpose of following the theoretical framework for ActiveLearning LMS was to realize a model, and here the challenge was keeping pedagogy ahead of technology. We believe that online education to transform knowledge to target audiences must follow a collaborative learning environment where every user is a critical component of educational practice. This evolves from the constructivist conceptions of learning that assume that knowledge is individually constructed and socially co-constructed by learners based on their interpretation of experiences in the world. The goal of the learner in such a system is to interpret and solve the problem or complete the project. Knowledge chunks in the form of related cases, cognitive tools, conversation/ collaboration tools, social/contextual support systems are of importance.

ActiveLearning LMS team believes that the most prevalent theoretical perspectives in research on online learning are those related to constructivism, particularly social constructivism and social constructionism. These epistemological positions privilege a focus on collaborative discourse (Amundsen, 1993; Bonk & Cunningham, 1998; Jonassen et al., 1999) and the individual development of meaning through construction and sharing of texts and other social artifacts (Ernest, 1995; Gergen, 1995; Papert, 1991). From these perspectives, learners are apprenticed into “communities of practice,” which embody certain beliefs and behaviors (Lave & Wenger, 1991).

New constructivist learning environments are technology-based in which learners are engaged in meaningful interactions. Emphasis is on learners who interpret and construct meaning based on their own experiences and interactions. Therefore, if educators are to adopt a constructivist approach, they are now challenged to adapt and change instructional design strategies to actively engage learners in meaningful projects and activities that promote exploration, experimentation, construction, collaboration, and reflection of what these learners are studying.

The concept of constructivism emphasizes the student as being the “active learner”, playing a central role in mediating and controlling learning (Jonassen, 1999). Emphasis needs to be on student-centered learning that promotes ownership of the learning experience. Greening (1998) suggests, “where ownership occurs, active learning and regard for students’ prior constructions follow quite naturally” (p. 25). The Internet, World Wide Web, and hypermedia application programs, all hypertext-based environments, are very quickly transforming how information is stored and retrieved and how learners collectively communicate, access, contribute and create information and resources. Forsyth (1993) indicates that the growing demand and use of cognitive tools in education is “placing students and technology, rather than instructors and curriculum at the center of educational practice”, and that “learners will increasingly demand that the technology relate to their real-world needs”