Teachers can change.

Being in my fifth year of college, I am all too familiar with Course Management Systems. They organize classroom materials, provide and online database for students' reference, provide a common ground for fellow classmates to correspond and organize group work. They are really quite ingenious. They prevent the professors from having to bring extra copies of handouts, to coordinate group work, and it provides and outside medium for things such as unfinished class discussion. And I am sure this is just the surface of its capabilities.



Kathy A. Smart and Katrina A. Meyer's article, "Changing Course Management Systems: Lessons Learned," discusses the hazards of teachers switching their course management systems. This seems to be a process. The study shows teacher switching to a new CMS called Desire2Learn. Their website writes, "Founded in 1999, Desire2Learn Inc. is a leader in providing innovative eLearning solutions to academic and other leading organizations around the world."

The authors found that, to their surprise, 80% of the teachers were willing to shift to the CMS. I think this is the key nugget I could pull out of this article. Teachers are commonly portrayed as stubborn and unwilling to change. However, this big shift was accepted by a majority of the teachers participating. There, changes can be made. AS LONG as the teachers are supported by their administration and provided proper training.

This article exposed that shifts in technology can be made easily, however the teachers involved were provided support, training, and were allowed to voice their opinions on the change. That means throwing new technology at teachers and expecting them to adopt it, may indeed be met with quite a bit of opposition.

Overall, I found this article somewhat boring. I am a fan of CMS, however I found the transition to a new CMS un-noteworthy.

Smart, Kathy A., and Meyer, Katrina A. "Changing Course Management Systems: Lessons Learned, " Computers in Education, 12th ed, 2007, The McGraw Hill Company.