We Have A New LMS. Now, What?

Over the past three months, our school has been doing some heavy lifting as we introduced a one-to-one personalized learning program to our staff, students, and parents. A key component of our, and any, one-to-one program is the presence and use of a learning management system (LMS). There are a number of LMS options available, none of which are necessarily better than the others. What matters most when it comes to learning management systems, is how they are used for teaching and learning, which is what we are currently exploring and experimenting with in our classrooms.

Fortunately, the Marzano Research Lab (MRL) has done some work to shed light on this question as well. In A Study of Best Practices in Edmentum Online Solutions, MRL identifies 13 practices found to be "significantly related to higher levels of student achievement in an online learning environment".

While the study focuses on the use of one particular learning management system, Edmentum. The practices identified are universally applicable to other solutions.

The 13 best practice strategies identified are:

1. Communicating course/assignment rules and procedures.
2. Providing students with all materials needed to complete an assignment.
3. Clearly presenting the goal/objective for each assignment.
4. Offering encouragement and positive feedback to students.
5. Allowing students to keep track of their learning progress.
6. Accessibility to students via electronic communication as well as face-to-face.
7. Monitoring student work.
8. Knowing every student by name and being able to recognize them outside of the online environment.
9. Allowing students to progress through assignments at their own pace.
10. Providing help to understand and practice new knowledge.
11. Allowing students to ask questions during online courses/assignments.
12. Treating all students equally. And,
13. Adding external resources to assignments aligned to local objectives.

Interestingly, only strategy 13 deals with content. The rest focus on the teacher's design of the online learning environment and routine events. For more information on MRL's 13 best practices, along with implementation tips for each, take a moment to read this post.