Learning Theories: Supporting A New Model For The LMS

A Learning Management System (LMS) is an eLearning platform that supports the creation and distribution of online courses to learners (Ouadoud, Chkouri, & Nejjari, 2018). Typically, these eLearning platforms are feature-heavy and are designed to provide tools to course creators/teachers, and provide less of these same resources to students/learners.

Researchers Mohammed Ouadoud, Mohamed Yassin Chkouri, and Amel Nejjari (2018) propose a new conceptual model for LMS building. These researchers believe that the LMS should be constructed based on traditional pedagogy, behaviorism, cognitivism, and social constructivism–and should stress the importance of usability, security, portability, sustainability, cross-device and cross-system compatibility.

LMS in use

Learning Theories and the LMS:

What is traditional pedagogy?

In traditional pedagogy, information is presented in a structured way by the teacher and learning occurs in pre-established stages (Ouadoud, Chkouri, & Nejjari, 2018). This typically involves the following:

  • Lecture-based teaching
  • The teacher delivers content and students show learning through recitation, examination, and learning exercises (Ouadoud et al., 2018).
  • Clear-cut delivery of knowledge, not requiring interaction between learners for clarity
  • This means no debate and no communication between students (Ouadoud et al., 2018).

How does this new conceptualized LMS support traditional pedagogy?

The teacher interface will support the creation of course content to be delivered to students in a hierarchical, structured fashion for easy student understanding (Ouadoud et al., 2018).

What is behaviorist theory?

In behaviorist theory, learning occurs based on a series of stimulus-response reactions overtime (Ouadoud et al., 2018).

How does this new conceptualized LMS support behaviorism?

The new LMS should support learning exercises that allow students to acclimate to new conditions via trial and error activities (Ouadoud et al., 2018). For example, when teaching students how to use a new tense of verbs in another language, it might be good for the LMS to support interactive activities that give students positive or negative feedback when trying out different conjugations.

What is the cognitivist theory?

Cognitivist theory posits that learning comes about from intrinsic and extrinsic factors. When motivation is stimulated in the learner, and knowledge is presented in many ways to engage different learning styles–learning is successful. When the learner is not motivated and the knowledge is not presented in multiple ways and the learner is unable to learn–it is seen as a deficiency of the learner’s information processing center (Ouadoud et al., 2018).

How does this new conceptualized LMS support cognitivist learning theory?

This new LMS will support all forms of multimedia learning materials to engage learners in various ways. The LMS should also support information communication technologies so that learners can interact with simulators, experiments, and intelligent tutorials which will require learners to expend the energy necessary to perform learning (Ouadoud et al., 2018).

What is social constructivism?

In social constructivism, new knowledge is acquired through interactions between peers during activities centered around problem-solving (Ouadoud et al., 2018).

How does this new conceptualized LMS support social constructivism?

This new LMS will come equipped with online communication and collaboration tools. These tools, allow sharing, exchanging and interacting in synchronous and asynchronous formats such as in blogs, or other chat forums/discussion boards (Ouadoud et al., 2018).

One LMS that can support these learning theories that is already in existence is CertCentral LMS. Contact CertCentral today to learn more about their Enterprise solutions which support dynamic integrations.