The essence of choosing the right platfom for your teaching process

This post will be dedicated to my experience of using two different types of platforms for course development. While reading, you will find my personal overview of each instrument as well as suggestions concerning how to unleash its potential. Before starting my review, I should highlight that both platforms pursue the principles of the Connctivism learning theory illustrated in the article of George Siemens (Siemens, 2005). I will review this article in detail in my next post. 

I will start with the most common one: Google Classroom.

I got introduced to this platform around a year ago as I was seeking for the "available for free" software while developing the private course for my private teaching classes. One of my colleagues, who had a great experience in teaching suggested me to check with Google Classroom. In the beginning, I went quite skeptical not being sure it will provide me with the needed flexibility. 

You may find the link to my course below:

Business Resources

The practicability of the Google Classroom tool for the beginning academic practitioner cannot be overvalued. Google Classroom is a free web service for education that offers teachers, academics, students and their parents mixed learning tools (traditionally called "blended learning"). In general, this platform allows the creation of virtual classrooms that include a flexible and convenient environment for streamlining formal education, offering new tools and methods to teachers and students of any educational institution or school. The service is free of charge (Abazi-Bexheti et al., 2018). 

I developed a set of materials for listeners of the course (12 weeks) including formative assessments and the final exams. 

Google Classroom provided me with the opportunity for effective communication with my students and an activity hub where I posted announcements containing media attachments (additional videos, reading materials, lecture PPT, seminar working sheets etc). These announcements are available to all my students integrated into the virtual classroom. Moreover, students were able to respond to my posts/messages. I remember many of them had questions related to my final exam distributed. They addressed their questions in the chat and I replied. As the result, all of them were able to see the comments (aka chat thread) and do not ask the same question. Therefore, we nearly eliminated the use of Google Mail (GMail) for personal communication. Likewise, I conducted a survey there asking if they are comfortable with the activities I am providing to them and if they would like to change anything. What I liked most is the built-in opportunity to have online video conferences with students with the use of Google Meet. I used one every time I was conducting a short lecture. This is a more convenient tool than Zoom, since a regular Zoom account allows lecturers to have only 45 mins conferences (longer conferences require a premium account subscription). Google Meet has no limitations of that type. Joining the classroom can be done via a mobile application. The student needs to enter the ID code of the classroom and I (as an administrator) will approve his request to join the class. The mobile application is user-friendly and during the whole course, I had no student facing any difficulties using it. Scheduled video conferences and assessment deadlines automatically appear in lecturer's and student's Google calendars.  

What I personally liked about the tool is the built-in option to mark students' papers and check it for the similarity rate (5 free assignments checks per classroom). Definitely, the Plagiarism checker is a basic one and not as advanced as TurnItIn. However, in the case of dealing with school-level modules, such a tool is sufficient and eases the life of the academic. 

Google Classroom allows you to get in touch with every student in "private mode" and discuss the paper (provide feedback) or the mark. Moreover, if the student submits a draft version for feedback, you can comment on it and "return" back to the student with suggestions to improve. Once improvements are done, he can re-upload the report for a new review to be done by the lecturer. The lecturer will get a notification via Gmail. Such flexibility and easy-to-use approach make this tool useful for school-level and higher education institutions as well as private teaching centers. 

However, when you are reviewing such instruments, you should keep in mind the potential obstacles:

* It lacks the opportunity to run quizzes and tests during the conference or in the chat. The only suggestion is to create the survey in Google Forms (academic spends significant time on it). You can use Mentimeter (see my earlier post) or Kahoot!

* Not operatable without internet connection. In the case of Uzbekistan, facing electricity limitations time-to-time, my students were not able to review already-available materials uploaded on Google Classroom. 

Now I would like to review another tool: H5P LMS 

Being a lecturer at Westminster International University in Tashkent since 2015, I have been observing the evolution of WIUT LMS. If we would compare the LMS 2015 and LMS 2022, we would probably consider we are comparing two different systems. While discussing the pros and cons of LMS, I will use my WIUT course as a sample (Negotiations and Influence). For data security, I will use the class I created in 2020. I have no idea, why WIUT LMS doesnt list me as an instructor there. Perhaps, it is just another issue of LMS that we will review below. 

For many years, LMS at WIUT was used as a storage system lacking any sort of interactivity. However, after February 2020 (the start of COVID-19 pandemic in Uzbekistan), the system got significant development. At the beginning of the pandemic, IT staff incorporated the video conferencing software (BigBlueButton). A few months after, they added the opportunity to initiate discussions with students in the dedicated discussion area within every module. Online assessment submission has TurnItIn incorporated. In the past, while marking students' papers we had to check TurnItIn separately. 

During the video lecturing, BBB software allows conducting a very simple vote among students online. However, the key advantage here comparing to GClassroom is the opportunity to divide students into groups working separately with the option for academics to observe each group and communicate with them. Just like in a real classroom. The recorded conferences have been stored in LMS and shared with those students that were unable to attend the class on time.  Marking and feedbacking assessments procedures are relatively the same in both systems. TheAt the same time, I should admit the existence of several limitations:

* Mobile application is not user-friendly (at this stage)

* BBB is very demandable in terms of internet connection. Students are mostly unable to connect to the conference with the use of mobile phones via 3G/4G cellular network

* The chatting with students is not as convenient as in GClassroom. As the result, I have created a group in Telegram for these purposes

The main challenge of e-learning is the "technology that makes it possible" (Abazi-Bexheti et al., 2018). Summing up, both platforms have basic similarities that every LMS should have (Barman and Karthikeyan, 2019). However, Google Classroom is more convenient for use as per my experince. Similar outcomes have been demonstrated in the above-mentioned comparative study of Barman and Karthikeyan. Therefore, I should conclude that my review based on my personal experience of the usage of both platforms could be considered unbiased. After comparing the two tools, I come to the point that both have specific advantages and disadvantages. At this point, I should highlight that GClassroom is more convenient for basic e-teaching, while WIUT LMS is a more advanced tool. However, once I will be ready to open my private teaching center, I will probably stick to Google Classroom as the main tool for its functionality and flexibility.

(1260 words)

Referencing

Abazi-Bexheti, L. et al. (2018). LMS Solution: Evidence of Google Classroom Usage in Higher Education. Business Systems Research, 9 (1), 31–43. Available from https://doi.org/10.2478/BSRJ-2018-0003 [Accessed 6 February 2022].

Barman, B. and Karthikeyan, J. (2019). Facilitating ELT through Moodle and Google Classroom. Restaurant Business, 118 (10), 506–518. Available from https://doi.org/10.26643/RB.V118I10.9570 [Accessed 6 February 2022].

Mohd  Ayub,  A.  F.  et al. (2010), “Factors  Influencing  Students’  Use  a  Learning  Management  System  Portal:  Perspective from  Higher  Education  Students”,  International  Journal  of  Education  and  Information Technologies, Vol. 2, No. 4, pp. 101-108

Siemens, G. (2005). Connectivism: A learning theory for the digital age. International Journal of Instructional Technology and Distance Learning, 2(1). Retrieved from http://www.itdl.org/ [Accessed 6 February 2022]