Course Management Systems and Blended Learning: An Innovative Learning Approach

INTRODUCTION

Traditional (or face-to-face) instruction and online instruction are two core learning environments in higher education. These two learning settings have been selectively adopted by individual instructors in most college campuses. Effects of these learning settings have been studied by researchers (Johnson, Aragon, Shaik, & Palma-Rivas, 2000; Sitzmann, Kraiger, Stewart, & Wisher, 2006; Wu, Tennyson, Hsia, & Liao, 2008; Zhao, Lei, Yan, Lai, & Tan, 2005), however, diverse findings have been reported in these studies. Advantages and disadvantages of each learning approach have been identified in these studies. Students also showed their preference in these learning settings. Traditional learning, in essence, contains circumstances of passive learning that missing individual learner's needs and ignoring support to problem solving and critical thinking (Banathy, 1994; Hannum & Briggs, 1982; Johnson et al., 2000). Following the development of Internet technology, online instruction became available. Online instruction is perceived as a major advancement in teaching and learning since it allows the distant learners to gain opportunity for college education. Although online instruction earned some popularity, its inherent obscurity and concerns ban it from gaining more support from educators. For example, the ever-changing computer and networking technologies and the unstable online learning environment make students and instructors difficult to follow the suit (Brandt, 1996). Another drawbacks of online learning are its “limitations in engaging learners in deep learning and meeting the high expectation of self-disciplined and motivated learners” (Lim & Yoon, 2008, p. 60) and “lack of peer contact and social interaction, high initial costs for preparing multimedia content materials, substantial costs for system maintenance and updating, as well as the need for flexible tutorial support” (Wu, Tennyson, & Hsia, 2010, p. 155). It therefore makes online learning less effective than other learning settings.

An alternative instructional setting to mitigate the concerns and drawbacks in online learning is through the blended learning environment. This new approach has been recognized as a “promising alternative learning approach” (Graham, 2006; Wu et al., 2010). Blended learning is also noted as “blended e-learning system” that “refers to an instructional system that combines multiple learning delivery methods, including most often face-to-face classroom with asynchronous and/or synchronous online learning. It is characterized as maximizing the best advantages of face-to-face and online education.” (Wu et al., 2010, p. 155). This new learning approach has recently gained prominent popularity because instructors and students are easy to get access to course management systems (CMS).

It is interesting to discover the innovativeness and the core value inside the blended learning approach. The concept of innovation, according to Rogers (2003, p. 12), is an idea, practice, or object that is perceived as new by an individual or other unit of adoption. Innovation in educational service can be noted as new ways of producing or delivering education (such as teaching and learning) and/or noteworthy changes to educational production or delivery. In many cases, innovation processes involve the addition of technology (Beckman & Barry, 2007; Goffin & Mitchell, 2005; Rogers, 2003; Wu et al., 2008) to enhance the process effectiveness and efficiency of new outcomes or services.

This article utilizes Rogers’ innovation-decision process model (2003) and Beckman and Berry's innovation process model (2007) to create an innovative learning map that illustrates three learning methods (i.e., face-to-face learning, online learning, and blended learning) in two types of innovation (i.e., incremental innovation and radical innovation) that exhibits the behavior and dynamics on a two-dimensional area of learning changes (i.e., change in learning model and change in technological infrastructure). The behaviors and dynamics of three learning models (face-to-face learning, online learning, and blended learning) will be analyzed and further be placed in a proper zone on the innovative learning map. Face-to-face learning is in the zone of incremental innovation. Online learning is in the zone of radical innovation, however it is also technology driven. Blended learning is also in the zone of radical innovation, but it is driven by both learning and technology changes. CMS can be used to facilitate communication channel within a blended learning environment. CMS are Web-based information systems that provide tools and frameworks for instructors to create online teaching contents, manage course teaching, and interact with students in a relatively easy manner. Instructors with minimal training on CMS can create online supplemental teaching materials quickly without mastering the skills of information technology. CMS have been widely used in many higher education institutions to either deliver online classes or supplement traditional classes. A national survey of information technology to U.S. higher education in 2008 found that 56.8% of respondents use Blackboard as their main CMS, while 13.8% of respondents use open source CMS such as Moodle or Sakai (Campus Computing Project, 2008).

There are a number of colleges adopted CMS for online teaching programs. Two major reasons that colleges embrace CMS are (1) information technologies are mature enough to support a large number of users, and (2) college teaching needs to accommodate students’ drastically changing learning styles. If we observe the incoming undergraduate freshmen recently, it is not hard to find that the newer generation of students is comfortable of using digital technology. Mark Prensky (2001) coined the term of “digital native” to describe those people who were born after digital technologies. “Digital native” has spent more time to read screens than books. They carry their music on MP3 players. They organize their social lives by exchanging text messages on mobile phones. To accommodate digital natives’ media preference in college life, it is inevitable to bring information and communication technology (ICT) into the classroom.

These college students who grew up with surrounding digital media may have changed their thinking patterns. By Prensky's view (2001), digital natives like to work in environment that allows for parallel processing, multitasking, and networking with their peers. This phenomenon creates a disparity when they encounter formal structure of education. Diverse learning behavior brought in by incoming college students have led educational scholars to believe that former educational rules should be changed. In order to serve current students’ learning need, it may be necessary to incorporate online learning model into educational pedagogy. Using Web-based communication technologies to transform the model of teaching and learning in the higher education is therefore foreseeable (Garrison & Vaughan, 2008).

This article first discusses the theoretical background of innovative learning, including types of innovation, the path of innovation, innovative learning process, and innovative learning map. Three types of learning methods are delivered in the later sections, including face-to-face learning and online learning, and blended learning. The next two sections portray the role of CMS in blended learning setting and the reasons of adopting such tools in an innovative learning process. A case study is then provided to support the functionality and capability of CMS in a blended learning environment. A conclusion is presented at the end of this article.

INNOVATION AND LEARNING PROCESS

The Path of Innovation: Innovation's Decision Process

Innovation is in dynamic process that can be continuously extended, based on the need of the process owner or the external forces, which makes such change to act in response. The path of innovation portrays the changes arisen inside the system that may have prolonged the interest of the process owner. Schumpeter (1934) indicated that innovation implied the introduction of a new product or the use of new sources of supply. Porter (1990) specified that innovation should include both improvements in technology and better methods or ways of doing things. Their ideas agreed to the point that innovation path should reflect the way of changes inside the system, which may be technological factors or new methods to be adopted inside the system.

Innovation process encounters a variety of opportunities for adopting changes and new methods. Decision making to adopting change and new method in innovation process is an imperative task for process owner. Everett M. Rogers (2003) proposed a well-known innovation diffusion model that described the steps involved in innovation decision process. His innovation-decision process model consists of the following five stages: knowledge, persuasion, decision, implementation, and confirmation (Rogers, 2003). Figure 1 illustrates these five stages in the innovation-decision process model.

Rogers (2003, p. 168) described the innovation-decision process as “the process through which an individual (or other decision-making unit) passes from gaining initial knowledge of an innovation, to forming an attitude toward the innovation, to making a decision to adopt or reject, to implementation of the new idea, and to confirmation of this decision. This process consists of a series of choices and actions over time through which an individual or a system evaluates a new idea and decides whether an individual or a system evaluates a new idea and decides whether or not to incorporate the innovation into ongoing practice.”

This innovation-decision process model clearly described the behavior and characteristics of each decision stage within the innovation process. This decision process is continuous and dynamic in nature that occurs within a system or an institution. In order to facilitate the individual decision stage in the process, a fluent communication channel should be built up to support tasks’ movement within the innovation process.

Innovative Learning Process: A Dynamic Process

The innovative learning research frequently focuses on the adoption of new technologies and/or applications of the innovation process. Beckman and Barry (2007, p. 25) indicated that “Hundreds of publications describe the process of innovation for products – both hardware and software – and a growing number of publications focus on innovation in services.”Beckman and Barry (2007) examined a generic innovative learning process model to illustrate the aspects of design and learning practices, which can be shown in Figure 2. Their model's innovation process allows the participants to work between the concrete and the abstract views, and to use analysis and synthesis to design new products and services. Within the four learning dimensions (concrete, abstract, analysis, and synthesis), the whole learning process may move through the following four sequential stages: observations, frameworks, imperatives, and solutions. Observation is the first stage of innovation process that includes the activities that “provide the designer or innovator an opportunity to understand how his or her product or service is being used, and how its benefits are derived in the context of use” (Beckman & Barry, 2007, p. 32). The next stage, frameworks, is to frame and reframe the data collected from the observation stage and then to come up with a new way of seeing the problem and reaching the new solution. After frameworks stage, the innovation process results in synthesizing a set of imperatives, which “provide a high-level specification for the design of a product or service” (Beckman & Barry, 2007, p. 42). During the solutions stage, the innovation team will choose the solutions that best meet the imperatives, and then put them into the testing mode. Any application of the innovation process needs participants to play a part in each stage. This innovation process can be applied to various learning subjects, such as information technology design, business modeling process, and organizational design. This innovative learning process and the innovation decision process are similar in nature; they are all dynamic processes that involve new knowledge to be encountered and changes to be made onto the existing practices. However, Beckman and Barry's discussion focused on innovative learning only.

Innovative Learning Map

Innovation theory can be applied into the learning practice. A learning model is “the way in which the core components are built by integrating the components and linking them into a coherent whole to support learning processes” (Wu et al., 2008, p. 1854). A learning model consists of educational environments, course development, teaching and learning, faculty and student interaction, collaborative learning, and evaluation and assessment (Tennyson, 2005; Wu et al., 2008). Recently, the development and adoption of technological infrastructure such as Internet and Web-based technology makes technology a major contributor to the area of innovative education. Online learning (or e-learning) has been accepted because of the maturity of the ICT.

This article focuses on the innovation progress of the three types of learning methods, including face-to-face learning, online learning, and blended learning approaches. We would utilize a two-dimensional diagram to represent the characteristics of the three learning models that progress within an innovative learning map. Figure 3 illustrates this innovative learning map.

Innovative learning map encircled with two areas of innovation (i.e., incremental innovation and radical innovation) that bounded by the two dimensions, including the change in learning model (shown in horizontal axis) and the change in technological infrastructure (shown in vertical axis). As indicated earlier, any changes in learning model stem from learning components’ adjustment, modification, alteration, and transformation, such as educational environment's alteration, course development, teaching and learning adjustment, new ways of faculty and student interaction, altered collaborative learning, and modified evaluation and assessment methods. These changes can be summarized and reflected in the dimension of the change in learning model. The dimension of change in technological infrastructure reflects the adoption of new ICT in learning practice, including networking, wireless technology, Web-based technology, information systems applications, information technology devices, etc.

The path of innovative learning in the map is outwardly dispatched as the number of changes increased in both dimensions. The innovation diffusion theory indicated that innovation process that occurs over time and involved a series of different actions (Rogers, 2003). The learners, educators, and institutions should go through a long term to experiment, implement, and confirm/adopt the new learning practice. Since it is a dynamic process, involved entities should communicate well on various success factors and risks that may affect their innovative learning decision. As the new knowledge that may persuade them to change the ways of learning and technological adoption, the decision will be taken to implement an evolutionary learning method into their classroom or learning environment. The confirmation step may be taken as the assessment and evaluation results to be collected and approved.

We can portray the two innovation types on the innovative learning map. First, the inner area of the map is the incremental innovation zone that depicts the low and steady change in learning model and technological infrastructure. Second, the outer area in the map is the radical innovation zone that reflects the high changes in both learning model and technological infrastructure. The dynamics of the three learning models (i.e., face-to-face learning, online learning, and blended learning) can be analyzed through this innovative learning map.

FACE-TO-FACE LEARNING AND ONLINE LEARNING

Traditional or face-to-face learning and online learning are two important approaches in teaching pedagogy. Face-to-face learning refers to the learning practice that occurs in classrooms through lecture or discussion. Face-to-face learning approach has been accused for encouraging passive learning, ignoring individual differences and needs among the learners, and emphasizing less on critical thinking (Banathy, 1994; Hannum & Briggs, 1982; Johnson et al., 2000).

One of the most important advantages of face-to-face learning is that the students can communicate and gain immediate feedback from instructor and classmates in the classroom environment. Instructors in face-to-face learning environment can utilize newly developed ICT to enhance their teaching process. Face-to-face learning can be further developed through steady and deliberate change to its learning model and technological infrastructure; therefore, it can be classified as an incremental innovation. Although face-to-face learning can continuously seek new methods to improve its practice, those changes made to its learning model and technological infrastructure are not enormous.

Online learning refers to the learning practice that occurs via telecommunication and networking, especially through the capability of Web browsers. A prominent advantage of online learning is that students can access content and instruction from any place at any time. Online learning is gaining popularity since it is an alternative for those students who cannot attend face-to-face classes. Another advantage of online learning is that instructors can manage more students and disseminate instruction materials more cost-effectively than before. Most traditional or campus-based institutions that recognize the benefits of online learning in term of accessing and serving more students in general, instead of serving existing students better.

Johnson et al. (2000) conducted an empirical study that compared student ratings of instructor, course quality, course interaction, structure, and support in both face-to-face and online courses. Their research results revealed that the students in face-to-face course held slightly more positive perceptions about the instructor and overall course quality than that of online course. For the learning outcomes, no difference was found between the two approaches.

Wu et al. (2008) used an e-learning hypercube innovation model, based on Afuah and Bahram's research (1995), to assess the innovativeness caused by the changes in both the technology and learning model between face-to-face learning and online learning (or e-learning) practices. Their research findings indicated that the innovation from face-to-face learning to online learning belongs to radical type. The reason of being radical is that online learning makes remarkable and dramatic changes in learning model and technological infrastructure for learners and instructors. Comparing the changes within the two components, online learning emphasizes more on technological infrastructure than learning methods since technology is the major driver to implement its teaching and learning.

The innovative footprint of two types’ learning methods can be shown in the innovative learning map that illustrated in Figure 4. Face-to-face learning is positioned in the right side of the incremental innovation zone since it emphasizes more on changing components inside its learning model. Online learning, although some changes need to be done to its learning model, which persuaded adoption of ICT and massive changes in technological infrastructure drives it to the left side of the radical innovation zone.

BLENDED LEARNING: A BALANCED APPROACH

An innovative learning approach should take advantages of both face-to-face learning and online learning practices. One way to reach such goal is to blend both learning patterns into a teaching model.

Several researchers advocated the trend of blended learning. A fundamental view of blended learning shows that the online learning should be considered as a value-added component instead of a replacement of traditional classroom learning to better serve their students. Blended learning is a thoughtful fusion of both face-to-face learning and online learning experiences. Its basic principle is that both face-to-face oral communication and online written communication are optimally integrated such that the strengths of each are blended into a unique learning experience that congruent with the context and the intended educational purpose (Garrison & Vaughan, 2008).

Garrison and Vaughan (2008) suggested that blended learning is at the center of an evolutionary transformation of teaching and learning in the higher education. They approached their blended learning design through a framework of community and inquiry. The concept of community recognizes the social nature of education and the roles of interaction, collaboration, and discourse that play in constructing knowledge. On the other hand, the concept of inquiry reflects the process of constructing meaning through individual's choice and responsibility. The challenge of the higher education is to recognize the importance of blended learning and further redesign the learning experience in ways to enhance the traditional value of education.

Literature has addressed the advantages and the shortcomings of both online learning and classroom learning. Students in online setting can study at their own pace, in their own space, and time (Marks, Sibley, & Arbaugh, 2005). Although online setting provides the tools such as discussion board for students to communicate and socialize, the research data showed that these tools are usually underutilized due to embarrassments or lack of user's self-perpetuating core (Shaw & Polovina, 1999). On the contrast, in traditional classroom learning the two-way face-to-face communication could make class much enjoyable to students (Koch, Verville, & Garza, 2007). Therefore, an environment without face-to-face interaction may encounter difficulty on developing social ties and information exchanging to students who are in the online learning environment (Arbaugh, 2000). Evidences have shown that students can interact with instructor and their classmates and also communicate with each other in the classroom are important contributors to their learning performance.

An empirical study conducted by Nemanich, Banks, and Vera (2009) found that students in a classroom learning environment enjoyed the course better than students in an online learning environment. However, the enjoyment of the in-class course did not necessarily facilitate students to build a better understanding in course content than those students in online learning setting. Nemanich et al. (2009) further found that in a traditional classroom context, the enjoyment factor could improve learning effectiveness for students with weaker ability. For students with higher learning ability, the enjoyment was not a significant contributor for learning effectiveness. Their research findings suggested that, while students may get more pleasure from their richer environment of the classroom, the online environment may be equally effective in encouraging students to understand the relationships among course constructs and to bring deeper learning to the course content.

Research results suggested that applying online technology in the classroom can enhance students’ achievement (Abel, 2005). With the help of online tools, students can perform better and more productive. Those tasks such as capturing student's accomplishment through electronic portfolios, reviewing course materials to prepare for a test, communicating with faculty, etc. can be carried out with online tools more efficiently. In this notion, online tools also enable the faculty to deliver their teaching better. An innovative blended learning practice could take advantage and combine the practices of both face-to-face learning and online learning.

While online tools offer many advantages to classroom learning, selecting a suitable testing tool is a major challenge in online teaching practice. Although information technology allows user authentication to be realized in an online class, it is not easy to verify that the person who takes test is the student actually enrolled in the class. This kind of cheating behavior may not be easy to be detected in online teaching environment. Fortunately, blended courses can resolve some of these problems because tests can be given during face-to-face sessions.

Blended learning makes an important advancement to learning practice. It has been recognized as an innovative learning because it utilizes multiple learning methods and combines both traditional classroom and online learning practices. This newly developed blended learning approach makes significant changes to both learning model and technological infrastructure; therefore, it can be classified as a radical innovation. It is also a balanced innovative learning approach since blended learning should equally advance the practice in both learning methods and technological infrastructure. It therefore to be positioned on the innovative learning path in the innovative learning map. This situation is illustrated in Figure 5.

CMS AS AN ENABLER FOR BLENDED LEARNING

A balanced blended learning method should equally advance its learning method and technological infrastructure in innovative learning environment. CMS serve the role of enabler that supports and moves blended learning practice forward on the path of innovative learning. Several stakeholders are involved in the deployment process of CMS. These stakeholders include instructors, learners, support services, leadership, and the CMS vendors (Carmean & Brown, 2005). A comprehensive CMS offers components such as content tool, organizational tool, communication tool, student learning activities, and student tools. These system components support both instructors and students to implement online teaching and learning. Specifically, CMS enable instructors to perform the following tasks:

On the other hand, students can use CMS to do the following tasks:

Regarding learning model's changes brought by CMS, research often highlights the benefits such as independent learning, life-long learning, or student-centered learning. There is a strong indication that CMS is beneficial in bridging the gap between face-to-face classroom instruction and online learning. With careful course design, CMS could provide resources to encourage learners to view learning as an ongoing process that does not limit to classroom experience (Daniels, 2009). However, some scholars cautioned that CMS is only a tool, not pedagogy (Carmean & Brown, 2005). An action of adopting CMS without a careful course design will not necessarily enhance teaching and learning. Therefore, evolutionary changes should be equally contributed to learning model and technological infrastructure. One imperative factor for sustaining innovative learning is to offer learners and instructors an effective communication channel in learning environment. This communication channel will facilitate the accomplishment of self-monitoring and feedback seeking in the learning environment.

First, self-monitoring is an important action in learning practice. Features in CMS such as online grade book could facilitate students to conduct self-monitoring. The behavior of monitoring grade is a form of self-regulated learning. Self-regulated learners are active participants in the learning process. They establish goals, select and apply strategies, and self-monitor their effectiveness (Zimmerman, 2008). Typically, self-regulated learning behaviors include asking questions, sharing information, seeking help, experimenting with actions, and pursuing feedback.

Second, feedback seeking is another important action in learning practice. Geddes (2009) suggested that feedback seeking is an important component of self-regulated learning. Feedback seeking is the behavior in which individuals actively pursue and acquire relevant information about their performance. According to Geddes (2009), feedback seeking is manifested in two forms: inquiry and monitoring. Feedback inquiry implies directly asking available sources, such as questions asking in the classroom. Feedback monitoring involves observing environmental cues, such as posted grades, marked article, and so on. Online grade book is a useful tool for feedback monitoring. Students would rather seek feedback from online grade book than inquire instructor directly because the cost is low (i.e., less efforts in pursuing feedback and more privacy protection) and the benefits of feedback is high. The research findings of Geddes (2009) supported that online grade book monitoring is a robust predictor of students’ academic achievement. The above discussions allow us to reach to the following proposition:

THE ADOPTION OF COURSE MANAGEMENT SYSTEMS

The research on CMS adoption suggests that the process of integrating CMS into classroom instruction is evolutionary rather than revolutionary. Usually, faulty members do not utilize the full features of CMS at the beginning of the adoption. Rather, they integrate CMS features into their teaching approach gradually. Kilmon and Fagan (2007) studied the nature of CMS adoption among faculty in a nursing program. Their findings contained the following three themes on CMS: (1) CMS facilitates course management, (2) CMS improves the communication among students and instructors while used it as a supplement to classroom instruction, and (3) CMS is easy to be used and needs only a minimal training and technical support.

CMS can facilitate course management process since it provides a great extent of convenience to both students and instructors. CMS not only provides a platform to share information but also gives students the opportunity to access information at their own time without depending on their instructor. The grade book feature of CMS allows students to retrieve their grades without public posting and personal contact to their instructors. From the course management perspective, instructor can provide CMS proctor quizzes online and then grade quizzes offline at later time. Tan (2009) indicated that offline grading function provided an efficient way for instructors to grade the Web-based short-essay questions. Furthermore, instructors can utilize the discussion board in CMS to post the answers or solutions of the frequently asked questions. Other than that, instructors can distribute handouts or announcements at their own convenience through CMS. For the faculty who are teaching a large classroom-based course, CMS can be easily used as a communication channel to all students in that class. According to the research findings of Kilmon and Fagan (2007), most faculty members adopted CMS did not need a formal training, or just took a short training session if needed. Although CMS offers many advantages for course management, a person who uses CMS does require advance planning, good organization skills, more attention to details, and improved written communication skills.

Although CMS is acceptable by the higher education, one question is worthy to discuss: will the acceptance of CMS tools create an effective learning environment for students?Carmean and Haefner (2002) suggested that an effective use of CMS-bundled technology should allow students to experience “deeper learning.” They reviewed core researches on deeper learning area and then found that deeper learning experience occurs while learning is: (1) social (feedback and reciprocity), (2) active (problem solving, practice, and action), (3) contextual (related back to the condition and understanding of the learner), (4) engaging (intrinsic motivation, high-challenge and low-treat environment, and high expectation), and (5) student-owned (learner responsibility and reflection). Basically, the use of CMS could facilitate the conditions that manifest in deeper learning. In fact, CMS tools themselves cannot achieve the objectives of deeper learning. The power of pedagogical selection belongs to faculty. The features of CMS that faculty apply in their course design will definitely affect the teaching effectiveness and the outcome of deeper learning.

The way instructors adopt the features of CMS is often determined by their teaching orientation. Apedoe (2005) divided teaching into two orientations: teacher centered (or content centered) and student centered (or learning centered). A teacher-centered orientation focuses on the communication of knowledge body, while student-centered orientation emphasizes on student's learning and conceptual changes.

The instruction in the higher education traditionally follows the teacher-centered model, that is, teaching and learning are viewed as the transmission of knowledge from the instructor to students (Apedoe, 2005). If we examine the usage patterns of CMS tools, it is not hard to find that the adoption of CMS is influenced by traditional teacher-centered model. CMS were originally developed for faculty who did not have information technology expertise to develop a Web site or to perform file management on Web server. CMS provides tools and features for instructors to integrate their teaching practices and to provide access to their students via Web browser. Most instructors tend to use the features that are suggested by a CMS course template. These features often include the links to a course syllabus, a course notes page, or an announcement page.

A main CMS usage pattern is to help communicate with students easily, provide students access to class documents, and offer convenience and transparency of the online grade book. Another important reason that faculty adopts CMS is the pressure and persuasion that come from campus administrators. Faculty rarely adopts CMS just because of students’ requests. Morgan (2003) investigated the usage of CMS by faculty in the University of Wisconsin System. The survey results revealed that faculty adopted CMS mainly to manage the tasks associated with teaching, especially when they taught large classes. An explored study conducted by Kilmon and Fagan (2007) yielded similar results. They found that most frequently used features in CMS among the faculty in a nursing program were the following: course documents, announcements, grade books, discussion board, assignment, and email.

Another interesting finding from Morgan (2003) showed that although faculty initially did not adopt CMS for the pedagogy reason, however, after using CMS faculty began to rethink and restructure their courses. Eventually, faculty improved their teaching through the use of CMS, which was an “accidental pedagogy” that faculty developed along with the process. Specifically, faculty teaching could be improved through “accidental pedagogy,” which might be a side effect, rather than direct use of CMS.

Although CMS technology continues to improve and attracts more higher education institutions to adopt it, Carmean and Brown (2005) observed that most faculty tend to use only a limited set of features that provided by CMS. The ease of use of CMS associated with template-driven and cookie-cutter implementation is usually where the course development stops. To make CMS an effective pedagogical tool, faculty should move beyond the intuitive setting and explore the applications of CMS to engage their teaching and learning activities.

Based on the CMS experience at Duke University, O’Brien, Campbell, and Earp (2005) suggested that CMS implementation can serve as a catalyst for curricular change. They viewed faculty's broader adoption of CMS as an intermediary step to future pedagogical change. Since CMS is easy to use, instructors with minimal technology skills can use CMS to organize their teaching materials in a short period of time. The use of CMS prepares faculty for further extensive use of technology and advanced pedagogical discussion about course goals and objectives. While trying a new tool to facilitate a particular pedagogical goal, faculty obtains an opportunity to evaluate all aspects of the tool. This process leads faculty not only thinking about technological dependency issues, but also broadening curricular issues. Based on these perspectives, the adoption of CMS is not only dealing with the implementation of a teaching tool, but also selecting an instrument to reflect teaching itself.

Students are another important stakeholder of CMS implementation. Understanding students’ perception about information technology is essential for identifying the success of CMS implementation. According to a survey (Smith, Salaway, & Caruso, 2009) of 30,616 undergraduate students on information technology use, most respondents indicated that they have used CMS from 2006 to 2009. In this survey, most respondents who had used CMS indicated that their experience with CMS was either positive (52%) or very positive (11.2%). However, survey results also showed that 64.7% of respondents would likely to skip classes when the course materials were available online.

Based on the evidences found in various empirical studies, our impression is that current undergraduate students belong to the digital generation; therefore, they shall be naturally embraced with digital technology in the course design. However, the ECAR (Eucause Center of Applied Research) study of undergraduate students and information technology (Smith et al., 2009) painted a different picture. Most respondents in their study were lukewarm about their instructors’ use of information technology. Less than half of respondents (45%) reported that most of their instructors or all of their instructors used information technology effectively in their courses. Under half (45.9%) of respondents said that their instructors have adequate information technology skills for carrying out course instruction. Only about a third of students (33.8%) revealed that their instructors provided them adequate information technology training for their courses. Students also recognized the positive impacts of using information technology in the courses. About 70.4% of respondents reported that information technology made their course activities more convenient. However, students were not so sure that using information technology in a course would improve their learning. Only a half of respondents (49.4%) reported that they “strongly agree” or “agree” that using information technology in courses improved their learning.

A study on meta-analysis and review of online learning that conducted by the U.S. Department of Education (Smith et al., 2009) suggested that that information technology alone cannot explain online learning outcome. The motivation of individual learner could be a strong contributor to the learning outcome regardless the use of technology in course design or not. This meta-analysis also compared blended learning with face-to-face learning and online learning. The results indicated that the instruction that combining online and face-to-face elements resulted in a higher advantage then those of pure face-to-face instruction and pure online instruction. The above discussions allow us to reach to the following proposition:

CASE STUDY: CMS FOR BLENDED LEARNING

A case study analyzes the teaching effectiveness of incorporating Blackboard (a prevalent CMS) into an undergraduate System Analysis and Design (SA&D) course offered by one of the authors. This SA&D course was scheduled as a traditional classroom course and Blackboard was used as a supplementary tool to the classroom lectures.

The initial reason of adopting Blackboard was to make this course interactive and easy to be managed. Some Blackboard features such as online grade book, online assignment submission, and online supplemental materials may provide a significant extent of convenience for students. Therefore, students may feel having better control over their learning, since they can have access to the information whenever they need to.

As discussed earlier, a communication channel will facilitate the functionality of self-monitoring and feedback seeking in the learning environment. We focus on Blackboard's communication features such as reading and sending email, viewing calendar, viewing Web links, and viewing lecture notes, which are related to student's self-monitoring and feedback-seeking activities. We will observe the usage of Blackboard's communication access in this case to evaluate the outcome of learning effect.

Blackboard offers a function for instructors to track into the amount of students’ usage of software's various features. After collecting and analyzing the data of Blackboard usage from six sections of S&D course that offered during years of 2008 and 2009, we find that students’ usage patterns of CMS are consistent with previously published studies. This study finds that students’ usage patterns on CMS are focusing on viewing supplementary course materials and checking calendar. To most of the students, the benefit of using CMS is for their convenience. Table 1 shows the frequency data about students’ access to various features in CMS.

Although research in CMS suggested that email feature has effective communication functionality and could be a commonly adopted feature (Kilmon & Fagan, 2007), our data imply the opposite. This case's results show that email is not a relatively high usage feature. A possible reason of causing this situation may be the email in Blackboard is isolated and cannot be redirected to other email server. Other than checking their regular emails, students have to make extra efforts to login the Blackboard system to check their emails for a specific course. Sometimes students may forget to check their emails in Blackboard in time so that they miss the urgent messages. For this reason, the instructor decided not to use the email feature in Blackboard for one semester. The “Frequency of reading email” data in class 5 and class 6 in Table 1 reflect such outcome. On the other hand, the calendar feature of Blackboard presents it as a good communication tool. The events in a course are usually preplanned. Since the information in the calendar is not urgent in nature, students can use calendar to keep themselves alerted and make sure they keep up the progress of the course.

Blackboard provides the Web link feature so that students can click the Web link to visit a new Web page outside the Blackboard. Instructors could use the Web link to integrate other sources, such as other Web sites, white papers, and tutorials into the course design. However, our data reflect that students have rarely used the Web link feature. It is possible that students may use a preferred Web browser for their Web access. The other reason could be that exploring other resources requires extra efforts and time and such efforts are not necessarily contribute to students’ grade. Only those students who have strong motivation to explore and learn the subject area may use this Web link feature.

Our data illustrate that the most frequently used feature in CMS is “viewing lecture notes.” The reason caused this result was very obvious. Understanding the course contents is a fundamental important factor for gaining higher course grade. For students who attended the class regularly, they would review the lecture notes for the purpose of reflecting or reinforcing their understanding. For those students who skipped classes often, they used “viewing lecture notes” feature in CMS to find out what they missed from the class. Being able to view lecture notes online at anytime and anywhere could provide students a large extent of convenience.

By analyzing the data of total number of sessions and total time that students spent in Blackboard, we found that the average duration of a session varied among different classes (see Table 2). The average duration per session could range from 4.90 minutes to 13.15 minutes. Evidently, some students spent much more time in CMS than the others.

An interesting question to be asked is: “whether the amount of time spent in CMS is related to student's final grade?” To answer this question, we ran a bivariate correlation analysis between the total time each student spent in Backboard and the student's final grade in percentage (e.g. 98.54%) to 142 students in six classes. The Pearson correlation coefficient between the total times spent in CMS and final grade is .278, which is significant at .01 level. This analytical result suggests that students spent more time in CMS did somewhat get paid off from their efforts. In order to examine if the number of sessions will have similar effect, we also ran a bivariate correlation analysis between the total numbers of sessions students logged in and the student's final grade. The Pearson correlation coefficient between the number of sessions in CMS and the final grade is .259, which is significant at .01 level. The correlation analysis results are similar for both variables. Therefore, it is predictable that student who spent more time in CMS also logged in more sessions than their counterparts.

The data we presented here can shed some light of relationship between the usage of CMS and the student-learning outcome with the experience of CMS as a supplement for six face-to-face classes. Since the scope of the data is limited, we view this result as a single case and it can be used as an example for CMS adoption in blended learning setting. Also, our analytical results can serve as a reference for the instructors who intend to use CMS as a supplement for their course design.

CONCLUSION

Through Rogers’ innovation-decision process model (2003) and Beckman and Berry's innovation process model (2007), this article creates an innovative learning map to identify the innovation patterns and dynamics for face-to-face learning, online learning, and blended learning. Innovative learning map locates face-to-face as incremental innovation, and online learning and blended learning as radical innovation.

Blended learning makes an important advancement to learning practice. It is an innovative learning practice since it adopts multiple learning methods and combines both traditional and online learning activities. Other than that, blended learning method continuously changes the ways of learning method and technological infrastructure. In order to balance the advancement of blended learning, CMS can be adopted as an enabler for implementing the innovative change.

Evidences have showed that CMS can help instructors improve efficiency of course delivery and course management. When instructors adopt CMS into their course design, students are able to take better control of their learning (Kilmon & Fagan, 2007; O’Brien et al., 2005). A published large-scale survey (Smith et al., 2009) showed that students prefer CMS to others because CMS gives them convenience, rather than improves their learning outcome. In general, ICT does bring convenience to people's life. However, to make the adoption of CMS worthwhile, we have to look for the answers beyond convenience, especially when the goal of CMS is to create an effective learning environment.

Previous research explained that students using the online grade book feature can assist students self-monitoring their learning (Geddes, 2009). Geddes’ research findings suggested that online grade book monitoring is a significant and positive predictor for student's final grade. In this study, what we learn is that online grade book does not merely provide the convenience for students to check their grade whenever they like to. As a matter of fact, due to the convenience of checking grade online, students can adjust their learning goal and improve their academic achievement continuously.

Another important issue in the online learning is to tackle the following issue: “Can adopting CMS for teaching really improve students’ learning outcome?” Our analysis of six classes from undergraduate SA&D course shows that the time students spent in CMS and their final grade are positively and significantly correlated. The results suggest that using CMS to supplement a traditional class may be worthwhile, even the class size is not large. However, our sample is limited. Future empirical study to analyze the behavior of more classes and students could further validate such effects.

While scholars postulate that CMS can enhance deep learning, there is little evidence to support the effects of CMS on deep learning. Carmean and Haefner (2002) suggested that deeper learning includes five principles: social, active, contextual, engaging, and student-owned. Future research can explore the course design issues by studying the best practice of CMS adoption that may enhance deeper learning. Another potential research area is to develop needed measurements of deeper learning and also examine whether CMS usage can really improve deeper learning. With more future research efforts, we will eventually have better understanding to the effects of adopting CMS.

Amy Y. Chou is an assistant professor in School of Information Technology at Illinois State University in Normal, IL. She has more than 14 years of experience in software design and project management in the software industry. Her current research interests include information system flexibility, user empowerment, and information systems outsourcing. Her papers have been published in journals such as International Journal of Information Systems and Change Management, International Journal of Management and Decision Making, Information Management and Computer Security, Industrial Management and Data Systems, Information Processing and Management, Technology in Society, Information Systems Management, and the Handbook of IS Management.

David C. Chou is a professor of computer information systems at Eastern Michigan University. He received PhD from Georgia State University. He has published more than 180 papers in fields of information systems and innovative education. He was the President of the Southwest Decision Sciences Institute in 2007–2008 and the Editor-in-Chief for the International Journal of Management Theory and Practice in 2005–2008. Currently, he is the editor-in-chief for the International Journal of Information Systems and Change Management and also serves as an editorial board member for five academic journals.