As educators, especially online educators, we can gain a lot of knowledge from the LMS about a student's background and achievement in courses. This information can help teachers make decisions to better help their students be successful.
The enrollments and attendance data shows a student's current course load, basic information about a student's classification such as gifted, special education, ESOL, or regular education. This also lets the teacher know if the student will be taking an EOCT course and an attendance summary. There are many ways that all of this information could be useful to the teacher. If a teacher is having problems with a student, she could contact the student's other teachers to discuss the student's progress in their classes and find out about some different approaches that may work in reaching the student. Also, the special education aspect of this information is extremely important, This would let the teacher know to be on the lookout for any accommodations that the student might have. The teacher can also see the student's attendance information and if he is showing a lot of absence, the teacher would need to contact the parent.
The LMS also features a communication log. There are some cases where the log is updated by the LMS, but for the most part the instructors will have to manually enter each communication. As online instructors, it is so important that we develop good, consistent relationships with our students and their parents/guardians since we typically won't meet face to face. We need to remember that parents and students like to hear good things they are doing too! They don't like to be contacted just because something is wrong.
The course progress feature is a very valuable tool for data collection for the instructor. This allows the instructor can see how often and for how much time the students are logging in and working on their assignments. It also shows the number of kilobytes of data used with the tool. this means the instructor can tell if the students are actually working or just logging in to make it look like they are working!
The last part is how students can monitor their own progress. It is particularly important for online students to be able to work independently and be self-motivated. With this tool the students can see grade and they can also see specific feedback from the instructor or see questions missed on tests or quizzes.
The more the instructor uses the LMS, the more it will become an advantage for him and the student. Knowing more specific information about each students helps the instructor be able to help the student in the best ways possible.
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