Abstract:

Learning Management Systems (LMS) have been largely adopted by higher education institutions. Being mostly used as knowledge repositories, they offer a notable advantage of making learning content globally available, free of time and location limitations as long as there is access to the Web. Existing LMS platforms currently provide with the technical infrastructure required to apply constructive learning methods in support to traditional ones, given the availability of eLearning design expertise. Despite the LMS performance, technical innovation and access to unlimited eLearning material, it seems that LMS implementations have failed producing and maintaining a critical mass of engaged learners. Consequently, LMSs seem to be used primarily as learning-related content repositories instead of learning enablers. At the same time, Social Networks’ (SN) services and technologies have achieved impressive engagement by both students and instructors. Additionally, through their mobile applications, they have succeeded to become an inseparable ubiquitous daily habit of vast numbers of users, with Facebook being on the front line with more than two million active users. This paper presents a case study deployed at a higher education institution where a flipped classroom learning methodology was implemented through the means of combining LMS with Social Network services in an introductory course in Information Systems. The goal is to recognize potential benefits for student learning and educational practices by taking advantage of the given student engagement to social media. For this purpose, a flipped classroom exercise was simultaneously deployed to a controlled group of students through both Blackboard (LMS) and Facebook (SN), aiming firstly at collecting access and usability evidence and secondly at determining engagement variations in respect to the level of engagement and the behavior of students in using each one of these platforms. Furthermore, students who participated in this exercise were asked to complete a web survey in order to assess their preference on the technologies used in this exercise. The usage and survey data produced by this case were analyzed and will be presented in this paper.

Keywords:

e-learning, Higher Education, Internet, Learning Management Systems, Web, Social Networks, Flipped Classroom, TEL.