Vance Stevens (English Teacher Coordinator, HCT/CERT Naval College) has prepared the paper at http://diylms.posterous.com/learner-centered-do-it-yourself-learning-mana In order to populate the blog space at http://diylms.posterous.com in preparation for a workshop on this topic given March 7 as a pre-conference workshop at the 2012 TESOL Arabia conference in Dubai In its full form as an article in TESL-EJ, March 2012 Stevens, Vance. (2012). Learner-centered Do-it-yourself Learning Management Systems. TESL-EJ, Volume 15, Number 4, pp. 1-14: http://tesl-ej.org/pdf/ej60/int.pdf. Also at http://www.tesl-ej.org/wordpress/issues/volume15/ej60/ej60int/ There is a 2000+ word extract for the proceeds of the 6th eLearning in Action conference held at the Sharjah Higher Colleges of Technology, UAE, on April 3, 2012 Conference URL: http://194.170.54.16/events/edtechpd2012/index.asp Proceeds: http://shct.hct.ac.ae/events/edtechpd2012/articles/index.asp The paper: http://shct.hct.ac.ae/events/edtechpd2012/articles/DIYLMS.pdf

1. Learner-centered
do-it-yourself LMS
Vance Stevens
HCT/ADMC/CERT
presented at the
6th eLearning in Action conference at
the Sharjah Higher Colleges of
Technology
in Sharjah, UAE: 3 April 2012

2. Vance’s presentations
are always online
Presentation Portal:
http://diylms.posterous.com/
O Proceeds:
http://shct.hct.ac.ae/events/edtechpd2012/arti
cles/DIYLMS.pdf
O Longer TESL-EJ article, with references:
http://tesl-ej.org/pdf/ej60/int.pdf
O Slides: http://slideshare.net/vances
O Recording: http://tinyurl.com/elearn2012vance
O Conference URL:
http://194.170.54.16/events/edtechpd2012/index.asp
Vance Stevens - eLearning in Action conference at the Sharjah
HCT April 2012

3. Problem / Solution
Teachers expected to LMS lets teachers
O Set up courses
O Develop viable
quickly
courses quickly
O Populate them with
O Make use of content, forums, and
available links to resources
technological O Accept submission of
resources student work
O Record marks
O Come under
according to specified
minimal budgets assessment strategy
Vance Stevens - eLearning in Action conference at the Sharjah
HCT April 2012

4. Choices of LMS
O DIYLMS (do-it-yourself
Blackboard: LMS)
proprietary, expensive O Wiki portal
but effective O Google Docs and
Etherpad clones for
collaboration tasks
O Blogging, to showcase
Free alternatives student work
O Back-channel tools
O Moodle such as Twitter, Skype
group chat, or Edmodo
O Schoology O Google Hangout or
http://schoology.com WiZiQ for live webcam
and voice-enabled
interaction.
Vance Stevens - eLearning in Action conference at the Sharjah
HCT April 2012

5. Why not Moodle
or Blackboard?
O Potentially complicated and
constraining
O Teachers learn just enough to mount
courses
O Do not learn advanced features
O Result: courses appear redundantly similar
O Pedagogical ramifications to one-stop
LMS
O LMS manages learning - not course
Vance Stevensdesigner. Action conference at the Sharjah
- eLearning in
HCT April 2012
O Lane (2009) “insidious pedagogy”
O Siemens (2004) “„locked-down, do-it-our-

6. Moodle
wall
of text
Moodle and Bb
can constrain
where (and
what) users can
upload and
display
Greg Kessler
says Moodle
users must
break from
Vance Stevens - eLearning in Action conference at the Sharjah
default
HCT April 2012
templates

7. Web 2.0 alternative
DIYLMS is about Web 2.0 alternatives for
O Storage of content
O Display of visualizations
O Interaction in forums
O Handling submission of student work
O Providing appropriate feedback
O Present grade calculations
(e.g. in Google Spreadsheets)
Vance Stevens - eLearning in Action conference at the Sharjah
HCT April 2012

8. Wiki layout and flexibility
Vance Stevens - eLearning in Action conference at the Sharjah
HCT April 2012

9. DIYLMS: Navigable portals
O More intuitively navigable
(for both developers and students)
O Easy internal links
O Table of contents from H1, H2, etc
headings
O Sidebar with links to other course
elements http://podcastingevo2011.blogspot.com/
O Tabs (in Blogger, for example)
Vance Stevens - eLearning in Action conference at the Sharjah
HCT April 2012

10. DIYLMS: Critical options
O More flexibile in
O Managing who joins / subscribes
O Keeping personal backups
O Access to past content and communities of
learners often denied users of lock-down LMS
O On Siemens‟s (2004) wish-list for what is needed
in a learning environment.
“Modularized approaches give the instructor or
learner (not the administrator or organization) the
control to follow the meandering paths of rich
learning. Selecting specialized tools to achieve
specific tasks, and being able to add them to the
learning environment quickly, are critical to rich
learning ecologies."
Vance Stevens - eLearning in Action conference at the Sharjah
HCT April 2012

11. Source: http://www.slideshare.net/vances/learning2gether
Vance Stevens - eLearning in Action conference at the Sharjah
HCT April 2012

12. 21st century learning and
paradigm shifts - Web 2.0 tools …
O Expose teachers and students to
changing attitudes toward sharing /
creating content
O Raise awareness of how social media
contributes to collaborative language
learning
O Assist movements toward Web 2.0, open
source, creative commons …
O Show how educators are eager to share
Vance Stevens - eLearning in Action conference at the Sharjah
HCT April 2012

13. Shifting paradigm:
willingness to share
O OERs
O Models
O MIT (since 2001)
O MOOCs (since 2008?)
O Stanford open
courses
O P2PU
O Khan Academy
Vance Stevens - eLearning in Action conference at the Sharjah
HCT April 2012

14. CMS vs LMS
O Drupal O Proprietary
O Ning O Blackboard
O MIT O Desire to Learn
O Bonk, C. 2009, The O Open Source
World is Open,
“However, there is O Moodle
typically no instructor O Sakai
at the site to review O Wikis, Blogs
or grade students‟
work.” p. 163
(my choice … )
Vance Stevens - eLearning in Action conference at the Sharjah
HCT April 2012

15. LMS = CMS + LM
O My choices
O PBWorks.com for content storage
O Google Docs for student submissions and
feedback
O Posterous, Google Groups, for content and
forums
O Posterous for showcasing student work and for
surprisingly effective forum
O Skype group chat for effective blend of
synchronous and asynchronous interaction
O WiZiQ, Google Hangout for online meetings
Vance Stevens - eLearning in Action conference at the Sharjah
HCT April 2012

16. Wiki for NYIT
Research Writing
Only most current
work and general
course info on
HOME page
Link to Posterous
blog showcase
Links to separate
pages for
previous work, by
week
Table of contents generated
automatically according to
H1, H2 etc. headings
Vance Stevens - eLearning in Action conference at the Sharjah
HCT April 2012

17. Wiki for HCT / NC
Academic Composition
Only most current
work and general
course info on
HOME page
Link to Google
Docs for revising
drafts
Table of contents generated
automatically according to
H1, H2 etc. headings
Vance Stevens - eLearning in Action conference at the Sharjah
HCT April 2012

18. Content and Submissions
O PBWorks O Google Docs
O Organize learning O In class
O Sidebar for O Work with students
O Course archives on the fly
O Links O See who‟s working
O Resources
O Outside class
O Store learning
O Easily see new work
objects AND your
objects O Organize
O Documents
have submissions
O tutorials URLs O Copy/paste
Vance Stevens - eLearning in Action conference at the Sharjah
feedback
HCT April 2012

19. Posterous for multimedia content
and conversation forums
Vance Stevens - eLearning in Action conference at the Sharjah
HCT April 2012

20. Skype group
chat blends
synch and
asynch
‘forum’
interaction
Vance Stevens - eLearning in Action conference at the Sharjah
HCT April 2012

21. Forum management -
affordances of …
O Posterous O Skype group chat
O Subscribers can be O Add people in your
contacts list to group
made contributors
O They can withdraw at any
O Links to media time
become embedded O Group appears as another
objects contact
O Works through Web O Members can post
or Email asynchronously
O Chat is seen when
O Post via email
members log on at any
O Any attachment time
becomes object in O If they are online at the
post same time, direct
O Subscribers notified, conversation occurs
can reply to email to
comment
Vance Stevens - eLearning in Action conference at the Sharjah
HCT April 2012

22. Synchronous meetings:
Google Hangout
Vance Stevens - eLearning in Action conference at the Sharjah
HCT April 2012

23. Synchronous meetings
in WiZiQ
Vance Stevens - eLearning in Action conference at the Sharjah
HCT April 2012

24. That’s all,
we have time for
folks
but there IS more information at
http://diylms.posterous.com
/
Vance Stevens - eLearning in Action conference at the
Sharjah HCT April 2012