DEVELOPMENTAL ENGLISH PROFESSORS’ EXPERIENCES WITH LEARNING MANAGEMENT SYSTEMS AT AN URBAN COMMUNITY COLLEGE: CHALLENGES, BENEFITS, AND OTHER PERCEPTIONS

Abstract

Universities and colleges are embracing and utilizing technology to a rapidly increasing extent, responding to its cost-effectiveness and efficiency as well as the regularity with which 21st century students rely upon it in their everyday lives. Chief amongst the technology used in higher education are Learning Management Systems (LMS), such as Blackboard, Sakai, and CANVAS. Urban community colleges have also embraced LMS, but with student bodies that often lack regular access to or extensive experience with using technology for socio-economic or generational reasons, the outcomes from using LMS can be very different to those experienced at four-year institutions that generally serve a more affluent, traditionally-aged demographic. In particular, students in developmental courses, or those courses designed for individuals who could not test into college-level courses, can be particularly challenged when it comes to using LMS in their studies as it is an additional component to which they must acculturate in higher education whilst attempting to rectify their skills deficiencies. For faculty teaching developmental students, this can raise the question of whether it is important to acclimate students to the technology they will be called upon to use in the 21st century classroom or whether the sole focus should be remediating students’ lacking academic skills. This qualitative, interpretivist, constructivist-activist/pragmatic study uses interviews with urban community college professors who use or reject the college’s LMS (i.e. CANVAS) to varying extents in their classrooms, non-participant observations of the course components those professors who use CANVAS post online, and course artifacts to examine and reflect upon professors’ experiences with employing or eschewing such technology with their students.