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Top1. Introduction
A Learning Management System (LMS) in the community of higher institutions is a web-based application that connects lecturers and students. It provides an avenue for classroom materials or activities to be shared easily (Adzharuddin & Ling, 2013; Ayub, Tarmizi, Jaafar, Ali, & Luan, 2010; Mtebe, 2015; Oliveira, Cunha, & Nakayama, 2016). An LMS can also be defined as a web-based system that enables lecturers and students to interact out of the classroom, having discussions through forums that could otherwise take up too much of the time supposed to be spent learning in the classroom (Adzharuddin & Ling, 2013; Ayub, et al., 2010; Mtebe, 2015; Oliveira et al., 2016).
In line with the ever-changing modern times where students rely on the internet for most of their daily activities, it is appropriate for an online system or web-based system to be set up to cater for their academic needs. The online system has to be a place where students can confidently search and obtain information regarding their courses, and also to ensure the accuracy and reliability of the information. An LMS is one such system which is used by various universities all over the globe (Adzharuddin & Ling, 2013; Ayub, et al., 2010; Mtebe, 2015; Oliveira et al., 2016).
With the fast growth of technology in the past years, the historic mode of education has hastily drifted educational methods that make use of technology and Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) as part of teaching and learning (Liyanagunawardena, Adams, & Williams, 2013; Margaryan, Bianco, & Littlejohn, 2015; Vardi, 2012). Some of the most widely adopted technology in LMS are Blackboard, Sakai, KEWL, and Moodle (Chung, Pasquini, & Koh, 2013; Juhary, 2014). Institutions use an LMS to supplement traditional face-to-face (F2F) delivery where faculty members develop and share digital learning materials via the Internet. In this case, an LMS can be used as electronic sources of learning materials. Advanced methods of education through the use of the above-mentioned forms of learning management has become important as compared to the historic methods of education. Some of the advancements are (Chung et al., 2013; Juhary, 2014):
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Teaching and learning can occur anywhere, any place and anytime.
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Many students can be admitted due to the fact that existing academic infrastructure are not enough, especially in developing countries such as Ghana.
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There is support for students that are offering distance education or those at the working environment that may not be able to attend lectures.
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An LMS creates a way for teaching and learning to have a different procedure which makes it attractive.
Globally, university administrators seek to provide staff with simple, accessible and centrally supported Information and Communication Technology (ICT) infrastructure but then must encourage quality teaching practices with technology through training that marries both LMS and pedagogy (Ellis & Phelps, 2000; Boud, 1999; Issa, Hussain, & Al-Bahadili, 2014). As technology often underpins university initiatives under the auspices of flexible learning or Internationalization of the curriculum (“Leading the Way –Monash 2020”), it is extremely important that universities do not simply have their staff translate existing poor teaching practices to the online environment (O’Mahony & Garavan, 2012; Chung, Pasquini, Allen, & Koh, 2012). Whilst the technology can support “bad transfer” as “effective transformation” of the curriculum, we should not merely “dump” our lectures online, but take the opportunity to improve our teaching. For example, improve our face-to-face tutorials with effective online communication or provide additional learning experiences that would otherwise not be possible (O'Mahony & Garavan, 2012; Chung, et al., 2012; Chung et al., 2013; Juhary, 2014).