Lecturers' Perceptions of Learning Management Systems Within a Previously Disadvantaged University

Background

Integration of technology into education is being used worldwide in order to facilitate learning outside the classroom through, for example, giving students access to PowerPoint slides, videos, lecture notes, and internet hyperlinks (Bradford, Porciello, Balkon & Backus, 2007) so that students can continue learning at their own pace, time, and in their own spaces. Learning Management Systems (LMS) can provide students with the ability of anytime-anywhere learning and, for lecturers, can facilitate the administration, documentation, tracking, reporting, and delivery of educational programmes (Mlitwa, 2006). Use of LMSs in educational institutions is believed to augment face-to-face teaching where it still occurs, as well as enables online and distance learning in other instances, thereby removing learning barriers (Mudaly, 2012). In addition, an LMS can track an individual student’s learning progress (Watson and Watson, 2007) and enable interaction between lecturers and students (Liu, 2013). While LMSs have been used in teaching and learning for the last two decades at least (Blackboard Learn, 1997), Billman (2014) claims that lecturers are not yet utilising the LMS to its full potential in order to realise its benefits as well as meet the changing educational needs of students.