Abstract
This paper describes a survey and research on the usage and effects of Online Social community (OSC) among the students in University Malaysia Sabah (UMS), challenges face by Learning Management System, LMS, and ways to improve it.
UMS provide students and staffs with online portal for various academic purposes, branched from a main domain, the UMS official website. These portals include the Academic Service Portal which provide students with information regarding class schedule and examination time table, Student Management Portal which allow students to manage their subject registration, checking on standing CGPA and results, accommodation status and also provide students with their financial statement, Learning Management System (Smart LMS) which allow lecturers and students to interact in respective subject’s forum, at the same time provide hosting abilities to lecturers to distribute education materials such as notes, assignments and quizzes online for their students, and VTLS Chameleon iPortal as a portal to access information regarding UMS Library.
Besides official system provided by the university itself, students in UMS also provided a interaction platform developed by UMS lecturer, the Open Committee, equipped with forums, file hosting services, associated online chatting and events notification system, and also provide computer science major students free website hosting for academic purposes. Others resources and platforms such as Yahoo Groups, and professional forums are also being utilized.
Besides being an educational platform, Internet is a convenient portal for students that utilize it for other purposes such as entertainment, communication, social networking and others.
The rises of social networking websites in recent years have posed a direct threat towards LMS. With various type of online educational and social networking platform available, it is important that Smart LMS is capable to adapt, improve and survive. This research is to study on the survival of LMS among the popular social networking websites, the challenge face by LMS, and how to improve LMS.
Social networking
A social network is a social structure made of individuals (or organizations) called "nodes," which are tied (connected) by one or more specific types of interdependency, such as friendship, kinship, financial exchange, dislike, sexual relationships, or relationships of beliefs, knowledge or prestige [1].
Social networking is the grouping of individuals into specific groups, like small rural communities or a neighbourhood subdivision. Although social networking is possible in person, especially in the workplace, universities, and high schools, it is most popular online. This is because unlike most high schools, colleges, or workplaces which have limited individuals, the internet is filled with millions of individuals who are looking to meet other people, to gather and share first-hand information and experiences about any number of topics.
When it comes to online social networking, websites are commonly used. These websites are known as social sites. Social networking websites function like an online community of internet users. Depending on the website, many of these online community members share common interests in hobbies, religion, or politics. Once you are granted access to a social networking website you can begin to socialize. This socialization may include reading the profile pages of other members and possibly even contacting them. However, trends nowadays are shifting towards a social networking environment where people come from different background, interests, and preferences connect together and socialize among them. Such example is the emerging of popular social networking websites like Facebook, MySpace and Friendster.
Utilizing Internet for Education
All UMS students are aware of the existence of online educational services provided either by university official or other sources, however, there exist a portion of students that do not utilize these service if it’s not compulsory actions, for example, most students will use Student Management Portal for subjects registration, which is set compulsory by the UMS official, but for Learning Management System built-in forum which its usage is optional, would less likely to be utilized.
In the aspect of accessing information on the Internet, with nature of university studies which require students to discover knowledge by themselves instead of spoon feed by lecturers as in primary of secondary school, the Internet is a convenient portal for students to extract useful information and knowledge on their own. By statistic collected, it shown that students in UMS utilize OSC for searching material related to their studies, however, from statistic we collected from clustered questionnaire, there is still a portion that does not. And with the emerging and rises of online social networking such as Facebook, Friendster and MySpace, the situation will be worsening if no appropriate measures are taken.
From our findings above, it is obvious that there is space for improvement to raise the awareness of importance in utilizing OSC for education purposes, and in this case Smart LMS, which is UMS official Learning Management System for educational purpose among UMS students.
Survival of LMS among the popular social networking websites
UMS official Learning Management System (Smart LMS) is a portal specially devised for online learning environment for UMS students.
Students are required to register and login to Smart LMS using their personal and unique student matrix number. Hence, this adds extra reliability and poses less security threats compared to other OSC which require just a registered email address to gain access.
Smart LMS is equipped with file hosting services for lecturers to host notes, assignment question files and other files related to the subject in protected manner. Smart LMS require registered students to enrol subject platform administered by respective lecturer which is either protected or non-protected depending on lecturer preference. Hence only students that are attending the subjects are able to access the resources shared.
Beside file hosting services for lecturer, Smart LMS also enable students to upload softcopy of their assignments, reports and quizzes answers for submission to lecturer. However, this feature is not frequently used by most of the lecturers.
The Smart LMS also provides built-in forum which associated with respective subject. The objective of forums is basically for students to interact with lecturers and among other students regarding their studies, like a message board to leave a message or questions for the lecturer. However, from the statistic we collected by browsing through a number of subject platforms in Smart LMS, the usage of forums built-in is extremely low.
Overall, Smart LMS system is a good online learning environment for aiding students in their studies. However, our survey found that most students use Smart LMS as solely a source of retrieving study materials provided by the lecturer, features such as forum is not being utilized to optimum level. Besides, there are some features that are lacking and room for improvement does exist in order to compete with and survive among the popular online social networking websites that keep increasing. More importantly, appropriate measures must be taken to attract and increase the awareness of students towards utilizing Smart LMS.
Challenge faces by LMS
Smart LMS is facing both internal and external challenges, the designs and architecture of Smart LMS itself poses certain drawbacks that affecting the interest of UMS students.
From the internal point of view, there exist lack of awareness and interest from students to utilize Smart LMS. The most common reason is the lack of interaction and communication in Smart LMS, where the built-in forums are not being utilized widely among the users. Students only login to gain the student materials and resources.
From our survey, we found out that the reliability and efficiency of Smart LMS is one of the reasons for the lack of interest from the students. From the opinions and results gathered, students feel that the time taken to process request and react take too long. Besides, another drawback of Smart LMS, which is the problem of server down or unavailable also draw dissatisfaction from the students.
Although, Smart LMS has continued to upgrade and improve in recent years, some convenient features are still lacking.
From the external point of view, the continuous challenge from the emerging of other social networking websites has certainly done damage to Smart LMS. Social networking websites offer more interesting and attractive features while in the same time convenient the users with different preferences. There are more options and desirable solutions for the users compared to Smart LMS. Some particular social networking websites even offer an environment for education purposes, which is major additional and features.
Nevertheless, Smart LMS does have its own advantages and features that are unique. Therefore, the administrator of Smart LMS should build on these advantages and improve the drawbacks and architecture now to gain back the interest of students.
How to improve LMS
From the survey and result gathers, most students feel that Smart LMS is lack of interaction media. Hence, additional features such as notification or alert for the user, interaction media, and interesting resources should be integrated into Smart LMS.
Smart LMS could add fun interactive web 2.0-like content to its interface and not just offer regular text content. Videos and media of related content can also be added and even add suitable widgets.
Smart LMS could send regular ’broadcast’ messages to the students to stay in contact with them by email them with the latest news and updates. Hence, the students are able to keep notified with any activities happened even they did not login to Smart LMS.
Another way to improve the interaction among users of Smart LMS is to embed a chat box feature. With this addition, students are able to communicate among themselves and also with the lecturers in a faster and interesting
