My McLuhan tetrad (Laureate Education 2014, Thornburg, 2013) is based upon Learning Management Systems.  As an educational technology futurist, and following McLuhan’s example, as taught by our instructor, Dr. Thornburg, I ask the four essential questions:

“(a) What a technology does that is new (enhances)?

 (b) what a new technology replaces (obsoletes)?

 (c) what a new technology brings from the past (retrieves/rekindles)?

 (d) what might replace the new technology in the future (reverses)?”

Enhances:  The advent of learning management systems brought improved and faster communication and increased staff and student participation.  It improved problem-solving and made for faster processing.  Finances were more easily integrated, tracked, and organized resulting in higher profits.  Customer service became at a higher level.  Data and marketing became targeted and rich. These findings were the conclusions of the studies at the boom of the industry (Alavi & Leidner, 1999).

Obsoletes:  Learning Management Systems created an overcapacity of some employees and services, but not always in the manner anticipated.  One would imagine the usage of paper would be much less but the need for paper continues to exist, and in some ways, more paper and ink are required as our printers print, print, and continue to print.  As was true in the Industrial Revolution, the advent of technology in the late 20th century brought an end to certain jobs because the computer machine could make processes faster and simpler (Jensen, 1993).  No need for so many teacher’s aids or even teachers.  Geographical limitations in the distance between people have become unimportant with the LMS.  It is perfectly okay that my instructor lives and works in Nigeria, for example.  Schools can become virtual.  Offices are virtual.  I chose an app and 24-hour support from India to proof-read my work reports at a less expensive price than a secretary who used to perform the same function. 

Retrieves/rekindles:  Learning Management Systems caused energy usage to increase dramatically.  The postal system and its competitors had increased markedly with the advent of the technology that developed at the same time when the LMS systems became widely popular.  Teachers became more accessible.  They are just an email away.  Schools such as Walden University request to please allow your instructor a certain number of hours to respond to your email.  Learning and knowledge have considerably increased as data, learning circles, and information has dramatically increased.  Global interests are of greater importance.  Technical jobs are worldwide such that some third-world countries have developed into meaningful participants in the global economy (BBC, 2010).  For example, technical workers in India help me with my Dell computer, proof-read my work reports, and assist with my Adobe software. 

Reverses:  Let’s project out 50 years from now or more.  The LMS can give rise to personal tutors as preprogrammed hologram images ready to aid the student.  The mobile device today which looks up millions of articles, books, and websites in a matter of a second may transform into virtual reality tours.  Learning about the middle ages and the travels of the Vikings.  With virtual reality, you are pulled into the scene.  Not enough people to make all those virtual reality tours?  No problem, the computer will do it with self-learning and the current information already on the internet for it to access.  With brain downloading and uploading, learning disability?  No problem, a quick upload and now a gap-fix can just provide the brain its needed link.  In fact, no need to learn at all.  Second language?  How about an upload of 100 languages?  Low on storage space, no problem, delete the 80 languages you will probably never need, and if you did need it, you could upload it later. 

References

Alavi, M., & Leidner, D. E. (1999). Knowledge management systems: issues, challenges, and benefits. Communications of the AIS, 1(2es), 1.

BBC Four. (Producer). (2010). Hans Rosling’s 200 countries, 200 years, 4 minutes - The joy of stats [Video file]. Retrieved June 7, 2014, from http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jbkSRLYSojo

Jensen, M. C. (1993). The modern industrial revolution, exit, and the failure of internal control systems. the Journal of Finance, 48(3), 831-880.

Laureate Education (Producer). (2014). David Thornburg: McLuhan’s Tetrad [Video file]. Baltimore, MD: Author.

Thornburg, D. (2013). Emerging technologies and McLuhan’s laws of media. Lake Barrington, IL: Thornburg Center for Space Exploration.

Module 1 Assignment 1:  Blog Post on Identifying an Emerged Technology

Educ 8342

Futurist Thornburg, D. (2013) uncovered many examples of current and upcoming transformations in educational technology.  His archetypal paper discussed the evolving history of the various technologies, anchoring those examples to references of current research.  Following the typecast of Thorburg, this blog post considers another case illustration of a technology used in education which is undergoing a transformation.  Specifically, the next generation of Learning Management Systems is underway.  First, membership in traditional LMS systems are stagnant and declining.  There is much evidence demonstrating that LMS systems as we know them are losing traction.  Emelo (2014) in his blog, “River, Do More With Mentoring” can be found here:  http://www.riversoftware.com/helpful-resources/blog/item/366-is-the-traditional-lms-on-its-way-out .  The writer cites a Brandon Hall Group survey in which about half of respondents of organizations want to change their LMS.  Similar references are commonplace on the Internet.  I invite the reader to see Cho’s (2015) descriptions of Blackboard’s attempt to adapt to needs of the major universities:  http://www.thehoya.com/blackboard-usership-steadily-declines/.  The Washington Post got in on the Blackboard slam, check out this post:  https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/blackboard-loses-high-profile-clients-as-students-gripe-about-its-design/2015/08/21/1fd91708-4511-11e5-8e7d-9c033e6745d8_story.html?utm_term=.ce9e76da6ff5.  Second, it is recognized that the traditional LMS fails to deliver the types of services that administrators and learners want as evidenced by failure to use the LMS outside of the classroom necessity.  Pearson is exiting the field of Learning Management Systems.  As the reason for the exit, Craig’s (2015) boasted, “The Decline and Fall of the Learning Management System.”  The article notes accurately that users are going digital mobile.  It is not enough for an LMS to merely be accessible by the mobile device because the very way of learning is changing.  The Pearson article can be found here:  http://www.pearsoned.com/education-blog/the-decline-and-fall-of-the-learning-management-system/.  Third, the employed pedagogy of the traditional LMS is inconsistent with the latest understanding of how learners want to learn (Tracey, 2016).  The new LMS, on the other hand, self-selects for flexible cognitive styles and self-learning modalities (Yuan & Liu, 2011). 

The fourth reason that I will discuss as to why the LMS as we know it is on the way out is that these outdated systems do not deliver the services needed by the users because the platforms are inadequately designed for the emerging digital, mobile user. For example, the new LMS systems need not only accommodate learners savvy of learning by way of their learning style via personalized learning, but the new LMS systems need to incorporate dashboards of sophisticated learning analytics.  The Brandon Hall Group indicated that organizations want their LMS to have skills to integrate (Gurunath & Kumar, 2015).  Brown et al. (2015) provided a wonderful summary article of the future of the digital learning environment that we are emerging into.

In the meantime, while we wait for the new LMS emerging technology to take a firm grasp, I see that various ad lib systems are springing up to meet needs.  A couple LMS options that are popping up to replace the outdated LMS systems include  Google Sites and Social Networking Sites (Pilli, 2014).  Zhuang (2017) takes a look at some of these emerging technologies in the context of higher education and e-learning. Brown et al. (2015) discussed in detail what the LMS 3.0 will be incorporating.  For myself, I like Google Sites because, as Whatonearth14 explained in his blog, Google Sites may be used in many ways that traditional LMS.  His blog can be found here:  https://whatonearth14.wordpress.com/2014/06/23/google-sites-lms-everything-in-one-place. Since that post, Google Sites has updated from that platform, which they call “Classic Sites,” to the New Sites – and it is more flexible and robust. 

References

Bogage, J. (2015, August 22).  Blackboard Loses High-profile Clients.  Retrieved June 9, 2017

from https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/blackboard-loses-high-profile-clients-as-students-gripe-about-its-design/2015/08/21/1fd91708-4511-11e5-8e7d-9c033e6745d8_story.html?utm_term=.ce9e76da6ff5

Brown, M., Dehoney, J., & Millichap, N. (2015). The next generation digital learning

            environment. A Report on Research. ELI Paper. Louisville, CO: Educause April.

Cho, E. (2015, October 08). Blackboard Usership Steadily Declines. Retrieved June 09, 2017,

            from http://www.thehoya.com/blackboard-usership-steadily-declines/Emelo, R. (2014,

            February 18). SOFTWARE. Retrieved June 09, 2017, from

http://www.riversoftware.com/helpful-resources/blog/item/366-is-the-traditional-lms-on-its-way-out

Craig, R. (2015, November 19).  The Decline and Fall of the Learning Management System. 

Retrieved June 9, 2017 from http://www.pearsoned.com/education-blog/the-decline-and-fall-of-the-learning-management-system/

Google Sites LMS: everything in one place. (2014, June 23). Retrieved June 09, 2017, from

https://whatonearth14.wordpress.com/2014/06/23/google-sites-lms-everything-in-one place

Gurunath, R., & Kumar, R. A. (2015). SAAS EXPLOSION LEADING TO A NEW PHASE OF

            A LEARNING MANAGEMENT SYSTEM. International Journal of Current Research

            and Review, 7(22), 62.

Pilli, O. (2014). LMS Vs. SNS: Can Social Networking Sites Act as a Learning Management

            Systems. American International Journal of Contemporary Research, 4(5), 90-97.

Thornburg, D. (2013). Current Trends in Educational Technology. Licensed via Creative

 Commons Attribution-NoDerivs 3.0 United States License.

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/3.0/us

Tracey, M. W. (2016). 14 How I Gave Up ADDIE for Design Thinking, and So Did My

            Students. Studio Teaching in Higher Education: Selected Design Cases, 195.

Yuan, X., & Liu, J. (2011, November). An exploratory study of the effect of cognitive styles on

user performance in an information system. In 5th Workshop on Human-Computer

Interaction and Information Retrieval. Retrieved (Vol. 22).

Zhuang, Y., Ma, H., Xie, H., Leung, A. C. M., Hancke, G. P., & Wang, F. L. (2016, October).

            When innovation meets evolution: an extensive study of emerging e-Learning

            technologies for higher education in Hong Kong. In International Symposium on \ Emerging Technologies for Education (pp. 574-584). Springer, Cham.