As you may know, Teaching and Learning Services (TLS) is conducting a review of cuLearn to ensure that the tool that powers Carleton’s Learning Management System (LMS) meets the current and anticipated needs of our students, faculty, instructors, teaching assistants and staff members.
We are currently in the listening phase of our review process as we collect information and feedback from cuLearn users and stakeholders to help us develop our requirements for the LMS. While a number of university-wide listening sessions have already taken place, there are still a number of other sessions planned, including those scheduled on April 10, 11 and 12. Targeted listening sessions for specific groups of users have also been conducted (Sprott’s faculty board) with others in the planning phase, including FASS faculty board, sessions with lab coordinators, and professional development and mandatory training providers, such as Environmental Health and Safety, Finance and HR.
We are happy to visit a department to conduct a targeted listening session. Reach out to us at tls@carleton.ca to arrange a session. Anyone can also provide feedback and input via the online form.
So, what have we heard so far? Some of things that we have heard include concerns around the current performance of cuLearn (basically certain actions take too long, specifically in larger classes) and that the gradebook seems unnecessarily complex. Some individuals appreciate the ability to organize and structure content in a specific manner within cuLearn, and the open nature of the platform. Students have shared that they would like to see cuLearn help manage their time by aggregating their class meeting times, evaluation due dates (i.e., due dates for assignments, test and exam dates, etc.) across all their courses and important university dates into one calendar. This way they would have a calendar that shows all their major academic events and deadlines for the term. Some users would like to see greater extensibility and enhanced integration of cuLearn to other tools on campus.
Much of the work of the cuLearn review is being supported by the LMS Advisory Group. This large and diverse team of individuals includes representatives from all of the LMS stakeholders. These are individuals who have volunteered to raise awareness of the review, collect feedback, develop our requirements, and work to determine which platforms meet these requirements. We encourage you to connect with them and share your experiences and ideas.
In the next LMS review update, we’ll share more of our findings from the listening sessions, as well as describe some of the mandatory requirements for cuLearn.
Please do not hesitate to reach out to us.