Online Course Platforms- Assessment and Evaluation

Thank you Bablu Bablu Kumar Dhar for your answer! I have heard and registered to it before for trial but didn't use it in Online Education. What is the main reason of your choosing QQ? Is it because of the language support? I know that it is also widespread in China also and was wondering why? It seems like an instant messaging software...

Dear Maurice Schols

Thank you for your reply and your offers. I have used Moodle and Blackboard before. Especially loved using Blackboard full version. I wouldn't opt for any other LMS if Blackboard had been free :) Finding an reasonably good and easy to adopt platform free is really hard. Moodle is also good but restricted in many ways. I didn't tried Canvas or Brightspaces before.. Sure I will register for a free version and give it a try! Ich wünsche Ihnen ein schönes Wochenende!

Abdelkader Mohamed Elsayed

Thank you! I am also using Zoom Md Sazal Miah . Zoom is good for delivering face-to-face courses or having online meetings. Its very easy and very useful for large groups also. Although limited with 40 min. Its reasonable enough and one of the most popular videoconferencing system.

Bablu Kumar Dhar

Dear Nazime Tuncay , after the epidemic, QQ (Chinese Version only) has been developed a lot. Here, we have start online classes from Feb 24. Actually, China prefers to do all activities in a single platform. However, the experience of QQ (Chinese Version) is simply amazing. I hope, the Chinese version of QQ is effective more inside the Mainland China.

Dear Nazime Tuncay , The Learning Department is based on democracy and participation, with open or electronic standardized test systems.

Thank you for your answer Ali A. Al-Homaidan , I agree Abdelkader Mohamed Elsayed Specially the Open Education is most important part of our lives in the Pandemic days.. Thanks to Open LMS

Thank you for your answer Bablu Kumar Dhar Can you explain a little bit more in what ways QQ (Chinese Version only) has developed ? It's sure that you can have online video-conferences. For example can you also have online quizzes before? Or any time limitations? I know that QQ has been around since 1999 and it has also been widely used in Turkey those times. By 2017 it had 861 million active users and was famous by its being used by 266 million people synchronously. I know that it has also premier users and was famous not having many advertisements. Unfortunately I don't understand Chinese and I am curious about what are news about it. I wonder, do you have advertisements going on now?

Waldemar Łasica

I tested various online learning platforms. I am currently using the program "GoToMeeting" to run classes. I'm happy with him. Easy and intuitive to use for lecturers and students. It has sets of interesting tools for conducting classes.

Thank you Hassan Izzeddin Sarsak ! Blackboard is great system. I had chance to use it at Havaring College in 2009. Long before.. It was an expensive program these days but one of the best options. Can you explain us what extras have Blackboard ultra? Thank you for your support to our discussion!

Bodh R Sharma Thank you! Yes, Google Classrooms are very useful, free and practical. I am also using it. "Whatsapp" is very common for social communications in Cyprus but we are not using it for sharing e-content. May be sometimes we are making announcements and I am writing from WhatsApp groups come to the class, I am waiting you at Adobe Connect platform for face-to-face communication.

Juan Luis Cabanillas García

GoToMeeting, GoToWebinar, OpenVoice are great programs... I also like joining them. There are lots of online webinars for free and I am trying to attain as many as I can :) I have experienced also GotoMeeting when having meetings with colleagues. It is similar with Zoom. Though I don't know why people choose GotoMeeting instead of Zoom. It seems a lot easier. Did you also tried Zoom Waldemar Łasica If you have tried, could we give us your reasoning why you opt for GotoMeeting instead of Zoom?

At our university we work with Moodle, incorporating external applications to carry out evaluations such as Google Docs and Docrative. The challenge is to create evaluations with a calculation of adequate times, whose answers make them reason without having to see the answers in their documents.

I am not sure there is one size fits all LMS. I guess it depends on how you weight the criteria. Is it price, integration with existing systems, ease of use etc. Recently I have had to cross boundaries between Canvas and Sakai courses. I found the following comparative that may be helpful.

https://raccoongang.com/blog/lms-comparison-what-lms-suits-your-needs-best/

Also, this may or may not fit the situation you are in, but if it does or if you know of someone that is looking for an outlet for rapid online onboarding there is a call for abstracts by May 30th that is looking for suddenly online inspired issues. -jd

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/rapid-response-elearning-scholarship-j-d-wallace/

Khan Academy is a great Open Source program for students and usefull LMS for teachers that we have been familiar with the name as distance educators since 2008 . However, I think all resources are available for free to all the users of the website ? Right? P. Contreras Open Source is good, but not knowing your students names seems like secret eyes watching you, somewhat irritating to some instructors?? What do you think about this P. Contreras ?

Completely agree with you J. D. Wallace "What you need is what you prefer :) " I know many people prefer Canvas to Sakai. I opt for Sakai since I can make quizzes with it, however it works better on Laptop/Desktop Computer and has problems at mobile phones.On the other hand Canvas is famous by its usability in a great variety of platforms. Which one is your preference? And did you tried SAP Litmos before? You know it is an awarded program and claims to be a lot simpler than Canvas or Sakai

I have not but would love things that are simpler. You can build quizzes in Canvas too but then it has its own issues. For instance Canvas, you have rebuild rubricks if you want to add items in a certain order and want to insert one. The problem is that once an institution has instituted one in their eco-system then it is hard to get them to shift to another platform even if it is better. I understand the commitment it takes but also think there may be some reasons to consider a shift. I am afraid the Pandemic has solidified some of those connections so my suspicion is that most institutions are "all-in" whatever their current LMS happens to be.

There are other factors to LMS beyond what is found in this discussion that cannot be ignored for economic sake such as student user friendliness. Nazime Tuncay touched on device friendly and J.D. Wallace referred to "simpler" which are both critical issues from myriads of diverse student perspectives. Even though I personally believe lectures and discussions are valuable learning tools for elearning, distance learning, and remote learning environments it has been my experience the majority of online class students tend to undervalue iterative hermeneutic engagement. This in itself may influence the balance of university socialization from afar which has been trending and is now current affairs. I dare say that more than likely the world is experiencing a sample, future style of higher education at the very least if not primary education as well.

My rationale is this system of institutional change will eliminate school shootings and massacres, grossley reduce educational expenses, provide a health safety net and increase exposure to diversity. Unfortunately some down side does exist such as a shifting paradigm from physical interaction and maintaining inclusive access for athletics to a broader passive society.

Thank you @J. D. Wallace . All in a sudden, we found us in the distance education world. You are right, many institutions are "all-in" whatever their current LMS happens to be, however there are many institutions who were delivering face-to-face courses before Pandemic and they started with the most common one in the area. We are all facing with some problems. Specially with the Assessment and Evaluation. You know, students were even cheating when they were in front of us, the situation is a lot more when they are distant. Most instructors are searching new methods and ways in Cyprus to make safer online exams. We are changing our question types. I am using a the Timify program for taking students webcam videos. However, not all students have working webcams in their homes.

Thank you for your contribution to our discussion B.E.I. Johnson You are right there are more than one issue for deciding " right " LMS for us

You are right we can of course eliminate school shootings and massacres however then everything seems not in our control. Whenever we face a problem, we can find no-assistant to help us and a message comes "you must register for premier membership for getting answer to your questions.... On the other hand yes, university socialisation has some good aspects. Perhaps we have to get help from engineering departments in our universities and produce our own LMS, hence avoid cost.

Nonetheless, I get that we agree about the following for LMS

1. Easiness and Simplicity to students

2. Practicality to teachers

3. Availability ( In terms of Language support and Platform Support)

4. .....? What else can we add here?

Snežana Mališić

For all projects, assignments and work I think that Google classroom is he best.

It has it all. You can share whatever you want, also it has summ of works, and grades. Perfect

You are right Snežana Mališić I also like google classrooms, google forms, google quizzes and everything about GOOGLE.. We are so used to them. They are easy, no cost and fast. All our students can access them easily. However, sometimes we need something more smart.

Unfortunately both students and professors lose traditional personalism of the whats, whys, hows, and even who's to a degree in the online learning environment. Students have somewhat of an advantage in evaluation and minutely to performance through somewhat simplistic surveys while professors are respectfully sandwiched between upline and downline judgements and requirements which affects education for all parties especially when considering process and relationships. It is imperative that our current LMS/VLE platforms metamorphosis mature into hermeneutic paradigms even should it mean multidiversity platforms, multiple cooperative platforms designed with creative collaboration.Open end questions is an option to help reduce cheating albeit not practical for quantitative measures of quality, time and performance.

Thank you for your contribution @ P. Contreras I did a trial myself today with Khan Academy. It really has a great variety of courses for students, I login with my Facebook account and connected it with my other accounts. It is really easy to shift between Student Account/Parent Account/Teacher Account. It gives variety options and good quality courses. It is none-the-less an Open Learning platform and a very good choice for students. On the other hand you are right, it is not open-software. However, as a teacher I felt the power is not in my hands. It seemed to me that, the system is just using teachers for advertising their courses by including them in their system.

Is there anyone who had any further experiences with Khan Academy? How are you using it in your education system?

Moreover it claims to be a "personalised learning resource for students", "world class system", "global classroom", "free tools for teachers and parents".

Great discussion B.E.I. Johnson ! Right

Hope we will have multidiversive and multiple cooperative platforms designed with creative cooperation in the following years. Although thats what most universities are doing these days. They are using more than one platform to deliver education.

Open End questions and even paragraph questions may be important for reducing cheating, however you are right they all need lots of time.. Exactly what I am facing now! I have delivered an online quiz with paragraph questions and now I will spend all night reading them but we have to do sth. If we want our students learn things we have to deliver proper exams for them?

However what is the proper exam method? Effective and efficient method for evaluation? Sure, its not multiple choice? Or may be it is, but having more sophisticated multiple questions exams.. Writing multiple questions is also an important job.

An important question that is being discussed for decades: what is the best assessment method ?

Thank you Nazime Tuncay. I truly appreciate anyone who spends their energy on educating people for they are unsung underappreciated leaders. As much as I enjoy some of the simpler things in life like multiple choice questions I find the exchange of time verses challenge is usually not good for higher thinking. As a matter of lived experience I actually think multiple choice questions rank right there with surveys since they both limit qualitative perspective, are useful for numbers, and save time in which non serve to encourage critical thinking, making them more useful for vocational trade schools than engineering and sciences. It is hard to balance 15, 20, 30 students or more per professor when teaching advanced thinkers because they are required to think outside of the box as perspective solution providers. LMS/VLE platforms are like transcribing apps in a sense because no matter how user friendly they become they will always lack human consciousness that can only come from unique human individualism such as reflective answers to open end questions. How does one evaluate diverse extended thinking and new thoughts through platforms? interactive platforms that function similar to remote think tank communication may be a direction to consider for professor probing that generates student answers which should exemplify their learning performance in lieu of open end/paragraph questions. {Key: anything in (parentesis) is illustrative-think as in}. In theory this should reduce the amount of time spent on grading all those quizzes (focus groups) and tests (in depth interviews). Ways to cheat are significantly reduced because exams are virtually face to face and only the professor knows the questions in advance. In addition personalism is incorporated in a world of distance learning leaving out much guess work in meaning-making of both parties creating both evaluation and performance results that are more reliable than mere paper trails of multiple choice questions or true/false questions. Advantages are ontological communication, real time that is iterative in nature as well as addressing emergent matters. Disadvantages are the trade off in time reading open end/paragraph questions for face time, ethical tightrope of guiding student answers (participant group) verses blind answers (control group) and as you mentioned criteria for evaluation (professor analysis).

B.E.I. Johnson Think tank communication among people from different culture is really important. I was also working in a Think Thank project before. We have to have more projects, taking benefit of these pandemic days..

I am using different platforms for different courses. Today I had an interesting experience in itsLearning platform. For delivering Differential Equations courses, I am using Adobe Connect and itsLearning platform. I am uploading my course notes to the LMS and having quizzes there. My course is between 13:00-16:00.

Today I had my first online quiz with itsLearning platform. Yesterday I had prepared my quiz in itsLearning multiple choice and paragraph questions for assessing different levels of performance. Set quiz time between 14:00- 14:20

Students were asking questions and I was answering them. I didn't notice the time.. By 14:10 some students said that they have started to the quiz. I was really shocked. The system automatically send messages them by the time of the quiz. However, in other platforms I was sending the quiz not the system. I am using Google Quizes quite often and this was really different experience for me.. Of course I had to cancel quiz. Had a course break and prepare quickly 4 paragraph questions. Give a Password to the quiz and students could not reach to the quiz without my premission..

Also I had a quiz on Google Platform and had a record with Timify and recorded students cheating. Had seen students closing webcam with a piece of cloth, two students solving the quiz together and even false student solving quiz. Timify reported me "Unfocused" and showed the amount of times the respondent left the form, opened another tab, application or window. However was upset to see that Timify was not submitting answers automatically, they can only be submitted when students click the "Submit" button in the form, however when the time is over the quiz were not submitted. I will have to do make-ups or choose another platform.

On the other hand in Moodle was students answers were submitted automatically... Now thinking whether to going back to Moodle is logical or not...

I find it both interesting and annoying that people have not matured beyond childish games of cheating Nazime Tuncay especially at university level of education. Is it that they are lazy (easy way out), insecure (do not believe they are capable enough), egotistical (thrill of getting over on someone), or some other phenomena? Irregardless I believe their ethical misconduct should be reflected in their evaluation and performance due to the notion that they are also cheating themselves from achieving a genuine education, casting (how to prevent) issues on the entire student body, in addition to increasing the workload of the education system--specifically professors. The upside to cheating students is that it challenges any caring educator to be creative in preventing cheating success in which such solutions may possibly transfer to issues beyond the classroom such as workplace environments where skill, knowledge, honor and moral are needed for efficiency as well as are economically important.

B.E.I. Johnson Right..

Why a student cheat?

1. First reason is, he/she dont know the knowledge

2. He is unsure about his/her knowledge

3. The system allows

4. I dont think its about matureness but it is in the nature of being a student

5. Why not? Nonetheless they have to pass exams to get a job.

These are the reason that we as instructors have to search our Quiz Platform and Quiz questions carefully

Nazime Tuncay Not knowing the information would surely reflect on student evaluation and performance being that education is both iterative and emergent. I once heard that a person has learned well when they are capable of teaching others what they have learned. Do you feel as though the nature of cheating students is the norm or the minority of certain individuals such as those who get a thrill out of bucking the system or enjoy the game of villain/hero? This maybe as you mentioned because "The system allows" it more so than either maturity or student nature. I'm more prone to believe that the majority of students genuinely want to learn v. cheating nature v. maturness which I linked with learning consequences and boundaries.

B.E.I. Johnson May be you may be right.. Winning a game.. Yes, isnt this mainly reason of peoples getting addicted to games that they can win easily.. A student who has got good marks as a result of cheating may want to get good marks everytime..This addiction may lead them cheating. Some students really learn when they are cheating as a result of the stress of being caught..

Abdelkader Mohamed Elsayed

By the way.. Did anyone try Jitsi Virtual Conference platform before? Although its being around since 2003, it got its current name Jitsi in 2011.. JSPhone (2003)==> SIP Communicator (2008) ==>Jitsi (2011) Its being very popular in 2020 most probably as a result of the pandemic. Its very popular in my country Cyprus these days.

https://www.thinkific.com/start-now/?utm_source=google&utm_medium=cpc&utm_campaign=9972576904&utm_term=%2Bonline%20%2Bcourse%20%2Bplatform&gclid=CjwKCAjwk6P2BRAIEiwAfVJ0rAr4_mUyx2-a_1YhYlJQVJyFVA3kf3ieEWCZP8uSArD2SKrrj8kn_hoC9E0QAvD_BwE

Thank you Abdelkader Mohamed Elsayed ! Thinkific LMS really looks enthutiastic

Very attractive web design! I will register and try it with a group of my students. Nonetheless 30 days free trial is a good offer. We can continue to use it in the universities also with other friends if it works.

Here is another LMS. It is also good. I am using it to share my course notes, videos with my students. Also it has a good assessment system. Very easy to adopt. https://itslearning.com/us/

Thank you Mourad Aty Thank you Mundher Alsaaidi منذر السعيدي

Choosing the right LMS is very important! Some Management Systems makes life easier for instructors and some of them make it very complicated!

Last week I was working with our free and open-source learning management system Moodle. We are giving Inservice training to teachers and this LMS is used by government. I think if I have a choice of not using it, I will never opt for it. I have to deliver courses from it 2 weeks more until my courses end.

According to me:

Most important thing in a LMS is its attractiveness

and second is its efficiency

fuctionality

easiness to use

and the last important thing must be its price.. Nonetheless most LMS worths the price that we pay.

Quality is more important than Fee

Its been around for 18 years now and most institutions are loosing interest quickly from it. I think its because of its design.. Its somewhat not attractive for me. I know that it can be improved but the webdesign lacks the attractiveness of all the other paid ones. What do you think about this?

Yacine Lafifi

There are many e-learning platforms, which are free. In our institution, we use Moodle because it is open source and free. I think it provides the teachers with a set of tools for facilitating the assessment process (assignment, quiz, multiple choice questions, etc.). In my opinion, these tools are enough for testing the cognitive level of students after the learning process. Finally, Moodle posses an important feature, which is the visualizations of students’ actions.

Amal abo Ashak

E-learning has advantages and disadvantages, as e-learning is a kind of abstract, imperceptible education, but some stages of education need tangible or tangible things such as pictures, the use of cubes, or the use of stereotypes. The delivery of the material to the child is faster than the abstract, and I mean simply by not using tangible things like Read a story without pictures

Yacine Lafifi There are many good quality LMS which are not free but have great facilites. I really dont understand, why universities do not want to spend money on a good qualiy LMS. May be they dont take it very seriously.

Yacine Lafifi

Nazime Tuncay Yes, I know. There are many good LMS that are not free. Also, they offer more good features such as personnalisation, adaptation, peer-assessment, peer-tutoring, collaboration, etc. However, I think that the problem of using free platforms is due to the commitment of decision-makers in some countries to take into account the online learning mode on one hand and the recognition of diplomas of this system on the other hand, and not a money problem.

Amal abo Ashak That's exactly what I think! Images talks instead of us! They are more important than everything that we teach.. Quality always talks and works

Abdelkader Dehbi

There are many e-learning platforms, which are free. In our institution, we use Moodle because it is open source.

Abdelkader Dehbi You are right Moodle has some good facilities like "If Moodle detects that the student's Internet connection has dropped, and the Quiz autosave feature is enabled, a warning message is displayed, prompting the student to make a note of recent responses. Quiz autosave is enabled by default, with the default time period set to 2 minutes." However I am not very keen on using Moodle always.beacuse of its week design..

Is there anyone who knows any other Learning Management System other than Moodle who deals with Internet connection drops during the quiz.

Thank you Soheir Hagras for mentioning Canvas. It was also recommended by other academicians. I think it is not free. It has a trial period but not open source? Right ?

Abdelkader Mohamed Elsayed

Thank you for your contribution Soheir Hagras Can you explain us which facilities of Canvas you find Good?

I depend on the discussion, and the student’s participation in all topics of the course, in other words, focusing on the student-centered teaching approach. As for the evaluation, I rely on electronic tests and sometimes open book tests.

Thats the best method Abdelkader Mohamed Elsayed . These days I am also doing open book exams. It is one of the best options specially for Mathematics courses.

Soheir Hagras I start using Canvas for my Summer Courses as a result of your offer here. I have been using it for the last month.. I am doing online quizes, I am making conferences via BigBlueButton and as soon as I finish my courses my recordings are authomatically are saved in Canvas platform. I have also installed it to my phone and my laptop. It has a lot more than I had expected and everything that a distance educator need. I am using free version for teachers and it is really good. I am giving assignements, making announcements, uploading my course notes and it has a modern look :) The appearance of Moodle was like an old fashion which I didnt like but Canvas has a lot more features than Moodle offers and it is a lot more easy. You can also integrate Zoom, Google Meet and have exams via Webcams (this features need premium membership) however Bigbluebutton is integrated in the Canvas and it works fine. It has also equation editors for Mathematics courses which I like a lot. I also advise this program to all distance educators https://canvas.instructure.com

Soheir Hagras Thank you for your reply and recommendations. I was doing online assesment via Quizes section and Assignments section for giving projects. Can you explain what do you mean by ILOs? I think its not https://www.ilo.org/global/lang--en/index.htm ?

Soheir Hagras Right! I also liked its showing online time to the students. This facility does not exist in Google Forms. What is more when quiz time ends, students's quizzes are submitted automatically. The Grades section and SpeedGrader is also useful. We can also lock the quiz, so students can not open a second window if they open their quiz ends. What is more, it keeps reports of students, how much time they spend on each question. Every minute of exam, students activities are recorded.

Soheir Hagras Hi! Canvas has 2 windows when preparing questions. One is for editing, locking and for arranging quiz settings. I require Password for quiz enterance restrict the time that it is online, lock each question after students answers, require IP addresses, shuffle answers,... the system itself drops students and submits answers to me if they open to many windows. Because, I give only one attempt right. So it becomes restricted with one window. This is same of course if students opens the exam from two different programs..

What is more when you are using SpeedGrader option after exam you can see all your students actions in the View Log at the top right corner. Its a lot more better than all the other free assesment programs that I have ever used :)

Mustafa al Saadi

We are in our countries, which are among the developing

and poor countries in this type of education. We have

tested many programs and were the best in giving lectures.

Zoom includes all the required elements. As for evaluation

and evaluation, we believe that Google Classroom succeeded

in using this type of open book type. Greetings to you ...

📷

Mustafa al Saadi Thank you for your reply! Right.. The cost free platforms are among most countries first option.. Zoom has proved itself to be a very good option for distance educators. I am also using Zoom & Google Forms among many other platforms for delivering courses and online exams. However, there are some security options related with Zoom like some other programs that we may come across.. We have to be careful not to use the same accounts, same passwords with our bank accounts for these applications..

Above all, specially when recording and sharing our screen we have to take special care to clean our desktop and not to reveal to much personal staff to be seen and to be recorded..

I think security will be one of the most important issues in Distance Education delivery and assessment among all the other important issues..

My recent interest is how I can deliver more secure distance educations and distance education assessment...

Is there anyone who has reached to a conclusion about this issue? Safe Assessment and Evaluation? Safety in the meaning of personal information privacy and many other things...

Sujan Mahapatra Thank you for your reply! Did you used Khan Academy Sujan? Can you explain us your experience about it.

You are asking some excellent questions and I think there are no answers that fit everyone. My apologies for recycling some previous discussion points but I am as much a victim as anyone and am desperately trying to find ways to move more mature content out quickly rather than not engaging or worse yet having less thoughtful discussions and benefits.

Selection Criteria

I am not sure there is one size fits all for many of the questions. The tools may depend on the instructor's experience, the discipline of the students, and the availability of the LMS system. Regarding LMS's, I am afraid the Pandemic has solidified some of those connections, so my suspicion is that most institutions are "all-in" whatever their current LMS happens to be. Regarding other items, I guess it depends on how you weight the criteria. Is it price, integration with existing systems, ease of use etc?

Modality

Recently I have had to cross boundaries between Canvas and Sakai courses (see below for comparison). In terms of recommendations, a key issue here is transfer not necessarily content. Teacher experience and class norms may be key here. Some Harvard classes that are based on case studies and discussions have migrated almost entirely to Zoom and breakout rooms (the norms of their environment) where other classes have migrated entirely to asynchronous modalities to provide flexibilities to either mobile or displaced students in terms of geography. But this leads to some of the security issues that you mentioned previously. If I have an LMS that is too open, personal information, outside surveillance, and opportunism become real issues. As bad as it is now, I fear the full level of invasion and exploitation has only begun.

Delivery,

The best LMS is the one that works in your particular situation. Teachers hate to admit it but we are limited in by our time, ability, and coping mechanisms and ubiquity of best experience as the norm. Let me take the last as an example. Nazime Tuncay and many others are notable exceptions, but increasingly we see the presentation of best experiences, successes, and applications that may not be typical, transferable, or adaptable,. While in the end it may not be the best choice, in the short run an LMS with an accessible Sherpa may be far superior. The issues are significant and consequential and I applaud those do engage in forums such as these. We all feel inadequate to the task put before us. Unrealistic expectations need to be put aside so those of us engaging can take on the role of new sherpas for those that may not have the wherewithal or luxury to take advantage of lessons learned in the broader academic community.

Take the synchronous/asynchronous false dichotomy. Online education by its nature has a number of cues filtered out meaning instructor and student do not share the same environment which means distractions are unanticipated and cannot be adjusted for as quickly. If it is asynchronous then there are a shortage of cues such as historical context, the richness of the communication (visual over text), and of course screen size makes nonverbal feedback difficult even in the most ideal of situations.

When asking if modalities can have the same benefits, in terms of educational proficiency the answer might be yes due to the intentionality of the design, maturity of the students (andrological students are more internally motivated), and the kind of content that is being presented. There are a number of studies that produce no significant difference in terms of online and face to face. While many of those studies may have arguable designs (higher drop out rate in an online group) taken as a whole they suggest for some subjects online education can be as good and perhaps better than face to face. However, there needs to be consideration having the LMS (advantages and disadvantages) becoming the primary pedagogical driver in promoting "best" educational practices.

LMS Selection Pitfalls

While the question of “best” is difficult to answer it really does not speak to a range of broader issues. What level of granularity are we speaking about; student, teacher, department, institution? What kind of dispersion is the LMS primarily accomodating, dispersion; geographic, or temporal dispersion of students? The choices often in these instances are not best but useable vs nothing. It is in these situations that the available LMS supersedes the better LMS on a variety of outcomes. (e.g. educational outcome, student satisfaction, instructor proficiency).

Another possible pitfall of seeking the best LMS (and I think Canvas is becoming the odds on favourite), the ubiquity that such an LMS demand reduces distinctions of those delivering the courses. Institutions will quickly find that affiliations and allegiances of alumni evaporate in the midst of online education. Networking is more difficult when it is not done in physical proximity and memorable relationships will be less common between students. so many of the benefits that drive institution selection by parent and student alike may be diminished. -jd

Sakai vs Canvas comparison

https://raccoongang.com/blog/lms-comparison-what-lms-suits-your-needs-best/

J. D. Wallace Thank you very much for your contribution to this discussion. Discussions and sharing experiences world-wide is important for global education improvement.

I agree with those statements

"The best LMS is the one that works in your particular situation. "
"Almost all institutions are "all-in" whatever their current LMS happens to be", whether it is efficient or not. They started to use the LMS at hand, didnt have chance to research because of the Covid 19 Pandemic
"Networking is more difficult when it is not done in physical proximity and memorable relationships will be less common between students". However, it is not impossible, its a solution when we can not deliver face-to-face courses.

Canvas proved itself to be userfriendly and I can do many course activities including assessment and evaluation via Canvas, however it has multiple-screen problem during BigBlueButton conference, when I share my screen with my students, it multiplies. However, we can see this problem when we are in the starter window, the problem does not exist in other windows.

I haven't used Skai before, will try it for the Fall semester, however as far as I did research it also has some problems when communicating with students, this feature and calendar feature works Good with Canvas.

I am sure most educators (although not me, I am keen on distance teaching) and students would opt for traditional education, if they had a choice.

With more in-service training, people will learn how to be careful about the Digital Life Traps. These discussions provide us an insight about the programs that we haven't used before and it helps us to give our own decisions. Thank you all!

Any more comments from ResearchGate researchers, experiences about the digital traps that a distance educator may come across during Distance Education Delivery/Assessment-Evaluation????

Some problems that I come across:

1. I was going to join to a Jitsi meeting. I clicked it before tidying my study table, I had thought ok..I give it a start and I can have 1-2 minutes to tidy the cloths from my table, however as soon as I click, I was in the conference and everyone was watching me taking staff out from my desk

2. I was going to make a Midterm Mathematics Online Exam on itsLearning.. I had arranged it to 14:30... I started my Adobe Connect Discussion on 14:20, students were asking some questions and didn't notice that the time was 14:40 when I said, its time to start to our exam and 3 of my students informed me that the program sent them exam 10 minutes before to their emails and they were solving it!!! It was a very bad experience for me.. I had informed them that it was just a trial (But it was not, I had to take control of the situation) I said that they were too stressful and not sure, the exam will start 15:00... I closed the conference and in 20 minutes I had prepared a new online exam.. It was very stressful for me..

Nazime Tuncay I gave up on big blue button and migrated mostly to zoom as an add on tool within Canvas. Sakai has some major issues in terms of usability. I found just the amount of time it took to grade things was much slower. I have a lot of small writing assignments and Canvas lets you view word and pdf files where high return comments can also be placed. Sakai forces you to download everything and then upload it. The time and keeping up with the files was difficult and tends to add to an already overloaded schedule. Thank you for the exam updates. I am looking for a robust exam system ( and have not found it yet). My solution has been the writing assignments but in terms of "knowledge demonstration" it means much more grading and they have to be personalized so that standardized (copied?) answers are more difficult. -jd

J. D. Wallace Thank you for your reply

I have also did a research about how I can use Zoom, Microsoft Teams/ GoogleMeet with Canvas, and reached to a conclusion that it needs premium membership/ contact with the assistants. Am I right?

We were using BigBlueButton with eLSE conference https://www.elseconference.eu/ , and it worked very well.. We had not any big problems that we are having with Canvas today. Also, in another institution, I am using BigBlueButton integrated with Moodle and I didnt have problems..

I really wonder, is it related with Canvas that the integration of BigBlueButton results in multiplying Windows...

I am using now Zoom& Google Forms for some courses, Zoom works reasonably good, however I dont feel that I am safe with it. I trust Google products more.. Gmail, Hangout, Google Form, Google Meet, Google Suite..

I have also used for an inservice training GoogleMeet and it was working very good with teachers who had Internet problems. So, may be I can try integrating Google Meet in Canvas for the next courses.

J. D. Wallace

With the Assignments.. Right, we have copy-paste answers from Google... I am sending the URL of the copied document as an attachment to the students answers and giving "0" to the question.

Its really hard to assess and evaluate students progress in Online Exams. We can not use the same methods with the traditional courses. We have to make new methods for Online Exams.. My choice for some mathematical courses is Open Book exams..Although I am using timify and Google Forms in some exams and locking exam windows, I am sure that students are sticking some papers on the walls and reading them and pretending to look to the webcam.. We should put students in a room and camera-record all the room but this is nearly impossible...