Deficiencies of Course Management Systems: Do Students Care?(Report‪)‬

Course management systems (CMSs) such as WebCT, Blackboard, Angel, Educator, and FirstClass are software systems designed to manage course content and course activities. These tools integrate technological and pedagogical features into a well-developed Web-based system that allows instructors who are unfamiliar with Web-based technologies to design, deliver, and manage an online course. Common features in CMSs include content areas, discussion boards, chat rooms, assignment drop boxes, quizzes and surveys, and white boards. CMSs support student-to-student and student-to-teacher communication and collaboration. Students are able to share resources, collaborate, participate in forums, take online tests, access their grades, and upload assignments. Today CMSs support thousands of courses at colleges and universities, and that number is growing at a staggering rate. While CMSs were initially developed to support distance education and fully online course delivery, they are also extensively used in on-campus classroom settings to compliment traditional face-to-face courses, or a so-called "blended" approach (Morgan, 2003; Simonson, 2007). The ease with which users can organize asynchronous and synchronous communication activities in CMSs is one of its most powerful features, because it enables (in fact, arguably encourages) instructors to create and support dynamic learning communities, consistent with a social constructivist perspective. This certainly explains some of the growth in on-campus blended courses (Dabbagh, 2004; Morgan, 2003).