Assessing students’ experiences of the effectiveness of the Blackboard Learning Management System in the Department of Information and Corporate Management at the Durban University of Technology

Abstract

The use of Learning Management Systems by universities worldwide has grown exponentially in the last several years and has become an important tool to help connect students and lecturers without the confines of the traditional classroom. It is an environment with digital software which is designed to manage user learning interventions as well as deliver learning content and resources to students. Since 2013, online education has been supported at the Durban University of Technology (DUT) using the Blackboard (Bb) LMS. Traditionally DUT students have been accustomed to face-to-face teaching methods. The purpose of this study was to examine students’ experiences of using Bb because understanding students’ experiences is a critical issue for academics and course designers in order to improve this LMS’s usage and to understand how to improve learner satisfaction and behavioural intention, and to enhance the effectiveness of online teaching and learning. Two main data collection instruments were used in this study. The first data collection instrument included a questionnaire which was only administered to the current cohort of students from the Department of Information and Corporate Management (ICM) who volunteered to participate in the study. This involved 109 respondents (n=109). The questionnaire was used mainly to gauge their overall experience of the online classroom in order to determine which features, used in the intervention, were of most use to the students and to guide future e-learning content designers on how to better design more effective content. The second data collection instrument involved a focus group comprising six IA3 students who volunteered to participate. The objective of the focus group was to assess in greater depth, allowing for open-ended discussions, the specific learning advantages of Bb. Other data collection instruments used informally in this study included observations of students’ behaviour on Bb use, which were made throughout the duration of the study by the researcher in his capacity as a technician in the computer laboratories, as well as a comparison of the assessment results of the current cohort of Information Administration 3 (IA3) students who were taught using a blended learning approach (n=184), compared with the assessment results of students from the previous three years who were taught using traditional face-to-face methods. These two informal data collection instruments were included for informational purposes and did not follow established research guidelines for data collection. The study found that students appreciated the flexibility of being able to access course information at their convenience although most were only able to access the online classroom using the computers at the university. While most students were satisfied with their learning experience of the online classroom in Bb, they felt training on the advanced features of the LMS could be improved. Most importantly, students viewed the role of the lecturer as having the greatest impact on their online experience. Students viewed a lecturer who posted frequently, responded promptly to student queries and demonstrated a caring attitude, was more likely to encourage students to commit themselves to using the LMS. During a comparison of the assessment marks between past students who received course instruction the traditional way, and the current cohort of students who received their course instruction through the online classroom, the study noted little difference in the results. However, what was important to note was that the class size of the current cohort of students was more than double the class size of any of the previous three years used in this study, and thus it can be inferred that there is a clear advantage in the support of an LMS system in contexts of growing student numbers, with no accompanying disadvantages. An examination of the findings reveals that, if implemented properly, Bb or any other similar LMS for that matter, has an important role to play in improving teaching and learning at DUT (and by implication other universities of technology in South Africa) both from a student and instructor perspective, by being able to create richer learning experiences for students, and for instructors to be able to manage larger classes.