Chapter 7: Designing Cms Courses From A Pedagogical Usability Perspective

Most academic institutions utilize some type of course management system (CMS) to deliver courses to learners. Although the CMS features have evolved over the years, many commercial tools (e.g., Blackboard, Angel, and Desire2Learn) continue to have an overarching framework that resembles the initial content-centric focus for organizing and delivering course information (McGee, Carmean, & Jafari, 2005). There are numerous features and system options that can negatively impact a system's ease of use and the actual meaning of the content learned when designers and instructors create a compartmentalized approach to the course design. As a course is designed, considerations regarding usability for the overall instruction of the course should be considered. For example, the amount of cognitive effort to complete instructional tasks can be increased when content organization is confusing, difficult to manage, and not effectively supporting the learning goals. If the learner spends more time organizing all the assignment instructions and tasks along with figuring out how to use CMS tools rather than the actual learning activity, then the system lacks the appropriate pedagogical usability.