Today's learners have grown up in a technological world and have an expectation of on-demand content. According to a 2018 study from the US Department of Education, more than 88 percent of eighth grade student reported using technology on a daily basis in 2015. (Snyder, 2018), and it stands to reason that this number has increased in the successive years. Yet many students leave their high schools and step into a college classroom with faculty members who are insistent that they store their technology, and the instructor facilitates his course content using the same methods that were employed more than 20 years ago.

Most institutions use a technological learning management system - or LMS - as their learning platform. It is the technological tool that enables students to engage with course content, and faculty members to distribute information. Yet most institutions permit faculty to decide whether or not they choose to use the learning management system at all. 

The two graphics below demonstrate a striking contrast between use of LMS by students vs faculty, and the features in an LMS most commonly used by faculty. 

LMS Features Used by Faculty

Faculty vs Student use of LMS

The top graphic illustrates that while 78% of faculty post grades on their institution's learning management system, and 92% use it to disseminate course content such as materials, videos, presentations, and notes, only 37% use it for exams and quizzes. 

This statistic was somewhat startling, and it begs the question "Why"? (Or, more accurately, why not?). The goal of this literature review is to determine the adoption of assessment features in Learning Management Systems, the barriers and challenges faculty and students face, the advantages of the use of such technology, and the perceptions associated with these tools and their use.

Rationale

Recently, while working at one of our remote campus locations, I was seated in a faculty support area that is outfitted with an assortment of equipment, technology, supplies, and reference materials. I noticed a rather large and noisy machine in the corner, and watched a faculty member feed a series of scantron forms into it for grading. This was surprising to me. Clearly, any question that can be graded via scantron must have been offered as either multiple choice or true false questions, and clearly the students would not receive their grades or any feedback until the next class session. In my informal surveys of faculty members about their concerns over the use of LMS assessment and testing features, many stated that the automatic grading only works with specific question types such as multiple choise and true false. I could not understand the reason why any faculty member would deploy a test that was graded via scantron when this feature was so simple in the learning management system, and the student could receive his results immediately if the faculty permitted the system to release them.

So why, since students have demonstrated their interest in LMS based exams and quizzes, and the technology is fairly simple to use, and the automatic grading feature simplifies the review process for multiple choice and true-false questions, is the use of this feature still hovering in the 30% range? (Snyder, 2018)

The first, and most frequently cited answer, is cheating. Faculty are concerned that offering a technology-based assessment will provide an easy opportunity for student to cheat. (Cornelius, 2017). This was the most frequently cited example for both for face to face and online faculty members. The chart below, which was drawn from a study completed at Marshall University, clearly debunks the idea that cheating is more prevalent. (Watson, 2010)

Student self-reporting of cheating

This chart demonstrates that cheating is only nominally more frequent in online classes as opposed to face to face classes.

A number of other factors were also cited for reluctance to embrace LMS based assessments including lack of training on the use of the technology, time commitment required to recreate content that already exists in paper based form, and resistance to a percieved push to use technology.

One of the greatest challenges to the implementation of a learning management system and its features is the reluctance of faculty to embrace the technology. Faculty who choose to forgo the LMS cite many concerns to support their opposition. One of them is the restrictions to academic freedom (Rees, 2014) particularly when private entities including textbook publishers create content and market these products directly to school administrators without including faculty in the decision making process. Many faculty members feel that this reduces their role in the course, rendering them as facilitators rather than educator. (Rees, 2014) Another frequently voiced concern is the potential lack of computer access by their students outside of the classroom. They indicate that students in diverse populations often lack access to both adequate technology and the internet, which can create a climate of inequality among students in the same class. (McSpadden, 2018). While this can be construed as a valid concern, this graphic, which was published in the Journal of Teaching and Learning with Technology illustrates both the access to technology and access to the internet for learners ages 3-18 in 2015. Extrapolating that out four years, it is a safe assumption that college-age students have equal or better access than the study reflects.

Technology access for K-12 Students outside the classroom in 2015

Another drawback cited by faculty is that some content does not lend itself to the technological model (Raga, Rodavia, 2018), or that their delivery style does not translate well to the LMS platform. Lastly, a frequently cited concern is the lack of ongoing faculty development and training offered by their institution, which makes the process of offering course content via LMS complicated for the instructor. (McSpadden, 2018).

One surprising reason that faculty identified as a concern is the lack of flexibility in today's learning management systems. Faculty want the flexibility to present their course content in the technology without any limitations. Some LMS products, particularly those that are open-source such as Moodle and Sakai, offer this level of flexibility, but the more frequently used products: Canvas, Blackboard, and Brighspace (also known as Desire2Learn) have a specific navigational structure that faculty are required to adapt. Ironically, this is one of the very things that students cite as a concern. Students can struggle with navigation when every instructor uses a different navigational model which is exactly the reason that many of the technology developers have moved to a more standardized layout.

In spite of all of these perceived barriers, usage of the LMS stands at nearly 80% for most institutions where the faculty member is given autonomy to decide whether or not they choose to use the LMS as part of their course. The educational publication Inside Higher Ed conducted their annual survey to determine adoption of LMS features among both full time and adjunct faculty, including those who teach fully online, those who only teach traditional face-to-face, those who teach both, and those who are on tenure track. The outcomes clearly support faculty use of some, but not all LMS features.

Adoption of Learning Management Systems by College Faculty 2018

Today's students have specific expectations when it comes to the use of learning management platforms and technology in general in the higher education environment. In a 2015 study, students identified use of the learning management system imperative, with a number of respondants indicating that it was valued as the "one place to successfully interact with university requirements"  (Henderson, 2018). According to one study in the order of importance these are the most important needs for an LMS (Chaw, 2017) :

• LMS allows easy enrollment of subjetcs
• LMS allows easy access to learning materials
• LMS provides fast access to learning materials
• LMS allows download of multiple files all at one time
• LMS operates normally most of the time
• Learning materials are available on LMS one week before lectures
• LMS can be accessed from a mobile app

Where some features previously thought to be of critical importance were considered less so. These included control over types of notifications from LMS via mobile device, more attractive LMS design, reasonable website response time, and live chat feature to interact with instructors. (Chaw, 2017).

With these factors in mind, further study was done to determine what LMS features students would like to see used more frequently by their institution's faculty. (Dahlstrom, 2014)

More than 32% of responses to this survey stated that they are extremely interested, with an additional 33% very interested. So with 65% of students expressing interest in using their institution's LMS, why is there still reluctance to do so?

During my research on this topic, I identified several concerns about the research and related gaps and shortcomings. 

First and foremost, I was unable to find any published research from the learning management system providers directly. My institution is currently in the process of evaluating several systems, so I have been in direct contact with representatives from the three largest LMS providers in the United States - Blackboard, Instructure, the maker of Canvas, and Desire 2 Learn, the maker of Brightspace. During their vendor presentations, all three cited specific research that was the driver behind their programatic decisions, yet I was unable to find any specific published research from these major providers, only research about them that was completed by third party organizations. It is entirely possible that this is intentional, and that they all hired outside research firms to conduct more impartial studies.

The second gap was the research sample size. In Perceptions and Utilization of a Learning Management System: An Analysis from Two Persepctives, participation was voluntary, and as a result, only approximately 220 students participated. Because use of learning management systems is ubiquitous in higher education, an accurate sample size would realistically be in the hundreds of thousands. Understandably, this would be an extremely difficult undertaking given the scope and size of this attempt. 

Another challenging component of this type of research is the ever-changing face of technology. The Educause Center for Analysis and Research study The Current Ecosystem of Learning Management Systems in Higher Education is quite comprehensive, having gathered data from more than 75,000 students at 213 institutions. Unfortunately, the compilation of this magnitude of data takes time, and the first rule of technology is that it does not wait. The outcomes of the study were published in 2014 - already 9 years old - but the data collection was taken even before. So while this data is useful and research based, it is now considered old.

The third concern that I recognized was the appearance of bias against the use of technology in general. In several of the resources - Dammit, the LMS, What are the Risks for Academic Freedom, and Cheating the the Digital Age - the authors seemed to carry an inherent bias against the use of technology in higher education. In spite of the research that supports student success, many instructors are simply reluctant to utilize technology for a variety of reasons, chiefly among them seems to be the underlying thought that students should be flexible enough to learn no matter what methodology the instructor chooses to employ, and that it should not be the responsibility of the instructor to adapt his instructional style for the learners.