Advancing further into the E-learning mode, Jaipuria Institute of Management Noida campus will be introducing a Learning Management System (LMS). In essence, an LMS handles and controls the delivery of self-paced, instructor led, e-learning courses. The LMS courses are published and placed in an online catalogue and users can log into the LMS and select the ones they need. An LMS can track a student’s activities, progress, compliance with assignments and more, along with providing online reports for each course and student. At Jaipuria Noida, the aim of introducing an LMS is to prepare students to use online learning and create a unique educational environment. As the system is introduced, students will learn how to navigate within the LMS, learn about “activity modules” and learn how to interact with fellow students and instructors within the system.
Activity modules contained in the Jaipuria LMS include chat, choice, forums and resources. They can be used to construct any course and personalize it to the needs of each student. The chat, choice and forums modules can only be initiated by the faculty member teaching the course. Chat will enable students and faculty to have real-time group discussions and choice enables instructors to pose questions on the subject matter being studied and offer students a number of answer choices – e-learning won’t eliminate the pop-quiz.
The forum module will contain threaded discussion boards allowing students to interact as a group to discuss, define and refine the subject matter under consideration – in effect it’s an online classroom. Instructors can put all useful study material needed into the LMS to be accessed by students via the resources module. Files, which will have a maximum size of 8 MB, can be a picture, a PDF document, a spreadsheet, a sound file or video file, with all files organized in folders and folders organized in other folders.
Once the system is introduced, students will be able to log in utilizing their username and password, at which time they’ll be taken to their own personalized home page containing some blocks and a list of their courses.
In effect, the LMS will be a website, just like any other website – available anywhere there is an intranet connection. But this website means your classroom is as close as your keyboard and your education is at your fingertips.