The Impact of Learning Management System Usage on Cognitive and Affective Performance

Abstract

Since learning management systems (LMSs) are offering a great variety of channels and workspaces to facilitate information sharing and communication among learners during learning process, many educational organizations have adopted a specific LMS into their educational context. A LMS is a software that handles learning tasks such as creating course catalogs, registering students, providing access to course components, tracking students within courses, recording data about students, and providing reports about usage and outcomes to teachers [1]. LMSs include several applications such as OLAT, WebCT, Moodle, ATutor, Ilias, and Claroline. However, LMSs can be utilized to integrate a wide range of multimedia materials, blogs, forums, quizzes, and wikis. Therefore, the researchers suggest that studying the influence of technology usage on end-users, especially students, is fundamental in learning and teaching environment. Despite educational organizations routinely make decisions regarding the best pedagogical approaches for supporting students’ performance, there is very little research on the impact of LMSs on learning outcomes [2]. Indeed, a considerable number of studies were conducted to examine the adoption of various LMSs, whereas little researches focused on understanding how educational institutes can enhance learning and teaching process through a particular LMS [3]. Consistent with this, the researchers found virtually no research on investigating the relationship between LMSs usage and attitude toward learning. [...]