LMS Encounters: Promises and Realities

(e)Learning for Sustainable Futures?

Abstract

Although there are radical opportunities afforded by e-learning technologies (Hemmi, Bayne & Land, 2009), digital Learning Management Systems (LMSs) can be risky and ?disorienting spaces? for participants (Bayne & Ross, 2007) even though they often replicate traditional rituals and forms of university bricks and mortar teaching spaces. Whilst we need e-platform standards, we also need flexibility and diversity to avoid replicating sameness in LMS design and implementation. In any educational platform selection, there are always risks and uncertainties, but if we embrace informed, sustainable and ecological design, we can evolve beyond purely market-driven agendas towards pedagogical designs that have a 'learning-centric university mission' (Ellis & Goodyear, 2010, p. 153). This paper juxtaposes LMS discourses in theory with participant LMS experiences in practice. Emergent tensions of (hyper)textualising the university are discussed with/against neoliberal agendas of the (dis)embodied individual. At the forefront of our research agendas, we need to move beyond espoused e-learning technology promises to consider participant realities to inform (e)learning designs and choices, whilst experimenting with how to create sustainable learning/knowledge spaces for sustainable (e)learning futures.