All the talk about learning management systems (LMS) around the office lately reminded me of a dataset a couple of colleagues and I put together last year. Dr. Florence Martin, Dr. Yuyan Su, and I undertook the task of validating an instrument to measure LMS self-efficacy.

Bandura (1997) defined self-efficacy as beliefs in one’s abilities to carry out a desired course of action. I’ll spare you the details of orthogonal exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses.

One of the many variables we decided to examine was whether student LMS self-efficacy was a predictor of course performance. After all, is not learning the primary motivation for using a learning management system?

A couple of weeks ago, I was a presenter at the CAEL 2009 International Conference. CAEL (The Council for Adult and Experiential Learning) is by definition broadly interested in assessing and serving adult learners in a variety of programs; nevertheless, I was struck by how few workshops offered anything geared toward online learning.

This isn’t a small matter. Each keynote speaker I heard addressed the importance of serving the underserved, of finding ways to identify, assess, and recruit adult populations who would benefit from increased access to adult and/or continuing education. There’s tremendous opportunity for institutional growth, they declared, and there’s a moral obligation and societal responsibility to do so. However, most presenters were thinking of these efforts as they pertain to on-ground, classroom-based models. Online learning–if mentioned at all–seemed to be regarded as an add-on option of dubious value to traditional academic delivery.

Instructors who teach in online environments often devote extensive time and energy into designing a Web space that is inviting and useful to students. But frustration inevitably ensues when, despite the careful consideration given to the most logical placement of a discussion forum and the “clearest” instructions provided to students on how to post to the forum, the instructor still receives e-mail from students asking, “So, where is this discussion forum? And what am I supposed to do?” Why has this gap in communication occurred?