Student and Staff Perceptions of a Learning Management System for Blended Learning in Teacher Education

Higher education institutions routinely use Learning Management Systems (LMS) for multiple purposes; to organise coursework and assessment, to facilitate staff and student interactions, and to act as repositories of learning objects. The analysis reported here involves staff (n=46) and student (n=470) responses to surveys as well as data collected in interviews and focus groups. The research focuses on participants’ perceptions of two broad affordances of the LMS: accessibility and interactivity. Differences were found between student and staff views in relation to accessibility of online materials, with students rating its contribution to their learning more highly than staff. However, the two groups held similar views with regards to the effectiveness of LMS tools to enable interactivity. Applying interaction equivalency theory (Anderson, 2003), the results reveal the importance of the key choices made by teaching staff in deciding which LMS tools to use in order to maximise student participation and learning.