Learning Management Systems

Areas of knowledge to study to become a learning tech power user

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What are learning technology competencies? They are skills that instructors running and developing courses in learning management systems (LMS) like Canvas should know to be highly successful. Studying these learning technology competencies can help you become a Canvas power user. They are about being knowledgeable in the university’s toolset of learning technologies. Here are some example areas of knowledge:

Designing online self-paced and blended courses

Running online courses in an LMS like Canvas or Moodle

Using Zoom for presentations

Uploading and managing lecture recordings to MediaSite and editing educational videos

Using Microsoft 365 tools

Using WordPress blogs in higher education and Extension outreach

Digital accessibility for courses, multimedia, and recordings

Managing surveys and forms in software like Qualtrics or MS Forms

This list of learning technology competencies links to my own posts related to the areas of knowledge and is loosely organized by Michigan State University’s Extension competency areas (Ed Tech Core Competences).

Using Moodle as a teacher

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Moodle is a popular open-source learning management system (LMS) used by schools, universities, and the Extension foundation online campus.

In many Moole instances, you can use your Google or Facebook login to create a new account in the Extension foundation online campus.

Once your account is confirmed by e-mail, you can use the search box to find the course that you’re interested in.

If your course has an enrollment key, enter that in the Enrolment Key box. Enrollment keys are useful if you want to limit your audience to just people with the key.

To be granted Teacher level access to a course, you can ask a Teacher in the course that you are working with or send a request to the Moodle Admin. Once you have access, you’ll be able to ‘Turn editing on for course pages’.

Once you learn to use one learning management system (LMS), like Moodle, those skills and concepts can transfer to using other LMS, like Canvas. Moodle and Canvas are some of the most popular learning management systems.

Here are some resources about learning Moodle:

Adding another Teacher to your course in Scarlet Canvas

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If you are an instructor in a Scarlet Canvas course, your Teacher role has the ability to add other Teachers to your course.

To add another Teacher to your course:

  • Login to your course and go to the ‘People’ roster.
  • Click the ‘+People’ button.
  • Enter a Scarlet Canvas user’s email address in the email address field, make sure they have a role of Teacher, and hit ‘Next’.
  • On the next screen, make sure it’s the correct person you want to add click ‘Add Users’.

If, for some reason, Canvas can’t find the user, it means they haven’t registered for Scarlet Canvas before. The user will need to create an account.

The ELT archives

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Blast from the past!

Exploring Learning Technologies was a group of instructional technologists and instructional designers at Ohio State who would meet monthly to talk about emerging technologies and popular instructional design tools. Here’s a list of archived ELT meeting information. Some include videos about the learning technologies discussed.

5/10/21: Take a Good Look Around with ELT
3/4/21: Flying High with ELT – covering working with drones
3/27/21: ELT: Power Automate
11/1/19: ELT: Getting Started with Adobe Character Animator
11/1/19: ELT: PowerPoint Unleashed
7/19/19 ELT: Getting Started with Web Annotation – covering Hypothes.is
6/21/19 ELT: Getting Started with H5P
4/17/19 ELT: Quality Assurance in Course Design
3/15/25 Podcasting Mini-Conference
2/7/19: A Closer Look at Transcription Services
1/18/19: Creating Video Discussions with Flipgrid – with Matt Yauk
9/4/18: ELT: Getting Started with the Padcaster
8/13/18: All Things Photography
6/11/18: ODEE Mixed Bag  – coving Turnitin, Proctorio, and the new Carmen Quizzing tool
5/18/18: ELT: All Things VR
3/28/18: A Closer Listen: Getting the Best Audio for your Project
3/28/18: Canvas Potpourri
3/8/17: Easier, Accessible, Better: Digital Book Publishing with Pressbooks
1/26/17: ELT: Getting to Know the Oculus Rift – at CETE at 1900 Kenny Road

What was BuckeyeLearn?

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The BuckeyeLearn platform powered by CornerStone – BuckeyeLearn was launched around 2015 as a learning platform to house internal training for OSU employees. CornerStone was popular for delivering corporate training and supervisors could easily assign trainings for employees to complete in the platform. Many of the trainings in BuckeyeLearn were SCORM learning modules developed in Articulate 360 or Adobe Captivate.

What was Moodle?

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Moodle – a number of colleges at OSU used the open-source learning management system called Moodle to house non-credit, public-facing courses from 2014-2020. The College of Pharmacy had a Moodle instance for continuing professional development for pharmacists. The School of Public Health and OSU Extension also used Moodle to host non-credit, public-facing courses. A number of MOOC courses were also developed for a platform called Coursera. The Extension Foundation continues to use Moodle for its Connect Extension learning platform.

What was Carmen D2L and Camtasia Relay?

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Carmen D2L – the first learning anagement system to power the ‘Carmen’ LMS at OSU was Desire to Learn (D2L). The first Carmen Affiliate subaccount admins for the colleges were trained after 2005. The College of Pharmacy used a number of lecture capture systems to host course videos for the Doctor of Pharmacy program during this period including Panopto, Camtasia Studio, and Camtasia Relay (latter called TechSmith Relay). Camtasia Studio was a nice video editing product that could upload finished videos to the Camtasia Relay lecture capture hosting system. Those videos could then be embedded in PharmD program courses in Carmen D2L. D2L was used at OSU from 2005 until 2016, when the Carmen platform was converted to use the Canvas LMS.

What was WebCT?

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Web CT (aka Web Course Tools) – was a learning management system used by the Non-traditional Doctor of Pharmacy Program (NTPD) at Ohio State from 2002-2005, one of the first online degree programs at the university. Lecture capture software based on Quicktime was used to record PharmD lectures and retransmit to online students. Asynchronous online courses in Web CT were the NTPD program’s primary mode of instruction in the didact portion of the program. Later Web CT was purchased by the company behind the Blackboard LMS, used by Columbus State Community College and many other schools. Web CT was the world’s first widely successful course management system for higher education.