Post 69: Use LMS to Monitor Student Progress

Post 69: Use LMS To Monitor Student Progress

"Learning Management Systems provide a sophisticated set of tools for tracking student engagement in course activities. Getting a quick look at how your students are progressing in case you needed information quickly  can help you determine whether any adaptive action might be in order. This tip describe some of the features of LMS  that can be used to track and evaluate student progress...  Time spent exploring and using these systems help develop good practices. These monitoring systems can provide at a glance statistics about student access, grades, and discussion board participation. Early warning tools allow you to set rules for expected performance and to monitor students based on these rules." (Conrad, 177)


The LMS has features that help you answer the following questions:

• Have all my students access to my class?
• Who has been participating a lot in the discussion boards and who has been discussing participating very little in the discussion boards?
• Who is the first time students and who is a repeat student?
• How is the class progressing as a whole? What is the total grade average of the entire class? (Conrad, 178)

I ordinarily used my LMS to see when students have or have not accessed my classroom.  I would look to see how often students have been to the forums or have done their assignments. The LMS allows me to monitor student progress. If I have a student who has not accessed the class since Week 1, then I would report that to his student advisor so that they can call the student to ask why he/she has not been in class. I also used the LMS to see if a student is a repeat student of that class or a first time student.

If a student is a repeat student, then I know to give him/her extra help by sending him extra emails asking if he/she is alright, or to send more late reminders if necessary. I would also talk to his/her student advisor to see what else can be done to get the student to participate in class so he/she does not fail the class.

I also like the way the LMS can keep track of the class as a whole. I can see right away the average GPA of the entire class. Some classes do really well at a B average, other classes need more help.  It did take me time to fiddle around with the classroom to find all these extra features. If you don't have time to play with the features of your online classroom, you can always ask Tech Support for advice, and they will be more than happy to acquaint you with the extra features of the LMS to help you better monitor your students!