The education tool of tomorrow
Learning Management Systems
Learning Management Systems have become a diverse and embedded part of teaching in college campuses today. They provide capabilities for file posting, drop boxes, test and quiz taking, and grade return on assignments tools, just to name a few. A green initiative on university grounds revolves heavily around this increasingly essential teaching tool.
File Posting
One of the most prominent tools in the learning management system, file posting, can immediately reduce the use of paper in the classroom. In place of printing handouts of your presentation slides, just upload them and your students can access them from anywhere, anytime. Not only is this a more efficient way to disseminate course content, but it is much easier to for the student to archive the material by saving it on their machine, so it is more likely that they will be able to access it well into the future.
Drop Boxes
Another popular tool within the learning management system, an online drop box empowers students to submit assignments and projects through an online "mailbox" - a clear environmental win. Their work is uploaded to a website and later downloaded by an instructor or assistant when it needs to be reviewed and graded. Graders are then able to annotate the assignment and return it with a mark for the student. This also means there is no chance of losing the paper materials along the way, as an electronic audit trail is created along the way. Plus, these "smart" drop boxes collect all your materials in a central place and can be set up to accept assignments within an automatic timeframe. Everything is stored and processed online, and is retrievable at any time.
Examinations
Tests and quizzes are another one of the largest culprits of resource consumption and waste in the classroom. Unlike materials like textbooks, the waste associated with exams is exacerbated as most of them are discarded at the end of the term (if not earlier!). Along with this, online exams can better engage and evaluate the student using interactive and adaptive media, neither of which is possible with the paper corollary. And as any instructor knows, grading can be a time consuming and cumbersome process. By facilitating exams online, you to create and administer exams without paper, centrally collect the responses, and then turn them over to assistants for evaluation. Even better, in some cases you can automatically grade and return the results.
Advantages Snapshot
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