COLLABORATION AND INTERACTION AS THE MAINSTAYS OF AN IMPROVED LEARNING MANAGEMENT SYSTEM

There are many commercially available online class management systems (OCMS) or learning management systems (LMS). Most have been developed to manage the data for a class and to track the participants ’ activities. Very few have centered their efforts on making the environment participant friendly. Even fewer have sough to create an environment where the participant is encouraged to be an informed contributor for the community. Most systems are designed so that the participant merely logs into the system to learn when an assignment is due, download an assignment or other information, take a survey, quiz, or test, and then log off the system. This is a failure to foster a constructive learning environment. The following paper describes the development and maturation of an OCMS that was engineered designed to be participant centric, to allow a large degree of interactivity, and to allow participant ownership of information within the system. Many of the features incorporated in the system give the participant reasons to remain engaged and even to contribute to the system – as opposed to merely lurking in the background. The “informal and reciprocal knowledge exchanges between individuals are valued and sustained over time because the sharing of knowledge is an important aspect of being a member of a technological community ” [8]. We developed an innovative system entitled “Community/course Action/interaction Management System ” (CAMS). The link to i