This document discusses using a learning management system (LMS) to enhance student engagement and success. It argues that an LMS can play an important role in student engagement if it develops its own voice and identity as a place of learning. The document suggests institutions define principles for their institutional voice and determine how different LMS elements like feeds and discussions can interact to engage students while balancing workload. Developing an engaging LMS presence requires understanding an institution's strategy and obtaining user feedback.

1. Enhancing Student Success Through Student
Engagement in the Digital Environment
This presentation connects student success
with the digital voice of a tertiary provider.
The term voice refers to the presence,
perceived by a viewer, that exists behind what
is presented: the implied author.
In an educational web environment this
presence can play an important strategic role
in student engagement.

2. ‘Catching’ and then keeping students engaged
is a key determiner of institution’s and student’s
success. This is why we are having this
conversation.
One powerful engagement tool education
institutions have is their LMS. When considered as
part of a student engagement strategy the LMS
plays a pivotal role in engaging students while they
are enrolled.

3. Web users expect feeds,
friends, events and news from
their favourite sites.
Compared with news and
social media sites, many
LMSs have little life-context
for the student.
However, a LMS should
not try to be like these places,
a LMS needs to have its own
identity as a place of learning,
it must have its own voice.

4. A LMS may have a particular
style to it that offers an engaging,
interesting, learning space to a
particular audience. It can have the
voice of a friend or mentor. It can be
fun-loving, simple, edgy or
academic.
So, what currently defines the
voice of this institution?

5. What would be some of the defining
characteristics you would like your
institution’s voice to have?
Can these characteristics be
captured in a set of principles, such as:
relates to the cohort, not overly
demanding of resources and lecturer
time, makes connections to a wider
learning context?

6. Different elements will play differing roles in engaging students.
Elements such as feeds and discussions may interact, some
elements may require observation by the lecturer or class reps.
Expected student behaviour must be made clear.
Each site will have its specific requirements that balance workload
with the strategic goal of greater engagement. The matrix is
complex.
Clearly the process of making a LMS ‘engaging’ to a particular
audience needs to be resourced: it is an activity that requires
technical skill, an understanding institution’s strategy, and feedback
from the users. It is also a process of evolution.

7. Only when the direction is
understood can a plan of action can
be considered.
The process of presenting a strategic
voice can then begin
A voice that will engage students;
make the learning environment a place
students choose to go; cause students
to connect and share; develop student
interest beyond their coursework; and
keep more students engaged and
involved until they complete.