Open AccessCritically Analyzing the Online Classroom: Blackboard, Moodle, Canvas, and the Pedagogy They Produce
Author(s) -
J. D. Swerzenski
Publication year - 2021
Publication title -
journal of communication pedagogy
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
eISSN - 2640-4524
pISSN - 2578-2568
DOI - 10.31446/jcp.2021.1.05
Subject(s) - blackboard (design pattern) , affordance , contradiction , computer science , rework , critical thinking , pedagogy , mathematics education , multimedia , sociology , software engineering , human–computer interaction , psychology , epistemology , philosophy , embedded system
Working from the crossroads of critical pedagogy and software studies, this study analyzes the means by which teaching technologies—in particular the popular learning management systems (LMS) Blackboard, Moodle, and Canvas—support a transmission model of education at the expense of critical learning goals. I assess the effect of LMSs on critical aims via four key critical pedagogy concepts: the banking system, student/teacher contradiction, dialogue, and problem-posing. From software studies, I employ the notion of affordances—what program functions are and are not made available to users—to observe how LMSs naturalize the transmission model. Rather than present adeterministic look at teaching technology, this study calls for closer examination of these tools in order to rework teaching technologies toward critical ends.