Use of LMS functionalities in engineering education

This paper shows the partial results of a survey sent to all the members of the IEEE Education Society around the world about some aspects on the use of Learning Management Systems (LMSs) in Engineering Education. The main interest of this study was to learn how e-learning functionalities were being used in the field of engineering education. The study covered the most commonly used LMSs, their main functionalities (Content Delivery, e-mail, Tasks-Exercises, Forums, Mailing lists, Exams, Self-assessment, Surveys, Groupwork, Chat, Calendar, FAQs, Wikis, Blogs, Glossaries, Videoconference, Notebook, Whiteboard, Learning Paths, Student Portfolio, Podcast, Student Tracking, and Vodcast), and aspects of their use, such as knowledge levels, training, patterns of use, perception of training proficiency, usefulness, learning curve; teachers´ perceptions of the students´ use of the different functionalities; institutional support; exams tools, and finally, the main advantages and disadvantages of e-learning use. The objective of this paper is to show the main results of this survey in the use of LMSs, and therefore to contribute to a reflexive debate in the international community about e-learning functionalities.