Session S1G 978-1-61284-469-5/11/$26.00 ©2011 IEEE October 12 - 15, 2011, Rapid City, SD 41 st ASEE/IEEE Frontiers in Education Conference S1G-1 Use of LMS Functionalities in Engineering Education Martín Llamas, Manuel Caeiro, Manuel Castro, Inmaculada Plaza, and Edmundo Tovar IEEE Education Society Spanish Chapter, martin@uvigo.es, mcaeiro@det.uvigo.es, mcastro@ieec.uned.es, iplaza@unizar.es, etovar@fi.upm.es Abstract - 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. Index Terms – E-learning functionalities, LMS INTRODUCTION In 2009, IEEE Education Society Spanish Chapter (IEEE- ES-SC) network carried out a survey on different aspects of the use of e-learning platforms in engineering education. The main interest of this study was to learn how e-learning functionalities and standards were being used in Spain in the field of engineering education. The study covered the most commonly used e-learning platforms, their main functionalities 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, the use and knowledge of e-learning standards, the use of repositories, and finally, the main advantages and disadvantages of e-learning. The main results of this study have been accepted for publication on IEEE Transactions on Education [1]. From this experience and from the lessons learned, we did an extension of this study to all the members of the IEEE Education Society around the world that are currently teaching in universities, to know their opinion about the aforementioned topics, focused mainly on functionalities and standards. We also wanted to treat about the use of social networks and assessment tools. The results of this study are accessible on the website of the CESEI (Spanish acronym of the IEEE-ES-SC) network [2]. As the survey is very large and for space reasons, only a part of the results will be shown in this paper: those related with e-learning platform (or LMS) functionalities and exams tools. Therefore one of the main objectives of this paper is to contribute to a reflexive debate in the international community about e-learning functionalities and usage. The rest of the paper is structured as follows. In the next section we briefly exposed the methodology. Next we outlined in short the main LMS functionalities asked in this survey. Then main results of this study are given. Finally the conclusions of this study are presented. METHODOLOGY Based on the previous work [1], the issues in this study were: I) Use of e-learning platforms; II) Functionalities; III) Institutional Support; IV) Contents; V) Teachers’ Perception of Students’ Opinion. Other two more were added according to the feedback of open ended comments from [1]: VI) Exams Tools and VII) Advantages and Disadvantages The survey was sent to all the members of the IEEE Education Society (IEEE-ES) around the world that are currently teaching in universities. The survey was done during the last week of March 2011, and was completed by 146 teachers, of whom 84% (122) were male and 16% (24) were female. The countries of origin of teachers are shown in Table I. The results show that 27% (39) of the teachers did not use LMSs, and the rest (73%, 107) did use them. The characteristics of the teachers can be seen in Figures 1, 2 and 3. Figure 1 shows the distribution of teachers according to their age. Figure 2 shows that 51% of the teachers have at least 20 years of teaching experience, and that more than 63% of the teachers have at least 15 years of teaching experience. Finally, Figure 3 shows that more than