Do Learning Management System Activities in Online Pedagogical Education Significantly Predict Academic Performance?

ABSTRACT

In online learning as a form of distance education, "Learning Management Systems (LMS)" have become one of the most dynamic forms of higher education today. LMS components play an important role in assessing both the quality of online educational offerings and student performance. The focus of this study is whether LMS activities significantly predict student academic performance in online pedagogical education. The participants of the study consisted of 511 prospective physical education teachers taking pedagogical online education via LMS in the spring semester of 2022-2023 at a state college in Turkey. The study data consisted of the participants' learning activity assessments via LMS and their academic performance at the end of the semester. The learning activity scores were obtained from the LMS student tracking report and the end-of-semester academic performance scores were obtained from the college's "Student Information System (SIS)". The results of this study, in which correlation and hierarchical linear regression analyzes were conducted, showed that each online learning activity significantly predicted academic performance. The relative order of importance of learning activities on academic performance was found to be "number of course document downloads," "asynchronous course viewing time," "course video viewing time," and "synchronous course participation time." While the number of course document downloads alone explained 36% of the variation in academic performance scores, this variation increased to 41% with synchronous course participation time, 52% with asynchronous course viewing time, and finally 68% with course video viewing time. Although each LMS activity had a positive effect on academic performance, following lessons from downloaded documents, asynchronous lesson viewing, and video viewing were found to rank first in increasing academic performance, while synchronous course participation ranked last. Consequently, asynchronous LMS activities have a stronger impact on students' academic performance in online learning.