Students learn best when they take ownership in the learning process and are actively engaged along each stage of the learning process. While our current educational technologies do a good job of presenting information that needs to be passed on to learners, it does not necessarily do a good job helping students increase their level of engagement. Teaching techniques and learning technologies will best serve these students when engagement is supported and encouraged in every stage of the learning process. This culminates in a pedagogy is often referred to as “Engaged Learning.” Using a pedagogy of Engaged Learning means being mindful of the barriers to engagement and scaffolding learning exercises in a way that maximizes engagement opportunities.

With the development of knowledge and technology being a necessity for the good of our society and the individuals within it, we have built substantial systems of education to further the process. A Learning Management System (LMS) may be best defined as an online software platform used for the dissemination of educational materials or facilitation of teaching and learning. While many software platforms can be used to facilitate learning, we generally reserve this title for systems that are able to provide a comprehensive suite of tools for instruction and evaluation of student learning.