Weekly Reflection: Government, Institutional Leadership, and the LMS

When we discuss online learning, we usually think of a triangle: the instructor, the platform, and the learner. Weekly Reflection: Government, Institutional Leadership, and the LMS. When we discuss online learning, we usually think of a triangle: the instructor, the platform, and the learner. However, reviewing this week’s materials, I realized that the real entity determining the conditions of our learning is often the “invisible hand”—Institutional Leadership and the LMS.

Previously, I thought of the LMS merely as a “clunky tool.” But now, I see it as a political device optimized to perform the institution’s Accountability and Security. From this perspective, my A1 inquiry topic—online silence—is not a failure of the individual, but a rational adaptation to a system designed for management rather than connection.

1. The Paradox of Good Intentions: How ‘Accountability’ Becomes ‘Surveillance’

Institutional leadership doesn’t necessarily have malicious intent to survey students. Rather, universities and governments are obligated to comply with legal requirements like FIPPA (Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act), protect student data, and prove the transparency of academic operations.

The problem lies in how this “Accountability” is technically implemented.

• To prove fairness, the system datafies every login and activity.
• To ensure security, learning is locked inside a closed LMS.
• To measure participation, quantitative metrics (number of posts, login duration) are demanded.

From the student perspective, this converts institutional good intentions into a persistent message of surveillance: “Your every move is being recorded.” This is the dilemma of institutional leadership and a key reason why online classrooms can feel rigid and cautious.

2. The LMS as a “Comfortable Prison” — and a UVic Example

Of course, the LMS is not purely negative. As discussed in the course materials, the LMS provides a structured learning path, centralizes resources, and offers a predictable environment. For some learners (e.g., those with ADHD or working professionals), this stability is crucial.

However, the cost of this stability is the loss of autonomy. The LMS is inherently designed for Management, not Inquiry. Inside the LMS, we exist only as “Student IDs” and are reduced to manageable data points. Serendipitous learning or wandering off the beaten path is rarely permitted.

This disconnect becomes especially visible in UVic’s Brightspace.

Almost every course has a Discussions section by default, but it functions more as a placeholder than a real learning space. In one of my large classes with over a hundred students, only two posts were made in the entire four-month term. The forum exists, but no one speaks. Nothing about the space invites conversation; its design signals assessment, not community. The emptiness of the Discussions page is not a coincidence—it is evidence that the LMS does not support relational learning, only managed learning.

Therefore, Brightspace begins to feel like a “Comfortable Prison.” It is safe and organized, but it is also a walled garden where it is difficult to find one’s own voice.

3. Silence Is Not Passivity — It Is ‘Resistance’

In my previous reflections, I described students as passive victims of the system. However, shifting my perspective, silence in the LMS can be seen as an active form of resistance.

We are not actually silent.
We are just silent inside the LMS.

Students actively chatter, collaborate, and help each other in backchannels like Discord or private social media. This is a deliberate move to escape the “managed space” of the institution and find a psychologically safe space of our own.

The near-empty Brightspace Discussions boards illustrate this perfectly: students are talking constantly, just not where the institution expects them to. The silence inside the LMS demonstrates that the platform fails to capture the vibrant reality where actual learning happens.

Conclusion: From Control to Trust

Through this reflection, I realized that the problem of online silence cannot be solved merely by adding better features to the LMS.

The real solution lies in a shift in leadership: letting go of the values of Control and Security, and choosing the educational values of Openness and Trust. Students need the right not to be surveilled, the right not to be reduced to data, and the right to connect outside the LMS.

Silence is not the student’s fault. It is a structural problem created by the interaction of policy, institutions, and technology.