Today there was a flurry of emails on the ALT mailing list about VLE’s (Virtual Learning Environments, or LMS or CMS as they are more commonly known Stateside). A number of posters were quite ‘anti’ VLE – looking forward to replacing institutional VLEs with an assortment of Web 2.0 technologies which students pick and choose for their own ‘Personal Learning Environment’ or PLE. (OK that may be a simplification!). These were followed by a few posts which managed to provide a good brief defense of VLE’s, and noting that it is possible to use both.
I sadly don’t have time to comment on this just now – briefly, as with the later posters, I quite strongly believe that VLEs do add value, but just because an institution uses one doesn’t mean that students can’t use other tools as well – but here are some useful links. First a few on PLEs, to try to come to terms with what it’s all about:
- Beyond Centralized Systems at Scott’s Workblog, which includes a link to the paper “Preparing for disruption: developing institutional capability for decentralized education technologies” by Scott Wilson, Dai Griffiths, Mark Johnson, and Oleg Liber, which was delivered at Ed-Media 2007.
- From The Bamboo Project, two links… Seven Strategies for Supporting Personal Learning Environments at Work and this an example of what a PLE might look like – Michele Martin’s Personal Learning Environment.
- This video by Stephen Downes – Web 2.0 and Your Own Learning and Development.
I previously mentioned Tara Brabazon and her book ‘The University of Google’, I suspect her book Digital Hemlock: Internet Education and the Poisoning of Teaching – written before the phrase ‘Web 2.0′ had been coined may have some ideas worth noting in this debate.
March 21, 2008 at 6:12 am
Some good points and links. Work in HK as an ed consultant and have just learned of the third school I know who has hired in someone to do some linking of a moodle to their School Management system only to have it go pair shaped when the programmer lost his visa and had to go back to Australia. This is a town where we have an excellent system developed by a local company.
I am wondering why institutions need their own system?
March 21, 2008 at 11:43 am
Hi Paul,
thanks for that. Not quite sure I followed your question at the end there – is it:
- why do institutions need their own VLE (ie own copy of Moodle etc)
- or why do institutions need their own ‘make’ of VLE?
Certainly, management have a fondness for integrated systems – ability to automatically propogate courses with students with data taken from registry IT systems.
If I had a class with 300 students, I wouldn’t want to have to do that manually…