Shelves, by striatic (flickr)
An article from the BBC, pointing to a report recently published by OFSTED, claims that virtual learning (a new addition to the plethora of terms in this domain for me) isn’t really taking off. What I found interesting though is how VLE’s were described: “Such virtual learning systems can provide background material, practice tests, course notes and internet links to help pupils at school or for homework or revision.” In other words, according to this article, they are repositories. We could debate endlessly whether or not this is true. I think the short answer is that they shouldn’t be but are often used as such, either through the limitations of the software used, or the limitations of the understanding of the user. And this I think is the problem.
Because it is certainly not true that there is no innovation in ‘virtual learning’. But most of the added value I think is found in the facilitation of activities, such as for instance online collaborative assessment, and not the digital storage of materials. Looking at our own experiences using Blackboard, I think I can safely say that a significant share of innovative activities do not take place within the VLE, as the VLE simply doesn’t support them very well. There are a lot of people using forums, blogs, wikis, virtual worlds or computer aided assessments of various forms. But aside from the forums, the majority of this does not, and cannot adequately, happen in our VLE.
And perhaps we have been taking the VLE for granted a bit, as if it is something we ‘obviously’ need. But do we really? if we have a repository, a student administration and a social networking facility that is organised at least partially around enrolment data, what then do we still need the VLE for? All that is missing from this equation now is the support for specific activities (forums, blogs, wikis etc.), but that doesn’t happen within our VLE now anyway. These activities can be supported through a best of breed approach, picking applications or third party services linking in with our social network infrastructure. This would leave us more versatile and able to respond to changing needs and solutions as they emerge.
