Some VLE thoughts

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Some VLE thoughts

• Martin Weller

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Outline

• The VLE choices
• Current state of play
• Tools and pedagogies
• Technology succession
• VLE 2.0

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The VLE choices

• In-house development
• Commercial VLE
• Open Source
• Service oriented architecture

4
Current state of play

• OECD/OBHE 2004 survey in 13 countries
• All had VLE
• 37 have institution-wide VLE
• 90 expect to have single VLE in next 5 years
• 52 use commercial system
• Rest use combination of in-house and open source
• No institution had just OS
• 31 had portal
• 6.6 had CMS

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Changing times

• Nearly all institutions had moved to an
  institution-wide system.
• Few institutions operated an in-house solution.
• The VLEs will be divided equally between
  commercial and open source solutions.
• Specialization and localization will occur
  through the use of services.

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A flexibility continuum
SAKAI
Standards
Commercial VLE
SOA
OS
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Moodle as reasonable compromise

• Gain
• Functionality
• Time
• Community
• Profile
• Flexibility
• Technical consensus
• Lose
• Some flexibility
• Some control

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VLE as toolset

• Conferencing
• Content
• Tracking
• Assignment handling
• Assessment
• Synchronous tools

• Blogs
• Wikis
• Podcasting
• Social bookmarking
• Eportfolio

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Trends

• Technologies are not developed for use within
  education
• There is a move towards socially focused tools
  and away from content-focused ones
• Technologies move from niche to mainstream in a
  short time frame
• The tools occupy a specific communication niche

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Match to pedagogy

• Conferencing
• Content
• Tracking
• Assignment handling
• Assessment
• Synchronous tools
• Blogs
• Wikis
• Podcasting
• Social bookmarking
• Eportfolio

• Community of Practice
• Resource based learning
• Peer learning
• Content-led/Instructivist
• Complex learning
• Problem-based learning
• Collaborative learning
• Instructor-led

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Technology clusters
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Plant succession
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Technology succession
technological environments are not merely
passive containers of people but are active
processes that reshape people and other
technologies alike (McLuhan 1962)
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Web 2.0
Users must be treated as co-developers, The
open source dictum, release early and release
often in fact has morphed into an even more
radical position, the perpetual beta, in which
the product is developed in the open, with new
features slipstreamed in on a monthly, weekly, or
even daily basis.

• Both an approach and a set of technologies
• Web as platform
• Harnessing collective intelligence
• Evolutionary development
• Lightweight programming models

This time, though, the clash isn't between a
platform and an application, but between two
platforms, each with a radically different
business model On the one side, a single
software provider, whose massive installed base
and tightly integrated operating system and APIs
give control over the programming paradigm on
the other, a system without an owner, tied
together by a set of protocols, open standards
and agreements for cooperation
users add value and the technology or site needs
to be set up so that it encourages participation
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VLE 2.0

• How would a VLE 2.0 be constructed?
• Service oriented
• Tools tested and released
• Standards based
• Unique configurations
• Incorporate external tools
• Localized configurations
• Personalised

• What does web 2.0 education feel like?
• Students as co-creators
• Reuse
• Less rigid boundaries
• Social

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Question

• What would a VLE be like to ideally meet your
  needs?