Exploring Virtual Learning Environments

Dr. Iain Doherty

Associate Professor

Director eLearning Pedagogical Support Unit

Centre for the Enhancement of Teaching and Learning

13th May 2012

Virtual Learning Environments

• A conservative and not pedagogically useful view of the VLE:– A virtual learning environment (VLE) is an education

system based on the Web that models conventional real-world education by integrating a set of equivalent virtual concepts for tests, homework, classes, classrooms, and the like, and perhaps even museums and other external academic resources. It normally uses Web 2.0 tools for 2-way interaction, and includes a content management system.

• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virtual_learning_environment

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Trends in Virtual Learning Environments

• What is the predominant use of the virtual learning environment in higher education?

• What are the potential affordances of the virtual learning environment?

• What are the pedagogies with which we have been working (for a very long time)?

• Is it time to re-think what it means to learn / acquire knowledge?

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Which Comes First?

• The traditional mantra:– Learning led and technology enabled

• The new mantra:– Technology led and learning enabled?

• O.K. so it’s not really going to be a new mantra but it is a springboard to thought.

• Technologies for teaching might be something other than a bolt on if we recognised the centrality of technologies in the lives of our students.

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Best Use of Virtual Learning Environments

• Putting technology first we might think in terms of Siemen’s concept of Connectivism.

• Difficult to understand and may not be a learning theory / theory of knowledge.

• It might be a theory of social constructivism referenced to technologies.

• What would a pedagogy look like that put Connectivism / technologies at the core of the curriculum?

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Best Use of Virtual Learning Environments

• We might conceive of our students living in a networked world of constantly accessible information.

• Physical spaces and virtual spaces both utilized / leveraged to engage students in research based learning around complex projects, cases, problems.

• VLE / LMS, Web 2.0 technologies, virtual worlds, simulations, games.

• Tablet devices, laptops, learning spaces, presentation spaces, wired and wireless connectivity.

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Concluding Remarks

• Higher education has been stuck with the same pedagogies for too long.

• Higher education has followed the trail of technologies for too long.

• Does higher education not have cutting edge thinkers and cutting edge practitioners?

• A good question:– What kind of contribution is the academic community

making to Wikipedia?

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