Category Archives: learning platforms

cetisdle – presentations now online

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Over the past year or so we’ve been doing a lot of thinking and work around what we’ve now come round to calling distributed learning environments. Essentially, ways that you can extend current VLE functionality without having to change/upgrade your VLE.

Concurrently it also seems that every HE institution in the country is either about to start, in the middle of, or has just completed a review of its learning environment provision. So despite many calls of its death, it does seem that the VLE is going to be around (in some shape or form) for a while yet.

Last week in Birmingham we held an event to launch our DLE briefing paper. The event also coincided with the Distributed Virtual Learning Environments call announcement from JISC. During the day we had presentations demoing a number of the models featured in the briefing paper as well as an overview from Peter Hartley of the ALT LER (learning environment review) SIG. Heather Williamson from JISC was also able to give an overview of the DVLE call.

Over all there was a lot of interest from participants in exploring further ways to easily extend functionality of learning environments for users (staff and students) – particularly the development of widgets. Over the next year we are planning to run a number of events where we can bring developers and users together, so watch this space, and if you have any suggestions please let me know.

Presentations from the day are now available on the CETIS wiki. You can also view the twitter stream from the day.

Distributed Learning Environments Briefing paper

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We have just published a new briefing paper on distributed learning environments. The briefing provides a short overview into a number of models for extending functionality of existing VLEs.

The briefing paper came about directly as a result of our work over the past year into widgets, in our widget working group, and from the sessions Wilbert Kraan and I ran at the CETIS09 conference on “Composing you learning environments”.

We’ll be discussing the models in more detail at the Distributed Learning Environments meeting next week (4th March) and there will be some demos of a number of the models. There are still a few places left for the event (which is free to attend). More information, including a link to register is available from our event webpage.

Blackboard moving towards IMS standards integration

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Via Downes this morning, I came across Ray Henderson’s Blackboard’s Open Standards Commitments: Progess made blog post. Ray gives a summary of the work being done with IMS Common Cartridge and IMS LTI.

Having BB onboard in developments to truly “free the content” (as is the promise of such standards as IMS CC) is a major plus for implementation and adoption. From a UK perspective it’s good to see that implementation is being driven by one of our own – Stephen Vickers from the University of Edinburgh who has been developing powerlinks for BB and basic LTI. See the OSCELOT website for more information.

There are a number of models now emerging which show how learning environments can become more distributed. If you are interested in this area, we are holding a meeting in Birmingham on 4th March to discuss the notion of the distributed learning environment. There will be demos of a number of systems and we’ll also be launching a briefing paper new approaches to composing learning environments. More information including a link to register for the event is available here.

SHEEN Sharing – getting the web 2.0 habit

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Sometimes I forget how integral web 2 technologies are to my working life. I blog, facebook, twitter, bookmark, aggregate RSS feed, do a bit of ‘waving’, you know all the usual suspects. And I’m always up for trying any new shiny service or widgety type thing that comes along. There are certain services that have helped to revolutionize the way I interact with my colleagues, peers and that whole “t’internet” thang. They’re a habit, part of my daily working life. So, last week I was fascinated to hear about the journey the SHEEN Sharing project has been on over the last year exploring the use of web2.0 tools for a group of practitioners that have barely got into the web 1 habit.

SHEEN, the Scottish Higher Education Employability Network, was set up in 2005. Employability is one of the SFC’s enhancement themes and almost £4million was made available to Scottish HE institutions towards developments in this area. This led to a network of professionals – the ECN (employabilty co-ordinators network) who had some fairly common needs. They all wanted to reduce duplication of effort in finding resources, share and comment on resources being used and to work collaboratively on creating new resources. As actual posts were on fixed term contracts, there was the additional need to capture developing expertise in the field. So, they started the way most networks do with an email list. Which worked to a point, but had more than a few issues particularly when it came to effectively managing resource sharing and collaboration.

One of the members of this network, Cherie Woolmer, is based in the same department as a number of us Scottish Cetisians. So in true chats that happen when making coffee style, we had a few discussions around what they were trying to do. They did have a small amount of funding and one early idea was to look at building their own repository. However we were able to give an alternative view where they didn’t actually need a full blown repository and that there were probably quite a few freely available services that could more than adequately meet their needs. So, the funding was used to conduct a study (SHEEN Sharing) into the potential of web2.0 tools for sharing.

Sarah Currier was hired as a consultant and her overview presentation of the project is available here. Over a period on just about a year (there was a extension of funding to allow some training at the end of last year/early this) without any budget for technology Sarah, along with a number of volunteers from the network explored what web tools/services would actually work for this community.

It was quite a journey summarized in the presentation linked to above. Sarah used videos (hosted on Jing) of the volunteers to illustrate some of the issues they were dealing with. However I think a lot of it boiled down to habit and getting people to be confident in use tools such as bookmarking, shared document spaces, rss feeds etc. It was also interesting to see tension between professional/formal use of technology and informal use. Web 2 does blur boundaries, but for some people, that blurring can be an uncomfortable space. One thing that came through strongly was the need for face to face training and support to help (and maybe very gently force!) people use or at least try new technologies and more importantly for them to see themselves how they could use it in their daily working lives. In effect how they could get into the habit of using some technologies.

The project explored a number of technologies including scribd (for public sharing documents), google docs (for collaborative working)twitter (which actually ended up being more effective at a project level in terms of extending connections /raising awareness) and diigo for bookmarking and sharing resources. Diigo has ended up being a core tool for the community, as well as providing bookmarking services the group and privacy functions it offers gave the flexibility that this group needed. Issues of online identity were key to members of the network – not everyone wants to have an online presence.

I hadn’t really explored diigo before this and I was really taken with the facility to create webslides widgets of bookmarked lists which could be embedded into other sites. A great way to share resources and something I’m playing around with now myself.

I think the SHEEN Sharing journey is a great example of the importance of supporting people in using technology. Yes, there is “loads of stuff” out there ready to be used, but to actually make choices and create effective sharing and use, we rely on human participation. Supporting people is just, if not more, important if we want to really exploit technology to its fullest potential. It also shows the growing need to share expertise in use of web2.0 technologies. You don’t need a developer to create a website/space to share resources – but you do need experience in how to use these technologies effectively to allow groups like SHEEN to exploit their potential. I was struck by how many tools I could see Sarah had used throughout the evaluation phase. Only a couple of years ago it would have been almost impossible for one person to easily (and freely) capture, edited and replayed video for example. A good example to highlight the changing balance of funding from software to “peopleware” perhaps?

More information about SHEEN sharing can be found on their recently launched web resources site – a great example of a community based learning environment.

Reviewing the VLE

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One of the hot topics at this year’s ALT was “the VLE is dead debate”. Following on from this, ALT with colleagues at the University of Bradford have set up a new Learning Environments Review SIG (LERSIG) which has just had its inaugural meeting. Today’s event “reviewing the VLE: sharing experiences” brought together about 60 people in total (online via Elluminate and physically at the University of Bradford).

The morning was given over to presentations from representatives from five institutions (Nottingham Trent, City, LSE, UCL and York) who have/are in the process of changing their VLE. The afternoon was discussion/group work. As I was participating remotely (and like everyone else, multitasking) I didn’t join in the discussion session. However there were a number of key elements that did come through.

The early incarnations of VLEs may well be dead, but the notion and need for some kind of learning environment is still very much alive. The HE community is, I think, much becoming much clearer about articulating requirements from all the technologies (not just the VLE) used in institutions to support teaching and learning. A number of questions were raised about the use of portals and using other ‘non-traditional’ VLE systems for teaching and learning purposes. What also came through loudly today was the recognition that user requirements and continual user involvement in the change process are key to making successful transitions in technology use.

Currently, many institutions in the UK are in the process of reviewing their technology provision, and it would appear a growing number are migration from proprietary systems to open source platforms. There seems to be quite a bit of moving from BlackBoard to Moodle for example. There was some discussion around the lack of take up of Sakai in the UK. From participants it would seem that at the moment the overhead and support for Sakai is higher and less supported than Moodle. Most of the big implementations are within more research led institutions and perhaps not as well developed for a more teaching and learning focus. However, there was a recognition that this could well change and that looking at the “broader framework” is key for future developments so that new elements can be added to existing systems. This is where I would see the developments we discussed at the composing your learning environment session at the recent CETIS conference would be of relevance to this group.

What came through strongly from today’s meeting was that there is an appetite to share experiences of these processes. Stakeholder engagement is also key and again sharing strategies for engaging the key people (staff and students) emerged as another key area for sharing experiences. The SIG is in the process of setting up an online community where experiences, case studies etc can be shared. You can join the SIG at their crowdvine site.