LMS systems (We dont call them VLE's down under)

[Andrew Chambers]

What is your current virtual learning environment or the main technology you use?

Moodle 2.3

How does it differ from the ocTEL platform? What learning styles does it afford that ocTEL cannot? Where is it restrictive?

A lot more tools… These support all sorts of collaboration and communication as well as testing and assessment, content delivery etc

Is it ‘open’ in the sense that you can develop or configure tools that fit your pedagogy (e.g. the learning styles above), or does it command a certain pedagogy?

Reasonably configurable… In fact at a high level its also extensible.

Not sure I’m into Kolb personally so I can’t answer this in relation to “learning styles” (as I think they are a bit of a red herring). Either students are doing content related activity or they are discussing the content and doing discussion based activities (in our model). YMMV.

What are the wider implications of enforced platforms and technologies for higher education?

Limited tool set (compared with social media and “web 2” as it used to be called). But with limited tool set comes closed, secure, more fully supported environments. I guess it’s a trade off. Social media, come, go, get morphed, bought out, go commercial (e.g. Youtube) etc. Closed LMS systems dont (usually, unless we are talking about Blackboard)…

 

How can your learning platform promote inclusion?

I havent obviously been following the course closely enough. Not sure about what “inclusion” means…

[SueFolley]

I assume inclusion in this context just means to include more students to participate. With a VLE/LMS is is normally a closed system, so not open to the public in the same way as Twitter or blogs may be. Keeping your content and blogs/discussion within the VLE normally restricts only people enrolled on that course to access that data. This may promote inclusion as some students would be very reluctant to publically blog or discuss something on the course, but they may be happy to do so if the audience is restricted to their course cohort with whom they have built  trust. Also often students may not have blogs or be interested in facebook or twitter, where as they are automatically included in any module on the institutions VLE, so there is not normally any sign-up or access issues.

[Jo Richardson]

We use Moodle 2.2 at the moment. I agree with Andrew that there is a wide range of tools available and these provide scope for applying a range of different pedagogies, depending on how they’re used. We include different tools for different types of courses and that flexibility is really valuable.
On the downside, the tools provided are quite basic because there are so many of them. For example we switched from PHPBB forums, which were much more specialised because of the single focus, to Moodle forums, resulting in reduced functionality. So it’s a case of using a single technology that does one thing really well, or a platform like Moodle that does lots of things at a more basic level.
However, as Sue has noted, there’s huge value in knowing that all students have access to the same resources and functions in a central place, with no sign-up required. And as Moodle is open, it can be customised relatively easily if you have the skills in-house, which we don’t really at my organisation – but that’s another story!
Confidentiality is also important for students on our courses; they are work-based learners and often share case studies from their own organisations that they couldn’t if a more open platform was used.

[ElizabethECharl]

We use Moodle and will be upgrading to the most recent version in June.  It  is good that it has a variety of tools that works even though they may seem a tad basic. Also not asking the learners to sign-up to other technologies removes added stress and confusion as to where to go – can be just as confusing for young adults as it is for mature students.  We are planning to expand/move to an advanced level what can be done with Moodle by using a plugin from our media cloud supplier to further enrich with audio and visual, etc, with the flexibility to make resources  or uploads of a sensitive nature password controlled and others open to all. I look forward to seeing what the take-up rate by academics will be as a result.  There will also be the possibility for learners to upload audio and visual materials to the VLE.  We have recently signed up to Mahara so I think my learning curve in the next month or so will be steep – in trying to map and to identify what other types of services the Library could be supporting/providing in the VLE.

Jo – good point re the confidentiality issue that is so is important in providng a safe and secure environment for learners to be honest in the learning process and how they apply it to their real world experience in work, etc.

[philtubman]

can i ask you elizabeth: do you have the multimedia filters turned on in moodle? they auto embed all media files that you upload and make for a really nice looking experience. i only ask because it is off by default, and if you don’t turn it on (its just a click button in site admin) the experience of using multimeidia is very limiting. i want to start experimenting with video assignments in moodle, where the user can record to the browser and submit the recording – that would be really useful in our linguistics and european languages dept…

[Author]

Posts