Jenny Brook wrote
>VLEs offer an opportunity for academics and librarians to create a learning
>community that has a richness that we haven't previously experienced.
>The closer the learning resources are in virtual terms to the student (e.g.
>within the lecturer's course notes in the VLE, not outside the VLE or on
the
>learning centre's web site 10 mouse clicks away from the web page that the
>student entered first) then the more likely they are to be used.
I do participate in a VLE - although it's a home grown one and there still
seems to be a lot of clicking involved! So the following to an extent is
just playing devils advocate:->. There is a lot of research supporting the
proposition that effective communication is a function of : 1) the number of
different channels through which we communicate (some face to face and some
electronic); 2) mixing of formal and informal communication and; 3) the
frequency of communication. Is a VLE really a "rich communication
environment" or a sort of "virtual mono-culture"? Isn't a lot of the
richness in setting up phase of VLE projects involving all the above - with
very little Student / Librarian communication through a VLE once its active.
If we focus too much on VLE's do we risk killing of other channels of
communication ending up with a poorer Student / Librarian interaction?
Matt
________________________________________________________________________
Matt Holland - Subject Librarian - Bournemouth Media School. Bournemouth
University,
Dorset House Library, Talbot Campus, Fern Barrow, Poole, Dorset, BH12 5BB,
UK.
Tel: ++ 44 1202 595460 Fax: ++ 44 1202 595475 E-mail:
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