Dear All

I think the most important thing on which we can, probably, all agree on
is that VLEs are a good thing.  There are still people around who don't
see and understand how much benefit VLEs can bring.  I have my own
opinions about the relative merits of Moodle, Boddington, WebCT,
Blackboard.  I believe that we made the right choice of VLE for our
institution, but I believe the most important decision we made was to
have a VLE.

There are still many people around who suggest that VLEs are not worthy
of the money invested in them, terms such as "monolithic" are still put
around.  This is where I think the real harm comes.  If I was in the
process now of installing a new VLE I would want the support of the
institution for what I was doing.  So I would be very worried if, for
example, Moodle was favoured because it was 'free' not because it was
good, as that would imply a lack of institutional support.  If the
institution wants something for nothing then they are wasting
everybody's time, a VLE, whether there is a license fee or not, will
need high-level support and a certain amount of resource, the benefits
are huge but there must be a commitment.

Steve

Stephen Clarke
Head of eLearning
Information Services
University of Birmingham
Birmingham 
B15 2TT

+44 (0)121 414 4736

[log in to unmask]
 

-----Original Message-----
From: Virtual Learning Environments [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On
Behalf Of Stuart Lee
Sent: 13 July 2005 15:29
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: [VLES] VLE - A case for Moodle


Tom,

Needless to say you expected a reply. So here it is.

> Firstly (and most importantly) when you read the reasons for choosing 
> Bodington it does not mention learning as one of the reasons for 
> selecting Bodington against any other VLE.  Now, there may have been 
> sound educational reasons why Bodington was chosen, but they are not 
> mentioned on the report which focuses on a number of technical issues 
> (scalability, fine access control etc.).

It is there but perhaps not as stated as one would wish. The
functionality within Bodington is about the same as one would expect
from most VLEs, i.e. pretty basic. The notion of much learning going on
inside a VLE remains to be demonstrated and I would not wish to make any
claim for Bodington over any other system. *However* if we take a
definition of learning in a wider sense then we did use it as a
criteria.

One of the objections we had to the other VLE systems we saw was the way
they pigeon-holed users into one of 3 categories - admin, staff,
student; and it seemed extremely difficult to break free from that.
Moreover, they tended to only allow you access to the material that the
SRS indicated you had enrolled for. Thus if you were reading History,
and suddenly wanted to look at some of the material in English, hard
luck - the SRS didn't have you down as reading English. There were
fudges in the commercial VLE systems but they were that at best. They
seemed to be based very much on a training idea whereby you pay to take
a training course and that was your lot. Bodington, however, has a
unique access control system (which I mention in the report). This meant
that at any point in the system access could be opned up, or closed
down, according to the wishes of the owner but on a much more
fine-grained level. The default was open but you were free to do
whatever you wanted. It has no concept of staff or student, just users
who can be assigned different rights ad hoc.  So what? Well this allowed
us to easily integrate our interdisciplinary studies, it followed the
rule at Oxford that all learning resources should be available to all
students to allow them to explore and investigate beyond their subject,
and it allowed us to open up parts of our system to other institutions
(joint courses, joint research projects).

>
> Secondly, its argument for the "free lunch" is falacious on two 
> counts. Actually, we are all paying for it (well those in institutions

> especially, but tax payers generally) through the top slice on funding

> council budgets and through the generous funding from JISC etc.

This is true in a sense in that every expenditure made by a
publicly-funded institution is backed by public money. But what are you
paying for? A licence? No.  Developers? Yes, but all development goes
back into the community for people to use if they wish. And as most of
the money came from our HEFCE Capital 3 budget then you could say that
Oxford is using money earmarked for its own purposes to work on a
project that has potential benefit to all.

I would also like to see you take the same approach (to be fair) to
commercial VLEs. We are all, by your logic, paying collectively for all
the licences taken out by HEIs, and FE colleges, and that money is just
heading straight out of the system into commercial companies.

As to generous funding from JISC I don't think that is fair. JISC are
funding open standard work, for strategic reasons. I, for one, agree
with this policy and find anyone who suggests the contrary situation is
sustainable (proprietary standards, lock-in etc) to be severely
mistaken. The fact that we are working in that area with an open source
VLE means that we have access to apply for those funds that is all. If
we get funded then maybe our strategic direction is in line with the
JISC's. But as I said, please note that most of the funding came from
the HEFCE capital 3 for development work.

> It is also an unrepeatable
> offer as no one is going to pay for other institutions to repeat what 
> has been demonstrated.
>

Sorry I don't agree with this. If institutions start to seriously engage
in open standards work, and possibly double this with open source work
(not absolutely essential though as one could easily see partnerships
with commercial companies working within an open source material) then
there is project money there.  Maybe not to the level we have
experienced but certainly to allow a serious reduction in costs.

So it may not be absolutely repeatable, but it can be reproduced to a
lesser extent. And even if you can't cover all your costs through
development projects or one-off grants when using an open source VLE
system, just go to sleep counting the pounds you are saving in licence
fees.

> However, I did enjoy it - so long as I thought that Stuart had written

> it somewhat tongue in cheek.

As always,

Stuart

Head of the LTG
University of Oxford

***************** List information: *****************
Remember - replies go by default to the entire list.
Access the list via the web on http://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/lists/vle.html
To unsubscribe, email [log in to unmask] with the message: leave
vle

***************** List information: *****************
Remember - replies go by default to the entire list.
Access the list via the web on http://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/lists/vle.html
To unsubscribe, email [log in to unmask] with the message: leave vle