This posting is particularly aimed at teachers although I'd welcome
comments from others too.
Most people are using or planning to use institution wide or sometimes
department wide VLEs but this might change in the future because of the
opportunities presented by Shibboleth as championed by JISC and in
particular the Middleware projects.
So, here's the question - would you consider hosting courses on a VLE
that was run by a third party if it was tuned and customised for your
subject and offered opportunities for collaboration with other
colleges/universities that teach your subject? I.e. a subject specific
VLE rather than an institutional VLE. Thanks to middleware there would
be no need to issue passwords to your students for the VLE - it would
intergrate with a single sign-on you manage at your own college campus.
You would also have complete control over access to your course,
including the option to grant limited or unlimited access to students
and/or staff of other colleges.
If such a service were available and reasonably priced would you see an
advantage to using it instead of a locally installed and managed,
instituion wide VLE? What factors would stop you going down that path?
My own interest in this question is as the main author of a VLE product,
Bodington which thanks to the work of others (and funded by JISC) is now
Shibboleth enabled. I would like to get an idea of the viability of a
managed service in which customers share a VLE and by doing so reduce
costs and/or increase reliability.
Jon Maber
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