I am very sorry that my comments appeared to be critical of the paper,
which was not my indention at all. It was merely a reflection of my
appreciation of practical difficulties in this approach, particular in
terms of no single universal pedagogy being applicable to all subjects
and to every members of staff. Besides the existing pedagogies may also
have to evolve to be applicable to online teaching practices, it is
therefore hard to be convinced of which pedagogy should be used in the
selection of a VLE. It seems more like a chicken and egg situation. 

I can see the attraction of testing/piloting all these packages in real
teaching practice and then come to a conclusion. But then again do we
have to do this for each subject and for each member of staff, and how
many do we need to go through before adopting one for an institution?

These could just be my naive thoughts, but it is my attempt to learn by
asking questions. Would be very interested to hear any experience of
using this approach in selecting an institutional VLE, which might help
me to answer my questions. 


Jie


-----Original Message-----
From: Konrad, John [CES] [mailto:[log in to unmask]]
Sent: 28 September 2001 20:16
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: Comparative tables


I think Sandy puts the point very well, if anything understated!
Having used Lotus Learning Space for 9 months [as part of a University
feasibility study] and now using WebCT v 3.5 which Leeds Met has
standardised on, at least the latter is easy to use. Teaching an online
course with a group of colleagues, designed for LMU staff, I have found
that there are some limited possibilities to move towards a
constructivist paradigm such as Lave and Wenger's Situated Learning.  It
depends, IMHO, on how one uses and supports the use of a variety of CMC
tools,
I'd be interested in reactions.

John Konrad

-----Original Message-----
From: Sandy Britain
To: [log in to unmask]
Sent: 9/28/01 6:32 PM
Subject: Re: Comparative tables

I think Jie Shen's post is both interesting and contradictory. Dr. Shen
says
that the approach to evaluation of VLEs put forward in our JTAP-041
report
is
1. Outdated. and 2. Of little practical use.

Dr. Shen goes on to say that it would be preferable to see, instead, a
comparative table of which VLEs are appropriate for which pedagogical
contexts.

I would like to counter both of these criticisms as I think they
demonstrate
 some misunderstandings. First, although we provided details of some
example
VLEs that were around when the report was written. These were only to
illustrate using the models. We deliberately didn't attempt to do a
comparative evaluation, because we were acutely aware of how quickly it
would be outdated. What we did instead, was to propose two approaches to
evaluation based on established theoretical foundations (which we made
explicit), so that people could develop their own evaluation criteria
tailored to their own context. I would argue that, although it does
admittedly take more time and effort to construct an evaluation than to
scan
a comparative table, it is unfortunately what you have to do if you are
serious about evaluating what VLE (if any) would work in your
pedagogical
context.

Our view is that there is a desperate need for an informed and
theoretically
sound body of work on pedagogical issues with VLEs and the report
mentioned
was a first attempt to get things kick-started. Many current systems,
IMO,
still fall short of the pedagogic needs of Higher and Further Education.
As
a constructivist, I would argue that what we need to improve them is
more
discussion, not more tickboxes :-)

Sandy Britain

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