Oleg and all
I have been watching the debate about standards/VLE capabilities vs
Pedagogical and other viewpoints with great interest. I have refrained from
replying to the list up to now because I wanted to see what developed. As I
am no longer the JISC MLE Coordinator I though it important that others
should take up the baton of the standards issues. IMHO I believe that ALL
these views are as important as one and other - that is that no one view
takes a higher precedence than the other. As John Gray (and I) in our
various presentations across the country emphasised it is essential that
progress is made on all the fronts concurrently. To allow one part to lag
behind will cause an implementation problem (just as much as if one element
is further ahead as can be seen from this debate). However this does require
a coherent strategic implementation that takes all these elements together
(and makes progress on them all).
One plea to everyone - Just because standards and specifications are seen as
(rightly) very important it does not make them more important than all the
other viewpoints. And they are definitely not exclusive - inclusive
approaches bringing all these elements together (and not working against one
another) are what is required.
Regards
=====================
Richard Everett
Head of ICLT
Oaklands College
St Albans City Campus
St Peters Road
St Albans
Hertfordshire
AL1 3RX
Tel 01727 737191
Fax 01727 737280
=====================
-----Original Message-----
From: Oleg Liber [mailto:[log in to unmask]]
Sent: 25 February 2002 12:42
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: Can we talk about the benefits of VLE to students?
I have a lot of sympathy with Peter's points in his last message. In my
view, it is only valid to pursue eLearning if there is some benefit for
learners and teachers, either in quality or access or both. The access
question concerns removing the time and place constraints for learning
activities, and how eLearning enables this is well elaborated. The quality
question is less well sorted out. If eLearning is just about shipping
content around, then in my view the model that implies will never lead to
quality improvement. I have not yet seen content that is so good that it can
completely replace interaction between people - expert teachers and willing
learners. For me the promise and potential added benefit of eLearning is in
the potential expansion of communication (I prefer conversation) between
people involved in the learning/teaching process. This includes asynchronous
discussions, chat, shared browsing and simultaneous discussion of resources,
collaborative working on projects, group participation in simulations,
educational games, and so on. These require skillful teaching, planning and
moderation, just as face to face teaching does. I find the current
preoccupation with content disappointing, buit I accept that there is a need
for materials to support the teaching and learning process, so that as a
teacher I can point to resources and suggest that learners read or otherwise
use them. But I want these materials to be there to support my interactions
with the learners, and I want to adapt them depending on my constantly
emerging knowledge of the learners as our learning conversations unfold.
So what I want from a VLE/MLE is a set of tools that help me with managing
my conversations - keeping track of who said what to whom and in what
context, developing situations for more effective learning interactions and
collaborations, and to help me to build a rich picture of learners'
developing understanding, which I can also manage and refer to when needed.
As a learner, I would want to be able to also manage my conversations and
collaborative activities with teachers and peers, and to record my learning
as it emerges in a way that will allow me to revisit this and to make
connections with previous learning, my learning ambitions, and be able to
reflect on these.
Most current VLEs are not only a long way from supporting this because of
their preoccupation with a content model of learning, aiming for their holy
grail of the perfect piece of content, that a learner can engage with and
achieve perfect understanding. This is not achievable, IMHO, but the result
of this pedagogic standpoint is that the incredible conversational
possibilities of internet based technology is to a large extent ignored by
VLE vendors - a bit of chat and a threaded discussion if you're lucky.
It may be that the content approach will win out for the forthcoming period,
and it can be made to succeed if all that learners want is certification.
But it will fail to provide better learning.
There is much more I would like to say on this topic - where (and which)
interoperability standards can help with this vision, what future eLearning
might be like (not like current VLEs), but I'll save that for later.
Oleg Liber
Peter Trethewey wrote:
>I don't think I see the wood for the standards trees.
>
>Why are we talking about VLE/MLE?
>
--
Oleg Liber [log in to unmask]
Director tel:+44(0)1248 383645
Centre for Learning Technology fax:+44(0)1248 361429
University of Wales, Bangor web:http://celt.bangor.ac.uk
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