If you're working in the learning technology arena and feel pretty satisfied that you've got things pretty well bedded down in your institutions, based on a good well established relationship with your VLE vendors, then you certainly don't want to read this. Since the inception of Auricle I've argued in one form or another that e-learning as we currently know it has for many institutions been largely defined by whatever major proprietary VLE the institution has selected and supports. If you are new to this thread of argument or want to revisit it then select 'View by Category' from the right-hand menu and you'll find all the relevant articles in the VLE/MLE/Portals category.
So you don't believe me and want to counterclaim that the VLE is unimportant because it's the pedagogy which people focus on?
Then select a senior member of faculty or the executive and ask them to tell you about e-learning in the institution. The chances are that early in the response will come back the name of whatever VLE.
“Off course we've got the e-learning we've got product xyz to prove it!” 🙂
Excluding the learning technologists or faculty e-learning champions, for many faculty e-learning is the VLE.
Also, how much so called e-learning is really a proprietary VLE being used as a convenient content repository? If so, such services should surely be provided by simpler systems not attracting annual licensing fees?
But the winds of change are beginning to blow and I'm sure at least some of the current e-learning 'establishment' aren't going to like it. E-Learning is still relatively new and we could perhaps assume it's proponents are innovators, risk takers, change agents, challengers of the status-quo.
But is this actually the case?
One of the consequences of the headlong rush to off-the-shelf proprietary VLEs has, I would argue, created a level of conservatism and potential resistance to change that is, to understate the case, 'unfortunate' and may yet cost us dear. Anyone who has invested considerable time, effort, reputation and university finance in locking their institution into a long-term 'relationship' with a specific vendor is hardly going to find it easy to recommend their institution should now contemplate changing horses or courses. Instead they will opt for 'evolutionary change' in line with what their chosen vendor will allow. As we know, however, evolution is characterized by apparently long periods of stability interspersed with short extinction events followed by new species moving into the niche so created 🙂
So into this milieu comes the absolute flurry of programmes, projects and papers emerging from the JISC E-Learning Programme and Distributed E-Learning Programme. From here we find such enlightenment as: A Review of Learning Design: Concept Specification and Tools; Strategic Overview: HEFCE-Funded Distributed E-Learning Programme 2004-06 (Word document); A Technical Framework to Support E-Learning; and, most recently, JISC Circular 3/04 Call for Projects to Develop E-Learning Tools for Learners and Teachers (Word document). And that's only some of what's available.
Now whilst the quantity of the above could easily induce cognitive overload I do encourage readers to persist. You may be looking at the future shape of e-learning infrastructure and you wouldn't want to miss that would you?
At least read as much of Scott Wilson et al's paper A Technical Framework to Support e-Learning (Word doc) as you can digest and then follow that with the Sakai project's White Paper A Comparison between the JISC and Sakai Frameworks (PDF document).
Now it seems to me that much of recent JISC output is at least exciting and full of promise but I still have the concerns I expressed in my Auricle article E-Learning Flexible Frameworks and Tools: Is it too late?.
Also, the JISC 3/04 E-Learning Tools for Learners and Teacher call perhaps indicates that the barrier to entry to e-learning development is getting higher with development teams needing to be grounded in the minutiae of web services, interoperability, and technical frameworks, as well as pedagogy … this is way beyond questions of what VLE is best and perhaps implies the presence of significant teams (distributed or centralized) who can tackle major initiatives such as this. How many institutions now support such teams, and does this, therefore, bias such development towards bigger institutions?
Now while I like much of what JISC is proposing, let's now kid ourselves that it's a nice tidy interoperable world out there where everyone will get behind the services, tools and components model. The biggest impediment I see to the vision is those vested interests who will apparently embrace the vision but somehow will still manage to operate a classic 'lock in' model.
Finally, if we could but synergize the JISC vision and the nascent Higher Education Academy vision then that would be even more promising, but that's another Auricle article for another day.
