In February 2004, Auricle initiated a series of articles The Weblog as the Model for a New Type of VLE? based on the contention that the weblog perhaps offered us the basis of a new type of online learning environment; an environment where dynamic communication and knowledge/resource sharing was key. Well I'm back to this theme because there's now at least one emergent example of what I meant. For those readers wishing to revisit the earlier postings on this theme the MLE/VLE/Portals section of our View by Category page provides quick access.
Lisa Williams recent article ePortfolios, but not as we know them caught my attention and Lisa reinforced my interest by sending me an email invitation to join her in the Learning Landscape proof-of-concept implementation by the University of Edinburgh's David Tosh and Ben Werdmuller … called mysteriously ELGG.
So I duly registered with ELGG and found myself in an environment which, I believe, shows considerable promise.
So how does the rather abstract concept of a Learning Landscape translate into concrete form? An extreme simplification of ELGG could identify four key ingredients: a weblog, social networking, syndication, and resource sharing.
The weblog functionality of ELGG could mature into an attractive solution for institutions or organisations seeking to set up their open-source hosted weblog solution but by giving users the ability to self define who are their 'friends' and 'groups' and eventually 'communities' makes ELGG much more than a weblog … more a weblog on steroids and with attitude 🙂
What do I mean? Well, if I can identify other users with similar interests registered on the system, form my own 'club' and invite them to join, and have control over who can read my postings or view my file uploads in a finely grained way then I've got the basis of a pretty powerful communication, socializing and learning toolset.
Also, since what my friends say, or the files they upload, are of interest to me what about a system that provides an alternative weblog view which aggregates my friends' postings with my own and enables me to access resources they have declared shareable with their groups of 'friends'?
Some things in ELGG do need refining, e.g. the aggregation of 'friends' blogs requires finer control so that a user isn't overwhelmed by postings from other users. Aggregations of postings from a user's self-defined groups would be more useful. Also, while I love the fact I can upload a file and set my fine grained permissions so that only my groups can access it this does mean there could be a lot of copies of the same resource being uploaded into the system by different people. Some sort of searchable library/repository of files/resources would enable users to make an informed decision about whether to make an individual upload or not would be handy.
ELGG is certainly a user-centric environment which puts a lot of power into the hands of individuals and not necessarily the institution. Being open source, however, I could envisage an institution modifying ELGG so that central systems defined users, groups and communities. Perhaps a good compromise would be for central systems to do that but leave users with the ability to define their own as well.
So how could we use ELGG? Project groups and research teams should certainly be interested in the communication and sharing emphasis. And, yes, ELGG certainly fits into the ePortfolio category which was its genesis; but the more I looked at it the more I came to the conclusion that it can be much much more than any of this. It's certainly possible to support a 'course' with ELGG so this brings me back to the key question, i.e. is ELGG an example of a weblog as the model for a new type of VLE?
It's free to try and it's going to be open source so it would seem to deserve the recognition and support of the HE community. Let's hope it gets it.
For those wanting further information, a useful orientation is a recording of the live webcast on The Learning Landscape: a conceptual framework for ePortfolios that the developers David Tosh and Ben Werdmuller delivered recently (Macromedia Breeze presentation) via BCcampus. There's also some more very useful online tutorials available from the ELGG site (also Macromedia Breeze).
Just to round things off; there's a new Auricle podcast in which I interview David Tosh, one of the developers of ELGG. During the interview we explore some of issues above in a bit more depth. Just click on the 'Podcast' icon at the bottom of the righ-hand menu or set your podcasting application to http://www.bath.ac.uk/e-learning/Download/podcasts/auriclepodcasts.xml.
For the technically minded, the interview was recorded using the open source Audacity sound recorder/editor and Skype, the 'free' VoIP system. David was interviewed at his home in Edinburgh and I was based in my office at Bath. IMHO the quality is very acceptable and it sure beats jumping on a plane with an audio recorder and travelling to Edinburgh (much as I love the city) or doing an interview over the plain old telephone system without access to expensive recording equipment and a second telephone line.
