Image credit: Anne White (Flickr)
Sometimes the most eye-opening insights seem the most obvious once you’ve heard them. That was certainly the case for me when I listened to Barry Spencer, from Bromley College, talk about VLEs at a recent Partner College meeting.
Barry’s contention was that VLEs are equipped to support two things: course management and learning. He contrasted these two functions and their levels of uptake (in general and over time) within the VLEs of formal education institutions.
In the “course management” bucket would go the obvious things like records of activity, grade/assessment mark information, course handbooks, but also things like lecture notes, handouts, presentation files – essentially anything where the added value is not in the thing itself, but in the way it is provided more efficiently. Handouts or readings fall into this category, because the availability online cuts out the limitation for students of only being able to get/replace them when they can track down a lecturer or School office staff and reduces the need for the lecturer to cart around their own body weight in printed matter. The other thing to remember is that we are not just talking here about lecturers or admin staff managing the course, but also learners managing their own interaction with and use of the course.
The “learning” function, I would guess, fairly obviously includes any way the VLE creates an opportunity intended towards learning; these aren’t necessarily as easy to list as they might first appear (to my mind). For example, a reading isn’t, in itself, an opportunity for learning (which is why I would see handouts, etc. as course management). I would say that it is the activity of doing something with that reading that gives the opportunity (whether that be something explicitly requested by a lecturer, such as writing a summary, or something implicitly understood by the student, such as reading through and attempting to understand the reading). Likewise, a discussion forum isn’t, by the simple act of creating it, offering much of a learning opportunity; like coherent written subject matter if it’s to be much of a success it needs to be well-planned, well-crafted and well-delivered throughout its timespan. Any set of tools or resources can be brokered for learning and, although different activities may be more or less fertile as learning opportunities, they rely heavily on what we do (humans learn from humans, after all, even if mediated through a computer).
Commonly, those involved in championing tech-enhanced learning tend to emphasise the learning function as desired and to be somewhat dismissive (let’s be honest) of the course management function. But I’m not sure that’s fair: effective course management may not be enabling learning directly, but (particularly when the learners are empowered to manage their course, by which I mean the experience of the course that relates directly to them rather than the whole cohort) it’s likely to be freeing up time for other, genuine learning opportunities, whether these are online or not. I’d rather see well-planned online course management than a rush to online activities implemented chaotically. Ideally, of course, there would be well-chosen activities, authentically integrated into the overall course, supported by useful management options; that’s what we’re all working towards, I guess.