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Virtual learning environment

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File:Moodle 1.3 sample course screengrab.png
Moodle Learning Management System with a navigation system and online community building tools.

A Virtual Learning Environment (VLE) is a software system designed to facilitate teachers in the management of educational courses for their students, especially by helping teachers and learners with course administration. The system can often track the learners' progress, which can be monitored by both teachers and learners. While often thought of as primarily tools for distance education, they are most often used to supplement the face-to-face classroom.

These systems usually run on servers, using one or more databases and a programming or scripting language such as PHP to serve the course to students as internet pages.

Components of these systems usually include templates for content pages, discussion forums, chat, quizzes and exercises such as multiple-choice, true/false and one-word-answer. Teachers fill in these templates and then release them for learners to use. New features in these systems include blogs and RSS. Services generally provided include access control, provision of e-learning content, communication tools, and administration of the user groups.

Similar Terms

It is a computer program that facilitates computerised learning or e-learning. Such e-learning systems are sometimes also called Learning Management Systems (LMS), Course Management System (CMS), Managed Learning Environments (MLE), education via computer-mediated communication (CMC) or Online Education.

Also called Managed Learning Environment (MLE), Learning Management System (LMS), Course Management System (CMS), Learning Support System (LSS) or Learning Platform (LP).

In the United Kingdom and many European countries the terms VLE and MLE are favoured. Becta in the UK have coined the term LP to cover both MLE and VLE as used in the schools sector. In the United States, CMS and LMS are the more common terms, however LMS is more frequently associated with software for managing corporate training programs rather than courses in traditional education institutions.

Facilities

A VLE should make it possible for a course designer to present to students, through a single, consistent, and intuitive interface, all the components required for a course of education or training. Although logically it is not a requirement, in practice VLEs always make extensive use of computers and the Internet. An VLE should implement all the following elements:

  • The syllabus for the course
  • Administrative information including the location of sessions, details of pre-requisites and co-requisites, credit information, and how to get help
  • A noticeboard for up-to-date course information
  • Student registration and tracking facilities, if necessary with payment options
  • Basic teaching materials. These may be the complete content of the course, if the VLE is being used in a distance learning context, or copies of visual aids used in lectures or other classes where it is being used to support a campus-based course.
  • Additional resources, including reading materials, and links to outside resources in libraries and on the Internet.
File:Webct-screenshot.png
WebCT Learning Management System with a navigation menu and icons giving access to automated tools and content pages.
  • Self-assessment quizzes which can be scored automatically
  • Formal assessment procedures
  • Electronic communication support including e-mail, threaded discussions and a chat room, with or without a moderator
  • Differential access rights for instructors and students
  • Production of documentation and statistics on the course in the format required for institutional administration and quality control
  • All these facilities should be capable of being hyperlinked together
  • Easy authoring tools for creating the necessary documents including the insertion of hyperlinks - though it is acceptable (arguably, preferable) for the VLE to be designed so that standard word processors or other office software can be used for authoring.

In addition, the VLE should be capable of supporting numerous courses, so that students and instructors in a given institution (and, indeed, across institutions) experience a consistent interface when moving from one course to another.

Popularity

File:OpenUSS.jpg
Open University Support System

Universities and other institutions of higher education are increasingly turning to VLEs in order to:

  • Economise on the time of teaching staff, especially when they are also involved in research and administration. The extent of the economy over traditional "talk-and-chalk" teaching is not yet clear, but using an VLE almost certainly absorbs less instructor time (and requires less expertise, while producing a more professional result) than creating a home-grown website for a course.
  • Provide a service for students who increasingly look to the internet as the natural medium for finding information and resources.
  • Ensure that quality control requirements are met by providing a standard vehicle for collecting the required information
  • Facilitate the integration of distance and campus-based learning. or of learning on different campuses.

In the UK 11-16 schools are being encouraged to make use of Learning Platforms. The DfES in the UK government has published an eStrategy outlining priorities that include every learner in schools having access to an online learning space and e-portfolio.

Transferring Course Content

A major problem with solutions available at the start of 2005 is that there is often no easy way of transferring a course site from one package to another, so that the considerable investment in time required to fit a course to one VLE package is likely to be wasted if an institution changes its VLE supplier, if an instructor moves from one institution to another that uses a different VLE, or if institutions using different VLEs wish to collaborate. Some organizations have addressed this issue by defining standards for learning objects, such as the Shareable Content Object Reference Model (SCORM) used by the US Department of Defense and the IMS Global Content Packaging specification.

The ability to exchange course data will be increased in as systems start to publish their course metadata in a metadata registry. This allows Vocabulary-based transformation.

Some institutions have attempted to combat this problem by agreeing in collaboratives to share common platforms. Use of open source VLEs such as Moodle have more recently enabled institutions to share content more easily. For the schools sector in the UK the DfES via Becta has defined a Learning Platform "conformance framework" to encourage interoperability.

Systems available

For those wishing to deliver e-learning there are many free open source and several proprietary VLEs available for use. Open source VLEs are increasingly popular and can be easily installed and customised with little programming knowledge.

Setting up an VLE typically requires access to a web server which supports the language that the VLE is written in (PHP is common), as well as a database backend. MySQL and PostgreSQL are popular whilst proprietary backends like MS SQL and Oracle are not frequently used with open source VLEs.

Given the rising popularity of functional free systems will reduce the restrictive cost of proprietary VLEs or drive them to focus on particular niches. For example, Knowlagent is now designed to integrate with the PBX systems of call centers and push content during times of low call volume.

Open Source

The community which surrounds a particular open source VLE is often the determining factor in its success. New or less popular open source VLEs might be distributed "as is," leaving the user to fend for themselves. Popular VLEs however, (such as Moodle and Dokeos ) provide both free tech support communities as well as pay-for-support vendors from a variety of sanctioned companies.

Commercial

There are a number of commercial (proprietary, closed source)VLE software packages available.

See also

References

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