Nearly at the end of the June EdTech Challenge … and with day 28 we’re asked about our ‘golden EdTech oldies’.
For me the most standout, as an ‘oldie’ (the presentation, not James) was James Clay and his 2009 ALTC presentation ‘The VLE is dead’:
Here are three important posts from James on his blog, on this topic, which will help those not aware of the death of the VLE –
- September 2009 – The VLE is dead
- January 2012 – The VLE is alive and kicking
- September 2019 – The VLE is still dead
Despite the opening, and maybe controversial salvo in 2009 (it certainly got people talking) in the love/hate relationship many of us have/had with our VLE, James made me think longer and harder about my own use of the VLE (at the time, Blackboard), but also the impact I was having in my role as a Learning Technologists in ‘forcing’ the use of the VLE on staff and students.
Until then, and we’re only talking a couple of years, I’d been willfully bumbling along extolling the VLEs purpose and benefits, shoe-horning everything and anything I could fit into the VLE, to the point where I was rounding the corners of square bricks to fit the round, VLE-shaped hole.
This made me think for myself, and think more critically about the VLE features I used and promoted, the purpose of those features, and whether the VLE and these features benefitted the student or individual academic, or just the faculty or administrators? Did the VLE need all those community or unit/module spaces, or was one enough with decent signposting and initiation? What really happens to the student’s voice when it’s distilled down to a community discussion forum?
The VLE may not be dead, but it is bleeding heavily and the younger generation are hot on it’s heals, learning from its mistakes and providing a better experience. Will the VLE survive? Should the VLE survive?
- This is Day 28 of the 30-day JuneEdTechChallenge. Follow the challenge on my JuneEdTechChallenge blog tag and on Twitter using the #JuneEdTechChallenge hashtag. And write your own entries too. The list of challenges is as follows:
