‘Unlocking the VLE': a Collaborative approach to developing online learning resources to support and scaffold learning Exploring and Sharing Innovative Practice

‘Working together’

‘Drivers’

‘Students as Partners’ – HEA The idea that students should be partners in their learning is receiving an increasing amount of attention from academics, students, learning and educational developers, researchers, policy makers and other HE professionals across the UK and internationally. It has been suggested that partnerships can create new opportunities for learning and enhance the quality of the student experience.

‘Students as Change Agents’ – HEA –Exeter ‘Students as Change Agents’ is a student-led action research project undertaken at the University of Exeter. It aims to bring together the university’s students’ union known as the Guild of Students, with academic staff and current students, as partners in improving learning and teaching.

‘Technology Enhanced Learning’ ‘Massive Open OnLine Courses’ (MOOCs) and ‘Rhizomatic Learning’. ‘A rhizome is a plant stem which sends out roots and shoots that allow the plant to propagate itself through organic growth into the surrounding habitat’.

…seen as a model for the construction of knowledge, rhizomatic processes suggest the interconnectedness of ideas as well as boundless exploration across many fronts from different starting points.

David Cormier, Manager, Web communications and innovations, University of Prince Edward Island. Principal, Edactive Technologies

‘…the learning experience may build on social, conversational processes, as well as personal knowledge creation, linked into unbounded personal learning networks that merge formal and informal media’ The current interest in ‘MOOCS’ has focused attention on this approach to learning and also on how educators use Virtual Learning Environments (VLEs)

OK but… ‘A powerful concept, though from a technical perspective it’ll need to get over what I see as the biggest obstacle to practically all technology enhanced learning – that students across multiple levels of education are so often denied agency within digital environments. Knowledge can only be constructed by members of the learning community if they are actually allowed to contribute by the technical (and potentially academic) gatekeepers’. Rich Osborne July 26, 2012 at 3:28 pm

‘Unlocking the VLE’ By ‘unlocking’ (and allowing members of the learning community to contribute) we are talking about allowing undergraduate students to develop and edit learning resources within the University’s Virtual Learning Environment Whats’ the problem?

Fear of the Dark Institutional VLEs have traditionally been restricted, in terms of their resource development capabilities, to educational (e)resource developers or academics with responsibility for the delivery of courses or programme modules. Used in this way VLE’s might justifiably be considered as ‘inflexible’ learning environments.

Within the College of Engineering, Mathematics and Physical Sciences at the University of Exeter we have developed an alternative approach to utilising the VLE which enables students to work in partnership with their lecturers and e-learning staff, to develop resources which address the particular needs and specific concerns of learners.

Exeter’s VLE Built on Moodle User roles defined with associated permissions

Our approach Create paid internship opportunities Create ‘sandboxes’ within the VLE Develop resources Embed resources within programme modules

Internship Opportunities

‘Sandboxes’

Method Student focus groups and discussions within social networking sites have enabled students to identify ‘difficult knowledge’ and share strategies for overcoming challenging concepts and revising effectively for exams The interns then develop resources in collaboration with their tutors. Once verified the resources go live in the VLE and feedback on their effectiveness and value is collected

Medical Imaging

Mathematics

‘Livescribe pens’

PHP – formative and summative online assessment

Electronics for Engineers: Core Engineering 2

A sideshoot! The approach to enabling students to create resources within the VLE has informed assessment strategies within some programme modules…

Student Projects

The work at Exeter demonstrates how Virtual Learning Environments can be effectively and responsibly ‘unlocked’ and utilised as a medium for co-creating resources and to support an enhanced community of teaching and learning within a programme of study. The approach also provides opportunities for engaging students in assessment practices and an insight into the ‘dialogue’ of teaching and learning.

Further information and resources available from..

Links to Resources