Presentation at EdTech15 Conference

1. What's on the Horizon for the
VLE: extinction or evolution?
Enda Donlon | Eamon Costello | Mark Brown

2. Image attribution: https://www.flickr.com/photos/jarbo/9379813470

3. VLE Saturation/Penetration in HE
“…their presence is
ubiquitous in higher
education, with 99% of
colleges and universities
currently reporting they have
an LMS”
“Global learning
management system (LMS)
revenue was estimated at
$1.9–2.6 billion
in 2013, with projected
growth to $7.8 billion by
2018”
(Dahlstrom, Brooks & Bichsel, 2014, p.5)
National Forum Consultation
27/27 HEIs using a ‘Main VLE’
(some using more than one)

4. Reflecting on the VLE/LMS
“Evaluation activity in reviewing
VLE provision is now well
established across the sector, with
half of the institutions which
responded to the Survey having
conducted reviews over the last
two years” (UCISA, 2014, p.3)
Ireland
- Cross-Institutional Survey: 2008, 2011, 2013, 2015
- Internal institutional reviews ongoing

5. “The VLE/LMS is Dead” (Weller, 2007)
“Scott Leslie has coined the term “Loosely coupled teaching”, for the
assembly of a number of different, third party apps to do your teaching
with. This differs from a PLE in that it is still the educator who provides
the tools, they just bypass the institutional systems”

6. “The VLE/LMS is Dead” is not dead

7. The VLE is Dead: Resurrection

8. Over to You!

9. What has the VLE
ever done for us?

11. Stability

13. Security

15. Online Assessment

17. Consistency of Experience
Integration with IT Systems
MOOCs
Widening Access
POVLs

19. The LMS is like...
“the LMS is the minivan of
education. Everyone has
them and needs them, but
there’s a certain shame in
having one in the
driveway”
(Hill, 2015)
“the LMS is more like a
bus than a minivan -
someone else is driving, it
only travels on a pre-
arranged route, the bus is
often late but you still
have to be on time
because it won't wait if
you miss it”
(Downes, 2015)
Image Attribution: https://www.flickr.com/photos/kenlund/66837383

20. Trends supporting emergence of PLE in
Higher Education (Gillet & Na Li, 2015)
formal INFORMAL
teaching LEARNING
closed OPEN
Local GLOBAL

21. “VLEs, while valuable as tools for
course management and
communications, have evidently not
been deployed to their full pedagogical
potential: evidence points to their use
primarily as a mechanism for storing
documents and transferring
information” (p.40)
teaching LEARNING

22. Source: Risquez et al., 2013

23. Source: Risquez et al., 2013

24. teaching LEARNING
“… the majority of faculty do not take advantage of advanced LMS
capabilities that have the potential to improve student outcomes.”
(Dahlstrom, Brooks & Bichsel, 2014)

25. “What is clear is that the LMS has been highly successful in
enabling the administration of learning but less so in enabling
learning itself. Tools such as the grade book and mechanisms
for distributing materials such as the syllabus are invaluable
for the management of a course, but these resources
contribute, at best, only indirectly to learning success. (Brown,
Dehoney & Millichap, 2015, p.2).
teaching LEARNING
VLE is also known as:
• Learning Management System (LMS)
• Course Management System (CMS)
• Learning Content Management System (LCMS)

26. Shift from Students as Consumers to
Students as Creators [Key Trend]
“A shift is taking place in the focus of
pedagogical practice in universities and
institutions of technology in Ireland as
students across a wide variety of disciplines
are learning by making and creating rather
than from the simple consumption of
content.” (p.6)
teaching LEARNING
“… educators are often trying to design
new, innovative learning models that
must be integrated with outdated, pre-
existing technology and virtual learning
environments” (p. 8).

27. VLE/LMS User Hierarchy (example)
teaching LEARNING

28. closed OPEN
Increasing Focus on
OERs
Mid-range trend: 3-5
years)
Proliferation of Open
Educational Resources
Mid-term trend: 3-5
years)
Open Content
Time to adoption: 2-3
years

29. Recommendation 3:
• “Institutions will adopt open
education principles with regard
to teaching and learning
resources and practices”
• “Open educational resources will
be developed and shared
nationally through institutional
or shared repositories”
closed OPEN

30. “…most LMS implementations still lack
elementary capacities to publish to and interact
with the wider web and the public. By
restricting online teaching and learning activity
to these closed systems, colleges and
universities make a mockery of oft-stated values
such as social engagement, public knowledge,
and the mission of promoting enlightenment
and critical inquiry in society...”

31. “…also cuts students off from each other and
the institution. Courses are severely limited in
the ability to access other courses even within
the institution (so much for "connecting silos"),
and when courses end, students are typically
cast out, unable to refer to past activity in their
ongoing studies or in their lives (so much for
"promoting lifelong learning").
(Groom and Lamb, 2014)

32. (Back) over to You!

33. Back to that Horizon…
Image Attribution: https://www.flickr.com/photos/artbystevejohnson/4607812720

35. On the Horizon? Interoperability
LTI: Learning Tools Interoperability (http://developers.imsglobal.org/catalog.html)

36. On the Horizon? Next Generation VLE?
“…the NGVLE might include a traditional LMS as
a component, it will not itself be a single
application like the current LMS or other
enterprise applications. Rather, the NGDLE will
be an ecosystem of sorts…”
“The model for the NGDLE architecture may be
the mash-up […] uses a heterogeneity of
components to produce a homogeneity of
function.” (Brown, Dehoney & Millichap, 2015)

37. On the Horizon? 4G LMS?
“Fourth generation LMSs will be characterized
by the unencumbered ability for users to
choose a preferred client or app to access the
LMS in a way that is similar to how one can
choose a preferred client (or build one’s own) to
use Twitter. The LMS will also begin to present
itself as a service following standard protocols
for common abstract LMS actions such as
“submit assignment” or “grade quiz”.
(Kroner, 2014)

38. Final Thoughts … ? …
“Higher education is moving away from its traditional
emphasis on the instructor, however, replacing it with a focus
on learning and the learner. Higher education is also moving
away from a standard form factor for the course,
experimenting with a variety of course models. These
developments pose a dilemma for any LMS whose design is
still informed by instructor-centric, one-size-fits-all
assumptions about teaching and learning. They also account
for the love/hate relationship many in higher education have
with the LMS. The LMS is both “it” and “not it”—useful in
some ways but falling short in others.”
(Brown, Dehoney & Millichap, 2015, p.2).