Yazan: Niall | 26 February 2013 | No Comments
Categories: Architecture, OU VLE
Accessing online content and services has become a vital part of the OU experience. The virtual learning environment has been carefully designed over the last seven years and has some excellent features such as a custom-built forum tool and quiz engine. Meanwhile we have other systems such as StudentHome, Open Learn and Library Services, full [...]
Yazan: Niall | 06 May 2011 | 2 Comments
Categories: Architecture, Moodle, OU VLE, Uncategorized
Fed up being force-fed a whole lot of stuff of no great interest to you in your university’s virtual learning environment? Want to view only the parts of most relevance to your own learning – and blend them in with your other interests such as news, weather and sports updates? The Open University is now [...]
Yazan: niall | 01 October 2010 | No Comments
Categories: Architecture, Collaboration, ePortfolios
Our pilot roll-out of Google Apps is going well. To date we’ve invited 12,000 students and nearly 2,000 of them have signed up. At the moment it’s up to students what they do with the tools and we’re staying out. The possible uses for formal learning though are intriguing and I just had a chat [...]
Yazan: niall | 23 September 2009 | 6 Comments
Categories: Announcements, Architecture, Collaboration, Moodle, OU VLE, Web 2.0
Much of the criticism levelled at virtual learning environments / learning management systems relates to the control of the environment by the institution rather than the learner. The individual student has minimal ability to upload their own content or to set up collaborative tools unless this has been pre-ordained by the institution. The argument goes [...]
Yazan: niall | 09 September 2009 | 8 Comments
Categories: Architecture, Web 2.0
The Association for Learning Technology’s annual conference currently underway in Manchester included a well-hyped session called “The VLE is Dead”. The debate included a number of well-rehearsed viewpoints on both sides of the divide between those who would like to do away with institutional learning systems and those who see them as essential (if perhaps [...]
Yazan: niall | 08 May 2009 | 13 Comments
Categories: Architecture, Moodle, OU VLE, Policies
A group of us met earlier in the year from my office and from Learning and Teaching Solutions at the Open University to discuss some of our ideas around the future development of our Moodle-based VLE/LMS. Out of this discussion emerge, I think, some principles which could be taken into account when looking at new [...]
Yazan: niall | 27 April 2009 | 2 Comments
Categories: Architecture, OU VLE
I’ve just been at a workshop with my colleagues Tony Hirst, Ross Mackenzie, Martin Weller and others looking at how the OU’s virtual learning environment could be enhanced by closer integration with other systems elsewhere. This could work both ways so that: Live data from other systems is integrated within OU course content, and OU [...]
Yazan: niall | 13 May 2008 | 2 Comments
Categories: Architecture, Moodle, Web 2.0
In the heart of downtown post-industrial Manchester, currently basking in sweltering Mediterranean temperatures, Blackboard is hosting its European Conference, BbWorld Europe ‘08. Michael Feldstein has described the attack on Blackboard’s market share from Moodle. Whether this has anything to do with the negative publicity surrounding Blackboard’s patents, reported on extensively by Stephen Downes and Jim [...]
Yazan: niall | 08 February 2008 | No Comments
Categories: Architecture, Moodle, OU VLE
This is a major issue for universities. Back-end integration work is carried out so that details of which courses students are signed up to and which lecturers/teachers/tutors are assigned to them are generally passed from the central systems to the VLE. There are other types of integration too such as passing assessment results from the [...]
Yazan: niall | 30 January 2008 | No Comments
Categories: Architecture, Moodle
Unless I’m missing something it’s not obvious from Blackboard’s website what their future development roadmap is but a recent posting to the Blackboard Midlands User Group, pointed out by A.J.Cann shows some of the things that are being talked about for the v9.0 release due in January 2009. What can users of other VLEs/LMSs learn [...]