It’s not all bad in the world our two favourite LMS/OLE/CMS/VLE etc. etc. providers, the Plagiarism Resource Site posting some good news about SafeAssignment working well in Blackboard (so there is an alternative to Turn it in!) and from Blackboard in Practice a romantic story about how “two different Blackboard users, hundreds of miles from each other, found themselves looking for something very similar”. This delightful story looks at the successful formation of user groups based around the use of Bb, which is wonderful of course. It is interesting to note, however, that at least one of these communities is, um, based around a Yahoo group… and yet Bb seems to want to catalyse community… not with Bb of course though… I wonder why that is ;o)
On a more serious note there have been a couple of excellent articles coming from Simon Walton over the xmas period who asks “why VLEs cannot be more open and flexible to allow better creativity and construction of learning – the development and features seem to be wedded to a very old-fashioned view” and in some detail examines the VLEs in some detail and finds through evaluations that:
“VLEs by their functionality & tools break down into three areas:
– content and support (e.g. WebCT)
– Collaborative product (e.g. Colloquia)
– MOO/MUD type structures (e.g. Bodington)This means that most VLEs tend to stick with what they are good at and do not move into the wider requirements for a fulfilled learning environment.” [Simon Walton]
.
Comments are closed.