Virtual Learning Environment

Throughout the last weeks, we’ve been looking at how various technological tools can help us engage and communicate with learners.  While external tools such as social networking sites, blog, independent websites are effective and mostly free-of-charge, your organisation might wish to use something with can sit within the institutional infrastructure.  If that’s the case, what can you do?  The answer is Virtual Learning Environment (VLE)!

Virtual Learning Environment?

JISC defines a VLE as “a collection of integrated tools enabling the management of online learning, providing a delivery mechanism, student tracking, assessment and access to resources” (Quoted from JISC infoNet – Effective Use of Virtual Learning Environments).  Majority of colleges, and many learning providers, now have a VLE in place to support learning and teaching.  VLE can be a single platform (such as Blackboard and Moodle) or an integrated set of tools.  Many institutions are now looking at, if not already, connecting the VLE together with intranet and library catalogue, so staff members and students can use all the facilities with a single-login, anytime and anywhere.

When using effectively, VLE is a powerful tool to make learning more flexible, interactive and personalised.  There’re a lot of discussion on the role VLE can play in learning, and we’re not going to repeat it here.  Have a look around in the internet if you’re interested, sure you’d be able to acquire lots of insight.

Why VLE?

One of the reasons for VLE’s popularity is its security.  Your institution has control on who can access to the platform, which means your staff members and students can conduct activities and exchange ideas in a safe environment.  This is particular useful when safeguarding issues are taken into consideration.  Most VLEs support a wide range of functions, which is also a strength.  You don’t need to use site A for blog, download software B for instant messaging, and register page C for an online forum – You can have all the functions together in one place.  VLEs allow you to upload and store files, so you can have podcasts and videos, without using external host such as YouTube.  As you can probably imagine, if enough traffic can be driven into the VLE, it can serve as an information hub, as well as a starting point to establish a strong online community.

How to use VLE to strengthen learner voice?

Using Moodle as an example, the basic functions you need to create dynamic and interactions are all in place.  For example instant messaging, survey, forum, blog and wiki (Wiki is very useful if you wish to have collaborative writing with a group):

To use VLE effectively in engaging your students, it’s important to:

• Be interactive: a lot of students find their VLE systems “boring”, like a “warehouse” which stores materials only. To attract students to actively log-on and use the system, it’s essential to make it interactive, so they can participate and feel being part of it.  Online forum and “user-generated” content are always good points to start.
• Have a presence: most institutions use their VLEs with a discipline-based approach (it’s natural, as VLE primarily supports learning). While as sudents’ union or student support unit you can’t control how others use the system, but it’s definitely helpful to establish a presence in the system.  Having a quick link or a pop-up box right after students login the system can definitely catch their eyes!
• Link up: Even if you’ve an independent website, a Facebook group, etc. it’s still worth to link them up with the VLE, so as to maximise your chances to reach out to your students.

Remember to work closely with your colleagues at the IT department, they’ll be able to give you advice and support that you need!

Blog – Online presence with a voice

In the last few blog entries, we have discussed how an online presence can be established through social networking sites and independent websites; while these tools are powerful and can effectively disseminate information and maintain a searchable platform, there is one single tool I’d highly recommend on top of them – Blog.

Why blogging?

Unlike other formal communications, blogging enables a mixture of formal and informal communication approaches: Company CEOs talking about their ambition, travellers sharing their experience, students’ union presidents expressing their ideas and thoughts… the unqiue “voice” in between the lines is more engaging and reflective, just like our old friends telling their stories.  At the same time, blog is also a very good tool to provide information and collect feedbacks.  It’s therefore a very popular tool in this social media era.

If you don’t want to spend a lot of time maintain an independent website, and you don’t want to use social networking tools such as Facebook and MySpace, blogging tools can also help you establish an online presence quickly.  For more information on how blog can be used as an alternative to a website, check out information 1 and 2.

What to blog?

The essence of a blog is its update – so you can keep your audience informed anything that you think they’d be be interested in.  For example:

• Event information
• Call for campaign support
• Policy updates
• Meeing highlight
• Discussion of learning issues

Want some ideas on the content and the tone of communication?  Why not checking out some excellent examples from various government and political organisations?

 

 

 

How to blog?

Exisiting blogging tools are pretty user-friendly, so you won’t need a long time to pick the skills up.  However, there’re other issues you need to consider.  Resource planning is very important:

• How often do you plan to blog? (If it’s left in the cold for too long, your audience might lose interest!)
• How many people are involving? (Bringing in different voices is brilliant, but that needs a bit of coordination.)
• Who is responsible for what?
• What kind of tone of language would you adopt?
• Do you have other tools to help you create content? (E.g. Camcorders, audio recorders, etc.)
• Should your blog be hosted externally (E.g. with WordPress or Blogger)? Within your organisation’s website? Or within VLE (Most VLE supports blogging function)?
• How would you integrate your blog to your wider communication strategy?

Need more ideas?  Check them out:
Imperial College Union Blog
Your Lewisham College (This blog is establised by college members, but open for individual students to submit entries for publication. This idea is quite interesting and has made good use of the “collaborative power” in the social media era.)

More on Online Presence

Last time we’ve discussed how social networking sites could establish our online presence.  While these tools come handy, it might not be able to give the much control you wish to have (e.g. layout, colours, functionality, etc.).  In that case, building up an independent website (not pages attached to a wider organisational website) might be a better option for you.

How to build up a website?

If this question was posed 10 years ago, you probably would come up with things like Html, Dreamweaver, Frontpage, etc.  While harnessing those tools can give you space and freedom for creativity, these days we don’t need to sweat for it.  If you are from an educational establishment, there are website service providers which provide their supoort with no cost (Note that there are terms and conditions which you might wish to consider carefully before commissioning) – BAM and On Campus are two commonly used providers in FE and HE sector. 

This kind of service can help you handle ”problems” of hosting your website or file storage (e.g. media files such as videos and podcast can take up much space).  They usually have a standard website layout, but you can tailor the colour scheme, banners, breakdown of the websites and applications plug-in to suit your needs.  Alternatively, if you’re not planning for a very complicated website, you can use blogging services to present the essential information and updates of your organisation (WordPress is getting more popular for this purpose).  Check out explaination 1 and 2 if you’re interested in this option. 

How to present information on the website?

Once you’ve the website structure set up, you can then think of the information you wish to present to your audience.  Castle College Nottingham Students’ Union website demonstrates a user-friendly, simple and clear example:

I’m sure you’ve the same experience which you found a website disorganised, out-of-date or you couldn’t find the piece of information you needed until the 10th click.  That was not pleasant was it?  Bear this in mind, it is important to plan ahead:

• Analyse what your audience mostly need and are interested in, so to make the website accessible.
• Arrange the information in such a way that people can find the essential info (such as organisational introduction, staff contact, important resources, etc.) easily, while picking up news and updates at the same time.
• Use simple applications and plug-ins such as event calendar, comment box and survey tools to support your operation and interaction.

What else to consider?

Establishing and maintaining an online presence is about building up a connection – a platform where your audience can get to you, and give you feedback when appropriate.  Merely “having a space” somewhere on the World Wide Web is not enough, when you think about the endless number of websites and resources in the virtual space.  It is important, therefore, to keep your audience engaged and coming back to you from time to time.  A few tips on that:

• Interesting materials such as videos, photos, podcasts which are relevant to your audience can always spice up the website a bit, compared to pure text.
• It’d be advisable to have functionalities in place to assist people with visual impairment.
• Make sure your website are up-to-date: who wants to click into a page with nothing newer than 6 months?
• Keeping up the content and maintainence can be time-consuming: do share the workload in your team systematically.
• Also service providers in the market can usually give you technical support, it’d be helpful to have in-house support, e.g. IT students volunteering for website maintenance.

Next time we’ll talk about blogging – another option for online presence, or a good tool to engage with your own voice!

Online Presence

Situation: You need some basic information of an organisation, what would you do?
A. Ask your friends/family
B. Call the organisation’s enquiry line
C. Check out the organisation’s website

I bet you’d come up with answer D – Google it.   Even when we wish to get a phone number, or check out a website, the very first thing we do is to locate the information by using search engine.  It’s simply the way how we acquire information nowadays.   With this in mind, our next question should be: how should we establish ourselves and reach out with our online presence, so that people who are interested in our work can locate and keep in touch with us?

How to establish an online presence?

To make your organisation/group searchable, you need a website somewhere in the world of World Wide Web.  This can be in the format of an page on social networking site, a “normal” website, or a blog.  All these tools serve the same function – being there, disseminating information, and interacting with your potential audience – but they also have different nature and functionality which can suit different needs.  In the coming few entries, we’re going to look at these tools one by one, and what needs to be considered in a wider context.

Social Networking

It is not just about partying and fun!  By using it effectively, social networking can strengthen the community power – people connecting with each other, information passing on through word of mouth, etc.  Mirroring our interest in knowing what our family and friends are up to, our audience probably also want to receive updates from the groups/clubs/societies they feel they belong to, and give feedbacks when necessary.  Tool such as Facebook Page is useful to provide a user-friendly, simple platform to establish our online presence quickly:

• It has interactive functions such as online forum, comments, uploading photos and videos (Note: Administrators do have control on the right of files upload, so you can decide whether you allow your students to use this function), which makes it more participative an engaging that traditional websites.
• Unlike some other social networking sites or pages within the virtual learning environment (VLE) systems, individuals do not need to be a member to read the page.  This is important if you wish to open a window for perspective students and alumni to keep in touch with you (VLE, on the other hand, is more secure yet not as helpful for establishing online presence).
• With the “status update” and “announcement” functions, information and updates can be “put” directly onto their news feed pages, without them checking out your page.  This subscription function is very powerful way to reach out.
• It gives you full control on the content of the page, unlike attaching a few webpages on a wider organisational website (e.g. a webpage of students’ union in a college website).

(Examples: City College Norwich Facebook Page; NUS Further Education Zone)

Which Social Networking site to choose?

Facebook is just one of the examples.  To consider which tool to pick, we have to take a look at:

• Which tool(s) do our audience mostly use? (E.g. Twitter is so popular now, especially in organisational and professional context. But do your students normally have a twitter account? Are they interested in it? If not you might need to consider whether it’d be suitable for you.)
• Which tool(s) can best fit in our wider communication planning/strategy?
• Which tool(s) would subject the least access problems with the access policy of your organisation? (If the tool is banned on campus it might not be ideal)

Also make sure you familiarise yourself with the tool before using it for your organisation!  We do want to establish a good online presence, don’t we?

Next time we’ll talk about what you need to do to set up a website!