Managing education online

Well, I'm back on the air after another short but intensive and devastating burst of assignment writing. It's certainly not over yet, but in the last week I've submitted two assignments and have just 1 exam and two more assignments to go and come November 6, I'm a free man until session 1 next year.

A lot of people who are enrolled to study in my courses are distance students. In fact, all year the most students I have had in my class as been 4, which was in the first week of Session 1. In Session 2, the most has been 2, and several times it has been just me and the lecturer, which can be awkward if you find yourself drifting off to sleep (I attend evening classes straight after work, so this isn't an uncommon occurrence). There's nowhere to hide when you're the only student in the classroom!

Given the high proportion of distance students, my courses make heavy use an outdated version of the virtual learning environment (VLE) WebCT, which is now a wholly-owned subsidiary of another VLE giant, Blackboard. I'm not fond of WebCT, or at least not this version. The university's licence for this version of WebCT runs out at the end of this academic year, I believe, and they held some usability trials earlier this year on alternative programs. Unfortunately I couldn't take part in them at the time due to time constraints, which is a shame because it would have been fun to play around with them. I think the final choice has come down to two different versions of WebCT, which could be an even bigger shame, but I guess only time will tell.

I have recently come across in my travels two very cool looking online VLE packages - Moodle and Digication.

Moodle is a free, open source VLE package that was designed here in Australia and is based around the open source standards PHP and either a MySQL or PostgresSQL relational database. Apart from having the "geek chic" appeal of being free and built on open source materials, Moodle looks damn nice, from what I can see. However, I think my institution eventually discounted introducing Moodle because of perceived problems in implementation and ongoing support without a "go to" company. I have no idea if that is a legitimate complaint or of they fell victim to some FUD (fear, uncertainty and doubt). Given that according to the Moodle stats page, there are 29 sites with more than 20,000 users, and the Humboldt State University has over 12,000 courses and more than 40,000 users with their Moodle installation, I wonder just how true this is. It's important that there are options in the market, especially when you consider that it's been reported that Blackboard does not play nicely with others.

The other very cool site I have come across is Digication. I first was exposed to Digication on the TWiT Inside the Net podcast. Digication seems more targeted at secondary rather than tertiary education. It's divided into Campus and Spotlight. Campus is where the "traditional" VLE stuff happens with course materials, forums, calendars and grade books are located. There is also the Digication Spotlight, which allows individuals to set up online portfolios of their best work. To me, this is a very cool idea and is perfect for students looking to market themselves and demonstrate what they are capable of. First set up in 2002, Digication is available to all institutions and is free for the first 1,000 users. I believe that this is 1,000 users registered at any one time, not just the first 1,000 through the system (but I could be wrong). Alumni can also be registered on school systems and they don't count towards the 1,000 either. For all intents and purposes, unless you are a huge school, Digication is free.

Man, I wish they had this around when I was at school.

I find the idea of VLE's exciting. Unfortunately for me, I have found that in practice, unless there is a critical mass of students actively using the system and lecturers prepared to really use the environment as an active learning tool rather than just a place to dump lecture notes and have a bulletin board for student questions, it will be rather lacking in practice.

I hope one day to be in a position where I can implement some sort of VLE. Knowing how not to run one has got to be a big advantage when it comes to running one right.