Distributed Learning Environments – an overview

Sheila MacNeill, Assistant Director

University of Nottingham, VLE review 24/6/2010

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JISC CETIS

JISC Innovation Support Centre (ISC). Provide strategic advice to the JISC, support its

development programmes. Represent UK HE sector on international

standardisation initiatives. Work with the wider educational community to

facilitate the use of standards based e-Learning. Support the current JISC eLearning programme.

Community Engagement Beginning with SIGs Accessibility Assessment Educational Content (EC) E-portfolio Enterprise Metadata and Digital

Repositories (MDR)

Lifelong learning group Pedagogy Forum

Now – working groups Short life-span, specific

outputs, smaller scale than SIGs

More agile response to needs of community

E.g. QTI profiling Semantic technologies in

teaching and learning Widgets

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CETIS: website, publications and resources

http://jisc.cetis.ac.uk

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CETIS: website, publications and resources Cloud Computing Business Case for Standards Distributed Learning

Environments Semantic Technologies

Annual horizon scan

Programme support lifecycle

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Details about this topic Supporting information and examples

How it relates to your aAnnual Horizon Scanning

udience

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Distributed (Virtual) Learning Environments – what are they?

Building on existing technologies Natural progression of mash-ups/widget

developments New ways to use/build/extend/integrate

learning environments Lightweight, user centred, utilising web

services, standards and the cloud

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Model 1: One system in the cloud, many outlets

Services gathered in one place (the cloud), - broadcast out to variety of delivery platforms (VLE, blog, mobile device)

Model 1 – Example – Icodeon blog

http://ccplatform.blogspot.com/2009/11/organic-chemistry.html

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http://ccplatform.blogspot.com/2009/11/organic-chemistry.html

Module 1 – example wookie/moodle

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http://getwookie.org/moodle/my/index.php

Model 1: One system in the cloud, many outlets

Strengths Secure integration with

current systems Growing developer

community Easy deployment on

multiple platforms

Weaknesses No standard way to feed

user interaction back to other applications

Some competing standards Implementation in early

stages.

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Model 2 – Plug-ins to existing VLEs

Extending functionality of exiting VLE using plug-ins

Model 2 – Example Moodle and cohere

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http://www.vimeo.com/12700689

Model 2 : Plug-ins to existing VLEs

Strengths Data interaction

between plugin and VLE

Growing developer community within HE sector

Potential to share many tools/plug-ins across the sector

Weaknesses Dependency on host VLEs Full IMS LTI spec

underdevelopment Not so great for integrating

social media tools from web

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Model 3 – many widgets from the web into one Widget container

Mash-up of number of web based sources /resources

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Model 3 – many widgets from the web into one Widget container - example

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http://www.netvibes.com/employability#Welcomehttp://sheensharing.wordpress.com/

Model 3 – many widgets from the web into one Widget container

Strengths Easy to set up Low cost – mainly

freely available tools/services

Demonstrates aggregation of resources into a collective space

Weaknesses Need some technical

confidence Lack of durability –

might not always be free

Lack of integration with institutional systems

Limited scope for integration of any service requiring authentication

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Model 4 – many providers and many clients

Google wave Federation of

clients and servers creating collaborative spaces

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Model 4 – many providers and many clients - example

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Model 4 – many providers and many clients

Strengths Highly interactive Highly collaborative Flexible

Weaknesses Relatively new

technology Usability issues

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Model 5 – both provider and a client

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Model 5 – both a provider and a client - example

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https://camtools.cam.ac.uk/

Model 5 – both a provider and a client

Strengths Flexibility Lets every system play

to its strengths Truly distributed

architecture Many options for

sharing functionality

Weaknesses Not many (UK)

implementations Heavy load on

provider and client Potential single point

of failure

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Resources, links, contact details

http:jisc.cetis.ac.uk (CETIS website) http://wiki.cetis.ac.uk/Educational_Content_widgetsworkinggroup

(Widget working group) Apache (incubating) Wookie http://getwookie.org/Welcome.html The headless VLE:

http://blogs.cetis.ac.uk/sheilamacneill/2009/11/13/the-headless-vle-and-other-approaches-to-composing-learning-environments/

s.macneill@strath.ac.uk

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