When is a VLE not a VLE? When it's a WordPress Site!
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A learning technology manager argues that a school's virtual learning environment (VLE) looks outdated, takes too long to navigate, and is poorly organized with outdated content. The manager suggests instead using a WordPress site, which allows for more engaging content like Storyline, Padlet, and VoiceThread that is easier for students to navigate.
When is a VLE not a VLE? When it's a WordPress Site!
- 1. When is a VLE NOT a VLE? When it's a WordPress Site! Bex Ferriday Learning Technology Manager School of Healthcare Sciences
- 3. The VLE: • Looks ‘old school’ • Takes time to navigate to what you need • Poor organisation: folders within folders within folders, replicated documents, out of date content • A repository of Word documents, PDFs and PowerPoint presentations – VERY didactic
- 5. Bex Ferriday’s patented Doctor Who reference…
Editor's Notes
- #3: This represents students’ faces when their lecturers mention Blackboard…
- #4: Typical VLE = looks ‘old school’, folders within folders leading to one document, duplication of content in different spaces, out of date content
- #5: I think students feel more valued if they are given nice things. So if the VLE looks bad and students don’t like engaging with it, they don’t feel so valued. ‘I pay 9K a year for this?!’
- #6: A small team of academics from various disciplines within my School wanted to do something different. They approached my team to see what we could do to make a more open, dynamic platform
- #7: We decided to use WordPress. It’s ubiquitous, simple to use, and there is no need to log into the VLE using university credentials, which opens up a lot of opportunities for collaboration and for students to co-create content caringpractitioner.wordpress.com
- #8: Three sections, each with 3-6 subsections for students to work through: Becoming a Caring and Compassionate Practitioner, The Resilient Practitioner and Developing Skills for Employability
- #9: As well as eLearning resources developed using Storyline 360, there is a variety of online activities of developed using free to use sites such as Padlet, https://padlet.com and Voicethread https://voicethread.com/
- #10: The advantage of using WordPress is that, at its heart, it’s a blogging site, and so the academic and technology teams have added blog posts, but more importantly, we are going to ask students to contribute reflective blog posts too
- #11: The site is being used by a small cohort of students who are, effectively, beta testing it for us. We have asked for feedback, and so far comments have been entirely positive with students ABDSOLUTELY preferring WordPress to the University’s VLE
- #12: We have funding to upgrade the site. In 2018-19, all students will access the site as part of their Inter-Professional Education training and we will encourage healthcare students from other institutions to add blog posts and help with further development of content