The institutional VLE is often blamed for all sorts of issues and challenges around teaching in an increasingly digital landscape. In a new addition to our workshop series, participants are given the chance to ‘lose the VLE’ and are tasked with redesigning one of their modules without using the VLE. In doing so, participants reflect on their use of educational technology and the affordances it can bring. This is achieved by identifying the activities undertaken in the VLE and attempting to undertake them in other systems. By the end of the session participants will have a greater understanding of their VLE and be in a position to decide if it is the most appropriate tool to deliver their teaching activities.
For the purposes of the workshop we offer alternatives for three key areas of VLE activity:
- Communications & activities: Microsoft Teams which allows sharing, collaboration, chat, group video calls, and is more likely to be used by students when they enter the workplace.
- Content: Kortext (www.kortext.com) as a repository for reading materials and Mediasite (www.mediasite.com) for video related materials; both of which offer analytics on use.
- Assessment: Turnitin (www.turnitin.com) as an end-to-end assessment platform
The workshop design can accommodate small or large numbers, with participants sat in groups of 5-10 for the redesign activity, with the whole cohort coming together to share feedback. At the end, participants are asked to vote on whether or not to keep their VLE – with some interesting results!
This workshop was first run at Perth UHI as part of their Learning & Teaching conference.
