Enterprise VLEs and LMS like blackboard (aka blackweb) are getting a bad press these days with the rise of web2 and the edupunk concept of finding your own open source tools to create the learner centred environment everyone wants. But we have to face the fact that most large organisations like universities (mine is no exception at the UAL) have invested heavily in VLE’s and they do have a usefulness in terms of managing the huge numbers of students and all the enrollment data and grades that they generate.
So perhaps the solution is to take your VLE and mash it up a little. I started playing around in blackboard and pretty quickly realised that you can create links from it to external sites very easily, and make those sites your course start page within the secure bb environment. So inspired by Michael Wesch’s course site at netvibes, I’m playing around with a version for my course, with lots of RSS feeds from relevant blogs and sites. Add in student and staff blogs and create a course facebook, ning or myspace site and you are away. The IT dept are happy because you are still using their expensive gateway, you have a secure site that is password protected, and your students think that their course site looks way cooler than it used to.
Thoughts welcome from anyone else who has tried this approach.
