From VLEs to Learning Webs: The Implications of Web 2

From VLEs to Learning Webs: The Implications of Web 2.0 for Learning and Teaching Stephen BrownKnowledge Media Design, De Montfort University, UKAbstract

This paper reflects on the current position of Virtual Learning Environments (VLEs) in universities and speculates about likely future directions for e-learning. Using accepted models of technology innovation and looking at current Web trends, it considers the extent to which e-learning is truly embedded in institutions, how Web 2.0 is being used by the upcoming generation and what this might mean for teachers, learners and Higher Education Institutions. The paper concludes that optimism about the impact of e-learning on higher education based on the market penetration of VLEs is misplaced and suggests that Ivan Illichs concept of Learning Webs may be a more reliable guide to future developments.Key words: VLE, Virtual Learning Environment, Learning Webs, Web 2.0, education, training, elearning, Illich.

Introduction

While computers have been used to support both distance learning and classroom delivery since the 1970s, by the late 1990s there was a step change marked by feverish optimism about their future potential due to the rapid development of the World Wide Web (Nicholson, 1998). In a retrospective review of papers presented at the Association for Learning Technology annual conference between 1994 and 2000, Jacobs (2001) concluded that The Web has played a more important role than any other factor in helping learning technology to gain general acceptance. And it was in 1998 and 1999 that the Web truly began to influence strategic thinking throughout tertiary and higher education, not just among certain enthusiastic institutions as it had done until then. The Web-fuelled growth in e-learning described by Jacobs coincides with the emergence and rapid growth of VLEs, VLEs are software environments for managing the online interactions of various kinds which take place between learners and tutors and the components through which learners and tutors participate in such interactions, including online learning (JISC 2002). Known also as Learning Management Systems (LMS) and Course Management Systems (CMS), VLEs have tended historically to evolve their functionality firstly to include a wide range of institutional information processing systems to create a Managed Learning Environment (MLE) and more recently to support individualised, personal learning (Severance et al, 2008:48) as Personalised Learning Environments (PLEs). One measure of the take-up of e-learning therefore might be the market penetration of VLEs, which, by 2004 were ubiquitous in UK Higher Education and elsewhere (Garret and Jokivirta, 2004). A more recent study (Browne et al. 2006), drawing together data from a variety of sources similarly concluded that there has been dramatic take-up of VLEs by Higher Education Institutions (HEIs). In the UK market penetration has reached 95% and many authors have confidently stated that e-learning is well established in HEIs alongside more traditional forms of education (eg. Watson, 2002; de Vries et al., 2005; Oliver, 2005).

Faced with such assertions, it is important to remember that the history of new technology in teaching has not always been a great success (Ely and Plomp, 1989; Slater, 1996). Successive waves of new learning media (broadcast television, audio, video, interactive video, CBT, CD-ROM, etc.) have met with difficulties and in many cases, after the initial enthusiasm and funding has been exhausted, the particular innovation has been quietly abandoned and 'business as usual' has been reinstated. A note of caution may therefore be appropriate. According to Conole and Dyke (2004), Salmon (2005) and San Diego et al. (2008), most HEIs are still struggling to engage a significant percentage of students and staff in e-learning, and real development beyond projects by innovators has so far been modest. Just because institutions are installing VLEs, does not necessarily mean they are being used extensively, or used to do anything differently (Westera, 2004; Salmon, 2005). Browne et al (2006) note that while there has been significant progress in the acquisition and central management of VLE systems.the transformative impact of these systems on instructional practices has yet to be realised. Thus, as with any new technology, while there have been localised instances of successful VLE implementations, overall the picture seems disappointing.Market drivers and trendsThe drivers behind VLE adoption can be traced back to the early 1990s when HEIs were facing new challenges: rising costs, reducing budgets, greater variability in students, increased competition at home and abroad and calls for increased accountability (Brown 1998). Figure 1 is a rich picture (Checkland, 1999) depicting the influence of these factors on UK Higher Education and the ambivalent view towards ICT in the early 1990s.

Figure 1. A view of the UK Higher Education system, drawn by the author circa 1997.

E-learning and VLEs offered the promise of a way of responding to these challenges through an easy to use system for flexibly delivering learning materials, activities and support to students across an institution using a standardised set of tools and interface design that could be centrally managed, resourced and monitored. Interestingly an almost identical assessment was published ten years later by the New Media Consortium: Horizon Report (2007), demonstrating that the same drivers are still in place:

The environment of higher education is changing rapidly. Costs are rising, budgets are shrinking, and the demand for new services is growing. Student enrolments are declining. There is an increasing need for distance education, with pressure coming not only from nontraditional students seeking flexible options, but from administrative directives to cut costs. The shape of the average student is changing too; more students are working and commuting than ever before, and the residential, full-time student is not necessarily the model for todays typical student. Higher education faces competition from the for-profit educational sector and an increasing demand by students for instant access and interactive experiences. This suggests that, despite their almost ubiquitous presence, VLEs are not yet living up to the expectations of their champions.Of course, it takes time for new technologies to become sufficiently embedded for innovative uses to emerge. So it may be that, after gradual build up, we are now on the cusp of some dramatic, creative pedagogical exploitation of VLEs. However the evidence seems to point the other way, towards a mature and declining market in which there will be less innovation. In the mid-1990s there were a great many different VLEs to choose from (see for example the archive of VLE reviews at EduTools (2007). But over time we have seen reductions in the number of different VLEs employed by HEIs (Browne et al., 2006) and convergence in the market. Some players have dropped out, others, such as Blackboard and WebCT have grown and merged to form even larger units and there have been signs of aggressive competition clearly aimed at market domination (The Inquirer, 2006). Figure 2 shows the product innovation cycle which describes the pattern of growth and decline typically observed in markets as innovations develop, mature and are gradually replaced by newer innovations (Levitt, 1965). The saturation of the market for VLEs, the reduction in the number of players and the absence of evidence that VLEs are being used to do anything differently reported above suggest that VLEs may be positioned at the apex of this curve currently.

Figure 2. The product life cycle model. (Based on: Levitt, 1965).Web 2.0

A potential challenger to the dominant position of VLEs is the so-called Web 2.0. Web 2.0 is a term coined by OReilly (2005) that describes a new generation of Web applications and tools such as Flickr, Delic.io.us, Myspace, YouTube, Wikepedia, Blogger. Web 2.0 applications are changing the Web from an essentially broadcast environment (where a relatively small number publish material to the rest), to one in which we can all participate as publishers. The concept of Web 2.0 as described originally by OReilly is a little fuzzy (Vossen and Hagemann, 2007) but has evolved since. Web 2.0 is a set of economic, social, and technology trends that collectively form the basis for the next generation of the Internet...... characterized by user participation, openness, and network effects. (Musser et al, 2006). Arguably Web 2.0 has created a new virtual environment in which young people live and, potentially, learn:Young people are spending their time in a space which adults find difficult to supervise or understandUse of digital technology has been completely normalised by this generation and it is now fully integrated into their daily lives..almost all are now involved in creative productionthey all use technology in a way that in the past would have labelled them geeks.

(Green and Hannon, 2007) Delicious, YouTube etc. are just some of the best known examples. There are a huge and rapidly growing number of Web 2.0 applications and tools out there already (see for example the directory at Virtual Karma (http://virtualkarma.blogspot.com/2006/01/complete-list-of-web-20-applications.html, accessed 3 April 2008). As a proportion of the total volume of Web content, Web 2.0 is growing faster than any other kind of content (Walsh 2006) and educationalists have not been slow to spot the potential of the rapid take-up of easy-to-use Web 2.0 applications such as Flickr, YouTube, Facebook, MySpace, blogs, wikis, social writing platforms such as Google docs, folksonomies and social bookmarking etc. (Downes, 2005) Examples include the Harvard H20 project: an open source educational platform for free creation and exchange of ideas within and beyond the university; use of ITunes by Stanford University, UC Berkely and others for downloading lectures and YouTube by James Madison University and others for the same purpose. Harvard Law School is using Second Life to teach advocacy skills and 15 UK Universities have invested in Second Life real estate, including: Edinburgh, Oxford and De Montfort Universities (Shepherd, 2007). The scale of interest and activity has been sufficient to prompt a UK-wide inquiry into what the widespread use of new technologies by university and college students could mean for higher education (JISC, 2008). Again we need to be cautious. Extravagant claims were made for e-learning in the 1990s at the height of the dot com boom: In the future we might see the News International or FT University with an in-country presence where they are delivering content from a few brand name players. (Tysome, 2000) and the subsequent failure of several high profile e-learning ventures, including the UK eUniversity (Garrett, 2004) should serve as a warning. According to the Gartner Group, Mashups, Web 2.0 and folksonomies are at the very top of what it calls the peak of inflated expectations (Gartner, 2006). If they are right, we can expect doubts to begin to set in as the practical realities of implementation begin to surface. According to the Gartner Hype Cycle model, the trough of disillusionment typically follows on from the peak of inflated expectations before an innovation achieves some level of usefulness (see figure 3).

Figure 3. The Gartner Hype Cycle for emerging technologies, 2006 showing selected technologies. (Based on: Gartner, 2006).

Yet, comparing VLEs with Web 2.0, we can see why Web 2.0 might be more popular than VLEs among teachers and students, if not administrators. Table 1 summarises some major differences.

Table 1. Comparison of the characteristics of institutional VLEs and Web 2.0.

VLEsWeb2.0

Top-down management led solutionBottom-up individually led solutions

Costly (even if open source)Free (mostly)

Enterprise wide infrastructure requiredWeb based

Requires widespread buy-inCan be adopted by individuals

Training requiredEasy to use

Interoperability is difficult, it requires agreed standards Mash up interoperability is built in

Controlled access make it hard to reach and modify materialOpen access allows you to continually modify material even when it is not your own

Mature market, declining choiceExplosive growth, lots of choice

Confirms traditional power relationshipsSocial, collaborative, empowers individuals

VLE developers have responded to the challenges of Web 2.0 by introducing more personalised, collaborative and student-centred features into traditional VLEs to create Personal Learning Environments. The concept of PLEs originated around 2001 and has gained momentum since (Severance et al, 2008). PLEs are about the creation of enabling technologies that foster learning exchanges or networks that privilege the individual over the institution Arguably they undermine the imposed, top-down, command and control kind of power associated with traditional VLEs (Wilson, 2008; Deepwell and Malik, 2008). However, Wilson (2008), considering the development of an institutional PLE based on observed patterns of use noted that the diversity of individuals requirements for PLEs is such that a comprehensive analysis of them all would be impractical. The institution is constrained by practical realities to offer the user a limited range of choices. So while institutional PLEs may be more empowering than traditional VLEs they are still, by definition, institutional and as such they may be missing the point. The distinguishing feature of Web 2.0 is that it empowers individuals to take control. Some learners clearly resent attempts by institutions to muscle in on their spaces. Lohnes and Kinzer (2007), in an examination of liberal arts students expectations of technology in classrooms reported that:Although the students technology practices as observed in the dorm fit expectations for Net Gen behaviour, we were surprised to find that these Net Gen students exhibited a strong resistance to using certain technologies in the space of the liberal arts classroom. So, hype notwithstanding, Web 2.0 tools might turn out to be a lot more popular among learners and teachers because they meet user needs better than institutional VLEs. The result may not just be a huge increase in scale of Web 2.0 based e-learning activity, via applications such as Flickr, YouTube, Facebook, MySpace, blogs, wikis, social writing platforms such as Google docs, folksonomies and social bookmarking etc. There may also be a paradigm shift in the way e-learning is conducted. Web 2.0 applications make it easy for users to take control of the publishing process. They blur the distinction between traditional producer and user roles, creating a new prod-user identity where content and opinion is freely shared between peers. This raises important issues about traditional learner/teacher relationships, ownership of lecture content and of control over the dialogue in a classroom. Even more fundamentally one has to consider how institutions will function if their customers can source content, support, and a social life elsewhere and what happens to knowledge if it is no longer moderated by traditionally accredited gatekeepers? Learning WebsThese issues were raised nearly 4 decades ago by Ivan Illich (1971, 1973). Discussing the negative impact of institutions on education at that time, Illich argued that:what are needed are new networks, readily available to the public and designed to spread equal opportunity for learning and teaching. He called these new networks Learning Webs. Learning Webs, he suggested, should support four kinds of learner goals:

1. Access to Educational Objects that support formal learning.

2. Skill exchanges, where people could advertise their own availability and skills.

3. Peer-Matching, where they could locate others willing to collaborate.

4. Access to professional educators, rather than to educational programmes or institutionsIn learning webs the roles of learner and teacher would not be fixed and learning would be far more collaborative, distributed and personalised than either then or now. Thirteen years before the invention of the PC and 23 years before the World Wide Web, the creation of Learning Webs presented significant geographical, social and technical challenges. How could people find each other if the expertise they were looking for did not reside in their immediate locality? Having found each other, how could they conduct the dialogue needed to sustain learning? Illich bravely describes how the technology of the day could be pressed into service. Broadcast television, tape recorders, postal services, telephones and In big cities typewriter terminals could provide instantaneous responses (Illich, 1973:95)The technology of the day did not readily support the kind of social networking Illich describes. Arguably now the technology has caught up with his vision. The current explosion of Web 2.0 based activity in which people exchange ideas and information, voice opinions, share pictures and seek out like minded others seems to model very closely the characteristics of the infrastructure necessary to underpin Illichs Learning Webs. Access to low-cost, ubiquitous and easy to use social networking tools has led some commentators to muse on the implications for formal education:The traditional classroom paradigm is being challenged today, not so much by professors, .but by our students (Duderstadt, 2004) and Students may force teachers to adapt by refusing to accept old ways of teaching. (Prensky, 2001).Of course these sorts of concerns have been raised before and institutions still survive. Illichs prediction that The disestablishment of schools will inevitably happen and it will happen surprisingly fast has yet to come to pass (Illich 1973:104). And there are signs that Institutions are responding to the challenge by seeking ways to manage the Web 2.0 phenomenon (Alexander, 2006). ConclusionsSo where is this leading? It has been argued here that VLEs have had only a relatively slight impact on pedagogy in Higher Education, despite their commercial success; that VLE development has peaked in any case and that VLEs are likely to be replaced by Web 2.0, which is more suited to the individualistic temperament, skills and requirements of teachers and learners. Web 2.0 has the potential to not only fundamentally change the nature of learning and teaching but through the creation of learner-controlled Learning Webs it may challenge the role of traditional institutions in a way that previous technologies could not.

While institutional PLEs can deploy some Web 2.0 features, it may be that the Myspace generation wants to keep their formal learning separate from their activities in Web 2.0, at least for the present. What the Gartner Hype Cycle suggests however is that in time Web 2.0 may progress through the curve to the plateau of usefulness. Quite what form this will take remains to be seen, but given the rate at which Web 2.0 is growing we should be preparing for it now. Experiments such as using ITunes, Flickr, YouTube, blogs and even PLEs are a start but we need to think about these issues at the level of institutional strategy as well. As for VLEs, it is clearly not yet time to switch off the servers, but it seems reasonable to wonder how much longer the return on investment will stand up to scrutiny.Acknowledgements

This paper is based on a keynote address delivered to the Cranfield University e-Learning Seminar, 20 June 2007 Cranfield University, UK. The author wishes to thank various anonymous reviewers for the helpful comments and suggestions they made on earlier drafts of the paper.References

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