VIRTUAL LEARNING ENVIRONMENT(VLE)

A virtual learning environment (VLE) is a set of teaching and learning tools designed to enhance a student's learning experience by including computers and the Internet in the learning process. A virtual learning environment  is a Web-based platform for the digital aspects of courses of study, usually within educational institutions. VLEs typically: allow participants to be organised into cohorts, groups and roles; present resources, activities and interactions within a course structure; provide for the different stages of assessment; report on participation; and have some level of integration with other institutional systems. VLEs have been adopted by almost all higher education institutions. In general, VLE users are assigned either a teacher ID or a student ID. The teacher sees what a students sees, but the teacher has additional user rights to create or modify curriculum content and track student performance. There are a number of commercial VLE software packages available, including Blackboard, WebCT, Lotus LearningSpace, and COSE.The following are the basic or the main components required for a virtual learning environment or online education curriculum to take place. A VLE may include some or all of the following element

·         The course syllabus

·         Administrative information about the course: prerequisites, credits, registration, payments, physical sessions, and contact information for the instructor.

·         A notice board for current information about the ongoing course

·         The basic content of some or all of the course; the complete course for distance learning applications, or some part of it, when used as a portion of a conventional course. This normally includes material such as copies of lecture in the form of text, audio, or video presentations, and the supporting visual presentations

·         Additional resources, either integrated or as links to outside resources. This typically consists of supplementary reading, or innovative equivalents for it.

·         Self-assessment quizzes or analogous devices, normally scored automatically

·         Formal assessment functions, such as examinations, essay submission, or presentation of projects. this now frequently includes components to support peer assessment

·         Support for communications, including e-mail, threaded discussions, chat rooms, Twitter and other media, sometimes with the instructor or an assistant acting as moderator. Additional elements include wikis, blogs, RSS and 3D virtual learning spaces.

·         Links to outside sources – pathways to all other online learning spaces are linked via the VLE (Virtual Learning Environment).

·         Management of access rights for instructors, their assistants, course support staff, and students

·         Documentation and statistics as required for institutional administration and quality control

·         Authoring tools for creating the necessary documents by the instructor, and, usually, submissions by the students

·         Provision for the necessary hyperlinks to create a unified presentation to the students.

A VLE is normally not designed for a specific course or subject, but is capable of supporting multiple courses over the full range of the academic program, giving a consistent interface within the institution and—to some degree—with other institutions using the system. The virtual learning environment supports an exchange of information between a user and the learning institute he or she is currently enrolled in through digital mediums like e-mail, chat rooms, web 2.0 sites or a forum thereby helping convey information to any part of the world with just a single click.

VLE Learning platforms commonly allow

·         Content management – creation, storage, access to and use of learning resources

·         Curriculum mapping and planning – lesson planning, assessment and personalisation of the learning experience

·         Learner engagement and administration – managed access to learner information and resources and tracking of progress and achievement

·         Communication and collaboration - emails, notices, chat, wikis, blogs

In principle a learning platform is a safe and secure environment that is reliable, available online and accessible to a wide user base. A user should be able to move between learning platforms throughout their life with no loss of access to their personal data. The concept of a learning platform accommodates a continuously evolving description of functionality changing to meet the needs of the user.

lInstitutions of higher and further education use VLEs in order to:

·         Economize on the time of teaching staff, and the cost of instruction.

·         Facilitate the presentation of online learning by instructors without web authoring experience.

·         Provide instruction to students in a flexible manner to students with varying time and location constraints.

·         Provide instruction in a manner familiar to the current web-oriented generation of students.

·         Facilitate the networking of instruction between different campuses or even colleges.

·         Provide for the reuse of common material among different courses.

·         Provide automatic integration of the results of student learning into campus information systems.

VIRTUAL TOOLS

·         Most virtual-learning technologies fall into three broad categories. These are not precise divisions — technologies and functionalities overlap as each category evolves.

·         Lecture capture: These technologies have come a long way from their roots in rough audio and videotape recordings of class sessions. Lecture capture system (LCS) use involving hardware and software tools to record fully integrated presentation began at colleges and universities.

·         Lecture capture can stretch teaching resources and enrich the curriculum by building a growing store of reusable digital resources.

·         An LCS records every aspect of the speaker’s presentation, including all the additional materials, such as Microsoft PowerPoint slides, interactive whiteboard annotations or output from a document camera. The recordings are then edited and annotated to create rich, complex presentations for asynchronous viewing by students. Many lecture capture systems also stream live audio and video, providing remote real-time access to the presentation.

·         Lecture capture lets students catch up on or review class content whenever it’s convenient for them. The edited recording can be integrated into a virtual-learning environment and thus becomes a component of a fully online or blended course.

·         In a software-based LCS, an agent is downloaded on the presenter’s computer, which is networked with the other hardware (microphone, video camera and interactive whiteboard) used for the session. The software agent integrates the output from the various tools, including keystrokes on the speaker’s computer.

·         When the edited recording is complete, the LCS automatically distributes a link to students registered in the course and others on a predetermined distribution list. Teachers can also release the lectures on a set schedule. Many systems include tools that promote student interaction, such as polls or requests for responses to the captured content. Results of the polling and student commentary are then integrated into the presentation. Current LCS systems offer high-definition recording and playback at a pixel resolution of 1920x1200 or better.

·         Webinars: These interactive online presentations are usually delivered first in real time and then recorded and made available for review or first-time viewing by a new audience.With their highly structured format, webinars offer an excellent platform to focus or expand on important topics.

·         Most webinars consist of PowerPoint slides that are accompanied by audio explanation by the teacher. Audio is delivered over a standard phone line or streamed via Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP). Using remote desktop sharing, teachers can talk students through complex topics while using a variety of tools and applications to display information on their computer screens.

·         The technology needed to support a webinar varies with the technical complexity of the presentation. Webinars work best if everyone in the audience has a high-speed Internet connection. There are many stand-alone software offerings that let schools or instructors create and deliver webinars; that functionality is also available in many course or learning management systems. Hosted webinar applications are also available as cloud services.

·         Interactive web conferencing: This technology takes many forms, but the main focus is on two-way communication over a distance, with the Internet providing the link between locations. Interactive web conferences can range anywhere from an online chat about homework to a lecture delivered via telepresence. But even in its most basic forms, these technologies deliver real-time interactivity over distance.

·         School districts often use interactive web conferencing to extend the geographic reach of classes. Web conferencing can let a teacher or expert speaker deliver a lecture simultaneously to multiple classrooms anywhere in the world and respond in real time to questions from students at all locations.The requirements for the most basic forms of interactive web conferencing are pretty simple — a software application and an Internet connection.

     VIRTUAL LEARNING LAB

The purpose of a Virtual Learning Lab (VLL) is to provide an interactive, engaging online course solution to institutions. Virtual Learning Labs offer innovative learning solutions to institutions, including the ability to introduce new courses, fix scheduling conflicts, and provide  students courses that may not otherwise be offered to them due to staffing issues or financial hardship.

                With a VLL, students work on a virtual course in a lab setting, while a course facilitator at                   the school monitors students and provides classroom management. Direct instruction is provided synchronously and asynchronously by the VirtualSC teacher in addition to the virtual course.During the VLL, VirtualSC provides both curriculum and highly-qualified, state-certified teachers, plus support and training for the course facilitators. Institutions provides the facilitator (does not need to be a certified instructor), computer lab, and Internet access for students, as well as a list of courses needed and expected student enrollments. All VLLs require a minimum of 20 students; the maximum number of students will depend on the course.

The use of the Double Robot was introduced to the Virtual Learning Lab project this fall to offer a new and engaging form of live interaction between the VirtualSC teacher and the students in the classroom.   Throughout the course of the pilot, VirtualSC will continue to monitor the progress and compare the student success rates with Virtual Learning Labs prior to the introduction of the robot.