What can you do with a Virtual Learning Environment (VLE) if you’ve got one?

Many institutions now have access to a Virtual Learning Environment (such as ‘Blackboard’ or ‘Web CT’), which enables various forms of electronic communication between subject tutor and trainees, subject tutor and mentors and between trainees themselves.

This has several interesting possibilities in terms of communication, but it also raises the question of what exactly you are going to do with a VLE and how much time and effort you are going to invest in getting trainees and mentors to use it. There are ‘digital divide’ issues: most, but not all history trainees will have home internet access, and some but not all mentors will have their own e-mail address within school and will check their e-mail as a matter of course each day. We probably have not got to the stage yet where one can assume that all communications to mentors can be sent electronically, without bothering to send hard copy as well.

It is unusual for history trainees not to have any access to the internet either at school, at home or at the university. One helpful step with ICT is establishing the use of e-mail and (if you are using one) a VLE as a standard method of communication between you and trainees when they are not actually in taught sessions. Putting important pieces of information on the VLE (such as the announcement of at which school they will be doing their school placement) before putting them on the course notice board is one way of encouraging trainees to ‘commit’ to the VLE.

Once you have established the VLE as a standard form of communication with trainees and are sure that they all access it reasonably often, it can have a range of uses:

• Messages and announcements, e.g. pre-session preparation, circulation or reminders about pre-session reading
• Recap or reinforcement exercises to see whether some of the key aims and objectives from teaching sessions have been digested and retained (see Discussion Board Number 3 in resource 10.5.1).
• Setting up a debate or discussion about an aspect of history teaching which is going to be, or has been covered in a teaching session (see examples in resource 10.5.1).
• Encouraging and enabling the trainees to keep in touch with you and each other when they are out on school placement. The ‘File exchange’ facility also makes it possible for trainees to share and exchange resources and materials whilst out on placement.
• Just keeping in touch with mentors to monitor trainees’ progress. The e-mail facility of most VLEs makes it easy to send a group e-mail to mentors.
• Completion of surveys and course/placement evaluations.

Activity 10.5.1 Using VLE