Title: Topic 4: Virtual Learning Environments
Course: Digital Fundamentals

Introduction

Following the emergence of the internet in the early 1990s, many new tools and products have been developed to exploit its benefits fully. Since the mid-1990s the education community software products labelled Virtual Learning Environments (VLEs) or Learning Management Systems (LMS) have appeared with the aim of supporting learning and teaching activities across the internet. (Ramsden, 2014)

Commercial VLEs has been currently used in education such as Blackboard, WebCT, Lotus Learning Space, and COSE, other open source VLEs systems are also used for the same. Most of these systems are intended not simply to reproduce the classroom environment -‘on-line’, but also to use the technology to provide learners with new tools to facilitate their learning. (O'Leary, 2002)

They aim to accommodate a wider range of learning styles and goals, to encourage collaborative and resource-based learning and to allow greater sharing and re-use of resources.

Objectives

- Upon completion of this section, you are expected to be able to;
- Describe Virtual learning Environment
- Identify and describe features of Virtual learning Environment
- Identify social features in Virtual learning Environment
- Use of Virtual learning Environment