Using VLE technology in education and outside educational environments

E-learning has become a major trend among Universities and several Educational environments. It is also the most important tool that lets students and teachers interact with each other in a better and productive way. This article talks about what VLE is and the technologies behind VLE along side how VLE is used in non Educational sectors as well.

VLE (Virtual Learning Environment) is some times called E-learning or virtual learning application as it helps students and teachers to interact via a website. VLE can also be thought of as a Content Management system because of the huge contents that are stored and interacted with on a regular basis. Some of the common technologies used as VLE include Moodle, BlackBoard, Word Press among others.

Moodle and Word Press are open source applications available freely over the internet and giving IT professionals the ability to interact with the source code and designing the website according to the business requirements, where as Black Board which is part of the Black Board Inc is a paid service. VLE can be very useful for student to submit assignments electronically (hence saving paper!!!) as well as using the News forums/ blogs to exchange information on various topics with their peers and teachers hence building their knowledge base. The most common functionalities used by most Educational sectors include creating online courses, exchanging information using news forums and blogs, submitting assignments online, creating resources, databases, viewing online users, searching courses, catalogues, using grade books for teachers to grade/ mark the works of students and publish these grades, online library facilities, e-resources, chat rooms, student and teacher profiles, linking educational websites to the VLE among others. So in these different ways the students can learn better and teachers can deliver courses without physically being in the class room. Most VLE providers let their users work from Home as the only requirements include a computer connected to the internet.

Non Educational sectors can also use VLE technologies as an Informational link and deliver this to their clients. For example the banking sector and financial sector can use VLE to deliver training materials (in Power Point, Word or other formats), statistics and reports (in Excel, CSV and other spreadsheet formats) while using the other facilities such as News forums, blogs, and Chat rooms to provide online support to their clients. E-learning as a whole is a truly dynamic method for Organisations to deliver better customer services and acts as an informational media to help solve customer problems and provide services to the respective clients/ customers.

As a VLE Administrator, I have been involved with creating courses, providing services, building databases among others. With my network/ IT Helpdesk background, I also interact with the Web Server and change the source codes of the VLE to fit the Organisation’s requirements and use the IT Helpdesk ticketing service to resolve VLE enquiries along side promoting the VLE as a whole.

To summarise this article VLE is the way to go for Organisations who want to deliver static and dynamic information while making it easy and fun to interact with their clients and stake holders.