Fry and Love (2011) ‘Business lecturers’ perceptions and interactions with the virtual learning environment’

A recent article suggests lecturers’ uses of Virtual Learning Environments (VLEs) are conservative, in the sense that VLEs are used primarily as repositories, and are not used to re-imagine learning and teaching. The lecturers’ approach to VLEs seems to be based on a frequent perception that VLEs are axiomatically inferior to face-to-face interaction.

Fry and Love (2011) conducted interviews with Business lecturers, and provide commentary thereon. One of the significant things about the article is the metaphors used to describe VLEs, variously described as ‘security blanket’, ‘crutch’, or an ‘electronic filing cabinet’ (p.54). The metaphors are conservative because they see online learning as supportive, covering holes (another metaphor) in face-to-face provision, but not rivalling it in efficacy, or offering alternative learning and teaching paradigms.

The lecturers interviewed saw the VLE as providing a valuable function for students with other commitments, in that VLEs allowed students access to learning materials outside office hours, but, and consequently, they saw the VLE is a one-way communication medium, despite the potential of VLEs to enable two-way communication.

A further issue with VLEs is that some lecturers were reluctant to make their learning materials available online. There may be valid reasons for this practice, but, from an Activity Theory perspective, the division of labour is also relevant here, as the relative positions of lecturer and student are reaffirmed when a potential tension arises between the two (a potential tension because students can access learning materials without the lecturer being explicitly positioned as gatekeeper). An existing Activity System remains intact, but not necessarily to the benefit of learning and teaching. Fry and Love suggest the lecturers’ practice is a Behaviourist position, and predicated on the idea that learning is acquired, not constructed.

The research might suggest that lecturers are using VLEs in unimaginative ways, using VLEs to support and insure existing pedagogies, rather than prompting a rethink of learning and teaching. Alternatively, the research could be exposing the limitations of VLEs. The VLE as a learning technology functions well as a content repository, but online conversation tends to happen more enthusiastically via social networking technologies (Facebook, Twitter, et al.). This imbalance may be the result of the successful marketing of social networking technologies, or may have emerged through practice, or it may signify a limitation in the VLE as a learning technology, and perhaps suggest a design flaw in VLEs, too. Users go to the HEI’s website, then go through a different log-in procedure for their VLE, then access a discussion board via a menu. Meanwhile, they can go onto Facebook or Twitter and conduct all their social and academic conversations from one platform. Lecturers may not be using VLEs imaginatively, but VLEs may be designed and implemented in ways that discourage innovation.

Reference

Fry, N. and Love, N. (2011) ‘Business lecturers’ perceptions and interactions with the virtual learning environment,’ International Journal of Management Education, vol. 9, no. 4, pp. 51-56.