How can I use the features of a VLE to support student learning?

• VLEs have features that cannot be mirrored in traditional face-to-face learning and teaching settings, such as anytime/anywhere access and giving feedback at any time. Electronic media are particularly appropriate for giving generic feedback to all students, making direct links to other material (cases and statutes) and for setting work that cannot normally be covered in class contact time.
• if you decide to employ technical help with setting up a study web then do not allow the technician to run the show alone. The practitioner carries the professional responsibility for sound educational practice.
• try to keep the look and feel of your web fairly consistent. Students will become familiar with how you set up your material and this helps them navigate around it.
• most VLEs have links to study skills, library catalogues and other help that is often available across all courses. Putting these links on the home page of your web makes these useful resources easily accessible. All VLEs allow hypertext links to other websites to be made easily. Use this feature to connect to sites such as:
  • House of Lords judgments since 14 November 1996
  • Acts of Parliament there is a growing body of evidence that we all learn in different ways, with some senses being more dominant than others, for example some learn better through seeing things than hearing things. Most VLEs will support graphics, photographs and other multimedia. Make the learning multimedia and, where appropriate, make it fun.
• consider using cartoons, graphics, (including animated graphics), photographs, video clips and audio to add variety to the design
• carefully selected features such as animated graphics can bring the subject to life and add humour to the learning. The examples below are intended to symbolise the concept or material being studied.

Tort of nuisance as a ‘conceptual dustbin’.

‘Key learning’

Link question

• help those with learning difficulties by careful choice of such things as font style (Comic Sans, for example, is good for dyslexics) and colours (pastel backgrounds are better than white, helping to reduce eyestrain for all students)
• facilities for the construction of tests of various kinds are available in many VLEs, and are useful for self-testing by the students or to include as part of an assessment strategy
• many VLEs allow students to make their own notes and connect these to each page of the web. Encourage your students to use this facility by building a demonstration page of how this can add great value to student learning. Below is an example of such a page from part of a web (in WebCT) on medical malpractice. It shows how a student can add value to the resources in the web by adding their own questions, comments and other aides memoir. The link to the law report, together with an earlier study of an Australian case, allows the student to make the necessary connections, write notes to themselves and include reminders of action points.

Example of a WebCT page on medical practice

Last Modified: 4 June 2010