Excerpts from  Design for learning in Virtual Learning Environments - Insider perspectives, Project Report from the Learning Design Tools Project by Mira Vogel and Martin Oliver.

5.5.2 Reflection and peer review

Babak was using a discussion forum in conjuction with recordings of his 12 Classical Acting learners’ performances to stimulate reflection. He had posted video recordings of each learner's performances, and attached a discussion thread to each seeking critique and reflection. There were some simple ground rules: no learner could assume the critic role until both they and the object of their critique had commented on their own recordings. This approach had a number of functions for Babak. For Classical Acting, which is entirely about externalising what is internal and communicating successfully it to others, this was felt to be enormously helpful and a powerful catalyst for reflection. In conjunction with the Forums, they permitted feedback which itself would endure as a text record. Because this feedback was no longer dependent on remembering a fleeting performance, but could refer to the recording, it could be more deliberate and more specific. As a record, he also hoped that over time this recording-and-forum combination would also demonstrate progress and learning – and made specific reference to value for money. Additionally, he intended learners to develop skills as sensitive critics and communicators.

The learners were simultaneously invigorated and mortified by the experience. Although they found an early set of performances difficult to watch in the context of their subsequent development, one learner commented, to the general agreement of the group, on the focus they lent the reflection activity:

Kathy: ... I think having a record of that makes you appreciate it, makes you kind of take note of what you were doing, what you are doing better, what you should be doing, and I think all those things make you reflect on it in a much more profound and…complex way than if you didn’t have it.

Babak’s trigger questions could hardly be more minimal and moderation was almost absent, yet the purpose and value of the activity was well understood. Members of the group had an ethos of support and took an active interest in others’ thoughts, especially those from “left field”, creating a fertile environment for ideas. The 35 taught hours a week limited time for reflection to evenings and weekends, and consequently another VLE advantage identified by the learners was spontaneity. In the light of the common conception, confirmed by Fred’s experience for example, that unmoderated learning Forums tend to lose impetus, it is interesting to observe these motivated learners maintaining their focus and their sense of community outside hours, and exploiting the VLE to spontaneously share valuable thoughts which would grow stale or, more likely, be abandoned without it.

5.5.3 Discussion and feedback

Babak solicited feedback via Forum to discuss and shape the course. He mentioned two reasons – the first was that the course was new and he was new to the institution. The other was was to diffuse what he referred to as a “tradition of rebellion”:

I feel that just by giving them a voice – be it a typed and read one – that actually we can diffuse a great deal of discontent… before it manifests itself physically.

He gave examples of his responses to feedback, which were also registered by the focus group of his learners as “changes in approach” and in one notable case, an extra four hours of teaching.

Ina used discussion in a number of different ways. It was as an important part of structured activities which maintained learning and group cohesion between the infrequent contact sessions. She reported that these had changed the sessions – allowing them to “hit the ground running”. This led to the amount of contact being reduced, a positive development for many of her full-time working learners. She had also provided a social ‘café’ forum with minimal intervention from teachers, which was active with deep threads and wide-ranging in subject matter including informal support on assignments and recommending resources.

For Fred, the Forum tool had another dimension of allowing him to become less of a teacher and more of a facilitator:

…rather than say “You got this wrong”, I tried to draw other people in here to say “What do others think about what [Name]’s said? So that she was given encouragement to come back herself and have another go.

This shows how the design of particular aspects of the course can reflect values or assumptions about the role of the teacher. The idea of the teacher as “guide on the side” has been popularised in research in the past decade; a course which is structured around discussions would be likely to emphasise the value of socially negotiated knowledge, in contrast to one structured around a central, authoritative text (such as a series of lecture notes). Thus the VLE as representation reveals aspects of the roles that are designed for learning, as well as the activities.

5.5.4 Presentation and peer review

In organising an exhibition of his four learners’ databases during each weekly contact session, Bart had chosen the Forum tool – when questioned about this choice, he explained that his learners could be reticent about debating in class:

I think with the Forums it’s about people making individual comments, and being identified for it it’s the easiest kind of approach. Use forums with them just informally and with that particular group the first time I introduced them to it, I said “Right, here’s a forum, here’s a discussion”, and off they went for about twenty or thirty entries in no time at all.

In these Moodle Forums, contributions appeared with the author’s distinctive icon (lending immediacy to their presence) and with replies in full and nested (showing the ‘shape’ of each conversation). This choice of medium enabled to some extent the connection of the evolution of each learner’s database to the comments of the others, although posts rarely exceed two lines, implying that a proportion of discussion took place outside the forum. Week by week, some of the Forums also recorded a joint decision about which database should be carried through as the basis for the following week’s activities.