VLE - is it worth the spend?

[ceebster]

Hi Guys

 

We have just been having a discussion about which VLE, and where we need to move forward with it.

 

One question has come out, asking is there any academic gains from students who use a VLE against students who have no access to a VLE.

 

As results is one of the important targets that schools have to work towards - have any schools found success in having them.

 

Or are they just a waste of money, year on year with subscriptions and paying salaries for staff to keep them up to date

 

All feedback and comments greatly appreciated

 

Thanks

 

Chris

[alan-d]

I don't have any stats proving that a VLE improves education but another consideration is the cost of resources. Without a VLE how much more paper and consumables are used to reproduce teaching resources? The time spent creating paper resources is probably greater than the time it takes to create them within a VLE.

 

We use Moodle hosted in-house so no subscription fees to worry about. It started as a trial to see if a VLE was a worthwile option and it has stuck. Some departments would not be without it and after 3 years or so even the technophobic elements are starting to embrace it.

[bossman]

Our staff are truly embracing our Moodle VLE and for the cost (Hardware and Time) is minimum, now that the DFES has done a U-Turn on live data for parental access a lot of schools have been stung into buying VLEs at ridiculous prices just to accommodate this functionality.

 

I have heard from numerous schools who have spent in excess of £30k for a certain VLE and more to find out that its Sims integration functionality is flawed and needs copious amounts of re-coding every time that Sims is updated.

 

Go for an option that is both cost effective and that which staff will embrace.

[Rooney]

"now that the DFES has done a U-Turn on live data for parental access"

Have you got a link to this information I can look at?

[adhutton]

"now that the DFES has done a U-Turn on live data for parental access"

Have you got a link to this information I can look at?

 

I would be interested to see that as well please.

 

We have subsequently gone with Moodle and it is being very well received by staff and students.

 

Andrew

[witch]

"now that the DFES has done a U-Turn on live data for parental access"

Have you got a link to this information I can look at?

I have searched for this as well and even asked the LA who couldnt find it and told my boss that the requirement still stood. I would very much like some info on this if possible

[GrumbleDook]

To bring folk up to speed on the general view of Parental Engagement, online reporting, online learning space, etc ...

 

At the moment, with a number of Becta's roles being pulled back into DfE, there is no changed documentation to say whether this Govt likes or dislikes any of the above. DfE have met with a variety of people and have said that they recognise the importance (and success) that Parental Engagement has on improving attainment, achievement and the life chances of learners (I know, I know ... lots of buzzwords but that is the language they use) ... but there is still no clear direction on online reporting, etc.

 

Most schools I know who haven't made a choice are holding fire ... but others are still going ahead because they see that, although the general target is not there, they know and understand the benefits it can have ... whether it works for their school or not is another answer.

 

The other aspect of VLEs when look at the spend is looking at whether some of the functionality allows you to cut costs elsewhere. Ray Fleming's recent article looking at Sharepoint to save costs is a good example ... and other VLEs can do similar things. But it usually has to go hand in hand with your school development for other things ... and if the VLE (in whatever form) is just a bolt-on because they have to ... then they will not have any educational or financial benefit from it.

[PhilNeal]

Becta modified its appoarch to "live" info for parents quite a while ago. I don't know many schools that would agree to live updates on behaviour issues being reported to parents. It's still considered to be important to be current with info. ASCL strongly supports the concept of sharing data with parents in a timely manner.

[beeswax]

One of the ways I got the English faculty interested in producing work for the VLE was in the run up to study leave and the exam period. Revision plans, possible questions and other reminders could be accessed 24/7 (and often are). It allows for two way communication between staff in school and pupils at home. Various problems could be ironed out, nerves calmed etc. The ability to see individual data on these pupils could then be correlated against expected results and those actually gained.

 

One result you would expect is that those pupils who were most conscientious would get better results, and visited the online material most often. However, it appeared that the majority of pupils spent time online revising (they could of course have simply logged on and realized Coronation Street/East Enders were on and left the machine to watch them). Results have improved over the past two years this scheme has been run, and indeed exam results for the whole school are the best ever. In English it would be fair to say that those who were expected to do well did so, but there was an improvement in those who were marked down as getting a borderline D for example and gained the extra marks to climb up a level to C.

 

I’m sure that our school is not alone in spending time concentrating on these “borderline” pupils, pushing them to achieve a higher mark and make the higher grade. What can’t be disentangled is if teachers pushing these pupils in conjunction with the online help led to these results, or if teaching alone was responsible for it all. The statistics show that the online revision material was used heavily in the run up to the GCSE exams; I’m responsible for the VLE, I don’t teach, but I believe that use of the VLE played some part in these raised results. It’s one of those things which can’t be proved or disproved without study over a longer period. It could also be that the quality of the last two years’ Year 10/11 cohorts was higher than in previous years.

 

It’s very difficult to measure value for money in education when developing a young person’s self-esteem and life view.

[Guest Guest]

Our moodle VLE has been relatively successful. We arn't typically a school who embraces new technology but SMT have pushed a couple of departments and most of the rest seem to be following suit. We don't use it to its full so Moodle seems like it has been a good move (no licenece fees for feature we dont use). A couple of things that got people on board are the masses of CDs/DVDs we already owned full to the brim with SCORM content which we gladly put on for them, and also the ability for teachers to set work for absent pupils with a simple "Do x,y & z from the VLE". The kids love doing work on a computer, and the teachers love not having to find out resourses, photocopy them, put them in the post/get someone to drive them round, loan out books etc.

 

One of the things which pushed this along nicely was the volcano in Iceland. I simply reminded departments and SMT that if they had already been using the VLE then setting work for students stranded in other countries would have been a breeze, as it stood they had to type up their lessons and email them.

 

Another thing which has got people on board is the ability to reuse resources. As long as the curriculum doesnt change too much from year to year, once you have all your lessons and homework up on the VLE that it, no more creating resourses, no more planning homework... they can focus on taking things to the next level rather than being bogged down with the mundane.

 

And the last thing is as said, no more paper!!! The teachers who use it alot absolutely love being able to go home only holding their handbag, get home, log onto the VLE and mark away. No more forgetting to pick up a stack of paper or books. No more forgetting your 4gb memory stick and not being able to take pupils work home for marking...

Edited October 17, 2010 by Guest

[cacmcgoo]

would like to chip in about Moodle- its ace. ICT department runs through it (all class work, assessments, homework, tracking etc) helps pool our resources, printer gathering dust etc etc. Great. Had a capita effort before, utterly rubbish, researched around and went moodle. Has been super, and other departments beginning to get on board after a year of me plugging away and promoting. Don't know where I would be without it frankly. Has cost the school next to nothing and seems easy to maintain/host in house (although thats not my bag).

[bossman]

Since building the Moodle VLE there has been a big take up from Staff and the SLT have now augmented a framework which has empowered the staff to take up their respective gauntlets and make it work for all departments.

 

With this in mind I have not forced the parental access until now but have taken a different route with which to engage the parents and this is through a software company called TASC Software - excellence in education and at a very minimum cost per annum will allow parents to log into a portal and view their respective child's Sims data, live. This is very controllable also through various setups within the interface.

 

This piece of software will allow the student also through AD authentication login to their own assessments and exam results or timetable. I have thought about parental access to our Moodle VLE but then had second thoughts as it would be a logistical nightmare whereas the Tasc Software just integrates with the Sims really well and at a later date we may be able to tie all three together when Moodle 2.1 is official.

[balticstar]

Moodle or Sharepoint are both very attractive for variety of reasons. With the School Agreements from Microsoft you now get all Sharepoint features for "free" as well. Whatever you start with, ensure that the content is not platform specific and can be moved easily around afterwards; otherwise your first decision will be very important. Teachers don't like change and I wouldn't recommend anybody swapping platforms just because they can or want to.

[Jobos]

Reading this thread I lost count of the number of times Moodle was mentioned but no word of Fronter which is the VLE used here... I wonder why

[marshharrier]

IMHO ... NO it isn't worth the money.

 

I was sent a login yesterday by my daughter's secodnary school to their new VLE (won't mention it's name but it's mentioned in this thread).

 

Virtually no information of any value, virtually no interaction for me, most of the options locked down (no permitted access), my contact details incorrect, achievement information just static sentences with no ability to see more. Utterly hopeless and I won't be going back to have another look anytime soon.

 

I wonder how many other 'parents' like me in this scenario will reach the same conclusion. I wonder also what the stats are as to what % of parents EVER login to these (working in a Primary school I don't have numbers but I'm sure some of our secondary school friends here might know?)

 

For me the idea of a VLE was a good one, but like so many things it was decided without talking to parents first .... build the mountain and the people will come!!

[GREED]

Reacting to the above post from marshharrier, consultation with al stakeholders is a must with any project like this, it cannot be rolled out on a whim from the ICT department, to all the school to deliver a product that all will be happy with, can use, and make use of. I am working with a school at the moment on that very stage.

[marshharrier]

Graham - I agree with you but I think you missed my point.

 

My point being that the whole concept of VLE's being discussed with parents before the last Government set the whole ball rolling and before schools were instructed that having a VLE was mandatory'ish within defined timescales!!

 

I'm not sure the guidance given to schools was "If you don't get a good reaction from parents, then you don't need to do it" or at least I've never seen such guidance. In the meantime a whole industry has been born (which taxpayers are paying for) and from my own experience, provides ZERO value!

 

I realise some VLE's may be better than that used by my child's school, or that VLE's will be better used by some schools .... but there will be many (perhaps the majority) that will not!

[marshharrier]

If I can add to my last post, VLE's are already being rolled out on the whim of may Local Authorities! It has been decided that this should be done and it is being done!

 

Schools are now in the situation of having to persuade parents of the benefits i.e. it's a done deal! Take a look at the link below and the first post which rather makes my point.

 

http://www.edugeek.net/forums/virtual-learning-platforms/65049-do-primary-school-pupils-need-online-storage-area-vle.html#post584377

Edited November 7, 2010 by marshharrier

[olcinm]

DfE have met with a variety of people and have said that they recognise the importance (and success) that Parental Engagement has on improving attainment, achievement and the life chances of learners (I know, I know ... lots of buzzwords but that is the language they use) ... but there is still no clear direction on online reporting, etc.

 

Hello - Thanks for that. Is that they "recognise the importance" documented somewhere other than here?

[marshharrier]

You need to look on the BECTA website to find the recommendations.

[nicholab]

Is it worth the spend at first no! so try and use a minimal cost product to start out.

[moriartythemundane]

We use, very successfully, Google apps.

You apply for a Free education version and over a period of less than a week, following googles guides and timescale, you implement it in stages. We have used this successfully for nearly two years now. Every department has an email and a website (or more if needs be) every staff/student member has an email address allowing them to make personal websites, access the apps "in the cloud" chat if needs be plus other "stuff" like wave for collaboration and calendars.

With the recent update to the control panel we can now extensivley control access/permissions to all tiers of school!

 

We have coupled this up with google blogger, flickr and as was mentioned above Tasc Softwares cracking Pars/Pars Connect for e-registration/texting to parents and are looking to provide access with their portal addon. This is fully interactive with Sims and cheaper...for us any way!

 

As a new trial we have just installed PHP BB (its free) to allow some form of discussion and interaction other than by email and if it takes off like google apps it will slot in beautifully. We have restricted membership to only allow the school domain email addresses for additional security. This took less than a day to implement...then as long as you want to make it look pretty.

 

We are going through BSF at the moment and the school is a building site...we have just been assessed as to our ICT standard where we are/need to be etc and the result was truly encouraging. Apparently, we dont do anything excellently but we do everything well. But, we do more than any other school in the borough...by far!

The bulk of this was free and easy to set up and works well. I can heartily reccomend it.

 

Just as a caveat... we tried Moodle and tried to integrate it with our old CC3 network and it was not good. The uptake was poor in trials and it was deemed not needed as we would have a VLE for BSF.

 

Then we tried Google apps and it took off, literally in a fortnight...changed the school completely!

Try it, what have you got to lose?

Moriarty...

[Ashers]

How did you get around the data scanning issue with Google and what about keeping potentially confidential and personal information on unknown servers, possibly not even on the European continent?

[creatinghavocagain]

Couldn't agre more with Marsh Harrier - seen LEs being "used" in a coule of schools and they were very all over the place with some teachers, not even departments, using it well but mostly not being used much at all so the kids soon got turned off. But did go to a Sharepoint conference a while back where there was one school using it really well.

[GrumbleDook]

How did you get around the data scanning issue with Google and what about keeping potentially confidential and personal information on unknown servers, possibly not even on the European continent?

 

Google have signed a Safe Harbor agreement, as mentioned a few times on EG before. For more information about Google Apps for Edu it might be worth speaking to folk who attended the Google Teacher Academy in london earlier in the year.

 

It is worth also saying that the reason why some folk have chose Live@Edu over Google apps is that MS have a real person you can speak and talk with (It used to be Ben, now it is James) and a lot of schools have found that it is better to talk real issues with real people.