From VLEs to Learning Webs: The Implications

of Web 2.0 for Learning and Teaching Stephen

Brown
Knowledge Media Design, De Montfort
University, UK
Abstract
This paper reflects on the current position of Virtual Learning Environments (VLEs) in
universities and speculates about likely future directions for e-learning. Using accepted
models of technology innovation and looking at current Web trends, it considers the
extent to which e-learning is truly embedded in institutions, how Web 2.0 is being used
by the upcoming generation and what this might mean for teachers, learners and Higher
Education Institutions. The paper concludes that optimism about the impact of e-learning
on higher education based on the market penetration of VLEs is misplaced and suggests
that Ivan Illichs concept of Learning Webs may be a more reliable guide to future
developments.
Key words: VLE, Virtual Learning Environment, Learning Webs, Web 2.0, education,
training, elearning, Illich.

Introduction
While computers have been used to support both distance learning and classroom
delivery since the 1970s, by the late 1990s there was a step change marked by feverish
optimism about their future potential due to the rapid development of the World Wide
Web (Nicholson, 1998). In a retrospective review of papers presented at the Association
for Learning Technology annual conference between 1994 and 2000, Jacobs (2001)
concluded that The Web has played a more important role than any other factor in
helping learning technology to gain general acceptance. And it was in 1998 and 1999
that the Web truly began to influence strategic thinking throughout tertiary and higher
education, not just among certain enthusiastic institutions as it had done until then.
The Web-fuelled growth in e-learning described by Jacobs coincides with the emergence
and rapid growth of VLEs, VLEs are software environments for managing the online
interactions of various kinds which take place between learners and tutors and the
components through which learners and tutors participate in such interactions, including
online learning (JISC 2002). Known also as Learning Management Systems (LMS) and
Course Management Systems (CMS), VLEs have tended historically to evolve their
functionality firstly to include a wide range of institutional information processing
systems to create a Managed Learning Environment (MLE) and more recently to support
individualised, personal learning (Severance et al, 2008:48) as Personalised Learning
Environments (PLEs). One measure of the take-up of e-learning therefore might be the

market penetration of VLEs, which, by 2004 were ubiquitous in UK Higher Education

and elsewhere (Garret and Jokivirta, 2004). A more recent study (Browne et al. 2006),
drawing together data from a variety of sources similarly concluded that there has been
dramatic take-up of VLEs by Higher Education Institutions (HEIs). In the UK market
penetration has reached 95% and many authors have confidently stated that e-learning is
well established in HEIs alongside more traditional forms of education (eg. Watson,
2002; de Vries et al., 2005; Oliver, 2005).
Faced with such assertions, it is important to remember that the history of new
technology in teaching has not always been a great success (Ely and Plomp, 1989; Slater,
1996). Successive waves of new learning media (broadcast television, audio, video,
interactive video, CBT, CD-ROM, etc.) have met with difficulties and in many cases,
after the initial enthusiasm and funding has been exhausted, the particular innovation has
been quietly abandoned and 'business as usual' has been reinstated. A note of caution
may therefore be appropriate. According to Conole and Dyke (2004), Salmon (2005) and
San Diego et al. (2008), most HEIs are still struggling to engage a significant percentage
of students and staff in e-learning, and real development beyond projects by innovators
has so far been modest. Just because institutions are installing VLEs, does not
necessarily mean they are being used extensively, or used to do anything differently
(Westera, 2004; Salmon, 2005). Browne et al (2006) note that while there has been
significant progress in the acquisition and central management of VLE systems.the
transformative impact of these systems on instructional practices has yet to be realised.
Thus, as with any new technology, while there have been localised instances of
successful VLE implementations, overall the picture seems disappointing.

Market drivers and trends

The drivers behind VLE adoption can be traced back to the early 1990s when HEIs were
facing new challenges: rising costs, reducing budgets, greater variability in students,
increased competition at home and abroad and calls for increased accountability (Brown
1998). Figure 1 is a rich picture (Checkland, 1999) depicting the influence of these
factors on UK Higher Education and the ambivalent view towards ICT in the early 1990s.

Figure 1. A view of the UK Higher Education system, drawn by the author circa 1997.
E-learning and VLEs offered the promise of a way of responding to these challenges
through an easy to use system for flexibly delivering learning materials, activities and
support to students across an institution using a standardised set of tools and interface
design that could be centrally managed, resourced and monitored. Interestingly an almost
identical assessment was published ten years later by the New Media Consortium:
Horizon Report (2007), demonstrating that the same drivers are still in place:
The environment of higher education is changing rapidly. Costs are rising, budgets are
shrinking, and the demand for new services is growing. Student enrolments are declining.
There is an increasing need for distance education, with pressure coming not only from
nontraditional students seeking flexible options, but from administrative directives to cut
costs. The shape of the average student is changing too; more students are working and
commuting than ever before, and the residential, full-time student is not necessarily the
model for todays typical student. Higher education faces competition from the for-profit
educational sector and an increasing demand by students for instant access and interactive
experiences. This suggests that, despite their almost ubiquitous presence, VLEs are not
yet living up to the expectations of their champions.
Of course, it takes time for new technologies to become sufficiently embedded for
innovative uses to emerge. So it may be that, after gradual build up, we are now on the
cusp of some dramatic, creative pedagogical exploitation of VLEs. However the
evidence seems to point the other way, towards a mature and declining market in which
there will be less innovation. In the mid-1990s there were a great many different VLEs to
choose from (see for example the archive of VLE reviews at EduTools (2007). But over
time we have seen reductions in the number of different VLEs employed by HEIs
(Browne et al., 2006) and convergence in the market. Some players have dropped out,

others, such as Blackboard and WebCT have grown and merged to form even larger units
and there have been signs of aggressive competition clearly aimed at market domination
(The Inquirer, 2006). Figure 2 shows the product innovation cycle which describes the
pattern of growth and decline typically observed in markets as innovations develop,
mature and are gradually replaced by newer innovations (Levitt, 1965). The saturation of
the market for VLEs, the reduction in the number of players and the absence of evidence
that VLEs are being used to do anything differently reported above suggest that VLEs
may be positioned at the apex of this curve currently.

Figure 2. The product life cycle model. (Based on: Levitt, 1965).

Web 2.0
A potential challenger to the dominant position of VLEs is the so-called Web 2.0. Web
2.0 is a term coined by OReilly (2005) that describes a new generation of Web
applications and tools such as Flickr, Delic.io.us, Myspace, YouTube, Wikepedia,
Blogger. Web 2.0 applications are changing the Web from an essentially broadcast
environment (where a relatively small number publish material to the rest), to one in
which we can all participate as publishers. The concept of Web 2.0 as described
originally by OReilly is a little fuzzy (Vossen and Hagemann, 2007) but has evolved
since. Web 2.0 is a set of economic, social, and technology trends that
collectively form the basis for the next generation of the Internet......
characterized by user participation, openness, and network effects.
(Musser et al, 2006). Arguably Web 2.0 has created a new virtual environment in which
young people live and, potentially, learn:

Young people are spending their time in a space which adults find difficult to supervise
or understandUse of digital technology has been completely normalised by this
generation and it is now fully integrated into their daily lives..almost all are now
involved in creative productionthey all use technology in a way that in the past would
have labelled them geeks.
(Green and Hannon, 2007)
Delicious, YouTube etc. are just some of the best known examples. There are a huge and
rapidly growing number of Web 2.0 applications and tools out there already (see for
example the directory at Virtual Karma
(http://virtualkarma.blogspot.com/2006/01/complete-list-of-web-20-applications.html,
accessed 3 April 2008). As a proportion of the total volume of Web content, Web 2.0 is
growing faster than any other kind of content (Walsh 2006) and educationalists have not
been slow to spot the potential of the rapid take-up of easy-to-use Web 2.0 applications
such as Flickr, YouTube, Facebook, MySpace, blogs, wikis, social writing platforms such
as Google docs, folksonomies and social bookmarking etc. (Downes, 2005) Examples
include the Harvard H20 project: an open source educational platform for free creation
and exchange of ideas within and beyond the university; use of ITunes by Stanford
University, UC Berkely and others for downloading lectures and YouTube by James
Madison University and others for the same purpose. Harvard Law School is using
Second Life to teach advocacy skills and 15 UK Universities have invested in Second
Life real estate, including: Edinburgh, Oxford and De Montfort Universities (Shepherd,
2007). The scale of interest and activity has been sufficient to prompt a UK-wide inquiry
into what the widespread use of new technologies by university and college students
could mean for higher education (JISC, 2008).
Again we need to be cautious. Extravagant claims were made for e-learning in the 1990s
at the height of the dot com boom: In the future we might see the News International or
FT University with an in-country presence where they are delivering content from a few
brand name players. (Tysome, 2000) and the subsequent failure of several high profile elearning ventures, including the UK eUniversity (Garrett, 2004) should serve as a
warning. According to the Gartner Group, Mashups, Web 2.0 and folksonomies are at the
very top of what it calls the peak of inflated expectations (Gartner, 2006). If they are
right, we can expect doubts to begin to set in as the practical realities of implementation
begin to surface. According to the Gartner Hype Cycle model, the trough of
disillusionment typically follows on from the peak of inflated expectations before an
innovation achieves some level of usefulness (see figure 3).

Figure 3. The Gartner Hype Cycle for emerging technologies, 2006 showing selected
technologies. (Based on: Gartner, 2006).
Yet, comparing VLEs with Web 2.0, we can see why Web 2.0 might be more popular than
VLEs among teachers and students, if not administrators. Table 1 summarises some
major differences.
Table 1. Comparison of the characteristics of institutional VLEs and Web 2.0.
VLEs
Top-down management led solution
Costly (even if open source)
Enterprise wide infrastructure required
Requires widespread buy-in
Training required
Interoperability is difficult, it requires
agreed standards
Controlled access make it hard to reach and
modify material
Mature market, declining choice
Confirms traditional power relationships

Web2.0
Bottom-up individually led solutions
Free (mostly)
Web based
Can be adopted by individuals
Easy to use
Mash up interoperability is built in
Open access allows you to continually
modify material even when it is not your
own
Explosive growth, lots of choice
Social, collaborative, empowers individuals

VLE developers have responded to the challenges of Web 2.0 by introducing more
personalised, collaborative and student-centred features into traditional VLEs to create
Personal Learning Environments. The concept of PLEs originated around 2001 and has
gained momentum since (Severance et al, 2008). PLEs are about the creation of
enabling technologies that foster learning exchanges or networks that privilege the

individual over the institution Arguably they undermine the imposed, top-down,
command and control kind of power associated with traditional VLEs (Wilson, 2008;
Deepwell and Malik, 2008). However, Wilson (2008), considering the development of an
institutional PLE based on observed patterns of use noted that the diversity of
individuals requirements for PLEs is such that a comprehensive analysis of them all
would be impractical. The institution is constrained by practical realities to offer the user
a limited range of choices. So while institutional PLEs may be more empowering than
traditional VLEs they are still, by definition, institutional and as such they may be
missing the point. The distinguishing feature of Web 2.0 is that it empowers individuals
to take control. Some learners clearly resent attempts by institutions to muscle in on
their spaces. Lohnes and Kinzer (2007), in an examination of liberal arts students
expectations of technology in classrooms reported that:
Although the students technology practices as observed in the dorm fit expectations for
Net Gen behaviour, we were surprised to find that these Net Gen students exhibited a
strong resistance to using certain technologies in the space of the liberal arts classroom.
So, hype notwithstanding, Web 2.0 tools might turn out to be a lot more popular among
learners and teachers because they meet user needs better than institutional VLEs.
The result may not just be a huge increase in scale of Web 2.0 based e-learning activity,
via applications such as Flickr, YouTube, Facebook, MySpace, blogs, wikis, social
writing platforms such as Google docs, folksonomies and social bookmarking etc. There
may also be a paradigm shift in the way e-learning is conducted. Web 2.0 applications
make it easy for users to take control of the publishing process. They blur the distinction
between traditional producer and user roles, creating a new prod-user identity where
content and opinion is freely shared between peers. This raises important issues about
traditional learner/teacher relationships, ownership of lecture content and of control over
the dialogue in a classroom. Even more fundamentally one has to consider how
institutions will function if their customers can source content, support, and a social life
elsewhere and what happens to knowledge if it is no longer moderated by traditionally
accredited gatekeepers?

Learning Webs
These issues were raised nearly 4 decades ago by Ivan Illich (1971, 1973). Discussing the
negative impact of institutions on education at that time, Illich argued that:
what are needed are new networks, readily available to the public and designed to
spread equal opportunity for learning and teaching. He called these new networks
Learning Webs. Learning Webs, he suggested, should support four kinds of learner
goals:
1. Access to Educational Objects that support formal learning.
2. Skill exchanges, where people could advertise their own availability and skills.
3. Peer-Matching, where they could locate others willing to collaborate.

4. Access to professional educators, rather than to educational programmes or

institutions
In learning webs the roles of learner and teacher would not be fixed and learning would
be far more collaborative, distributed and personalised than either then or now.
Thirteen years before the invention of the PC and 23 years before the World Wide Web,
the creation of Learning Webs presented significant geographical, social and technical
challenges. How could people find each other if the expertise they were looking for did
not reside in their immediate locality? Having found each other, how could they conduct
the dialogue needed to sustain learning? Illich bravely describes how the technology of
the day could be pressed into service. Broadcast television, tape recorders, postal
services, telephones and In big cities typewriter terminals could provide instantaneous
responses (Illich, 1973:95)
The technology of the day did not readily support the kind of social networking Illich
describes. Arguably now the technology has caught up with his vision. The current
explosion of Web 2.0 based activity in which people exchange ideas and information,
voice opinions, share pictures and seek out like minded others seems to model very
closely the characteristics of the infrastructure necessary to underpin Illichs Learning
Webs. Access to low-cost, ubiquitous and easy to use social networking tools has led
some commentators to muse on the implications for formal education:
The traditional classroom paradigm is being challenged today, not so much by
professors, .but by our students (Duderstadt, 2004) and Students may force teachers
to adapt by refusing to accept old ways of teaching. (Prensky, 2001).
Of course these sorts of concerns have been raised before and institutions still survive.
Illichs prediction that The disestablishment of schools will inevitably happen and it
will happen surprisingly fast has yet to come to pass (Illich 1973:104). And there are
signs that Institutions are responding to the challenge by seeking ways to manage the
Web 2.0 phenomenon (Alexander, 2006).

Conclusions
So where is this leading? It has been argued here that VLEs have had only a relatively
slight impact on pedagogy in Higher Education, despite their commercial success; that
VLE development has peaked in any case and that VLEs are likely to be replaced by Web
2.0, which is more suited to the individualistic temperament, skills and requirements of
teachers and learners. Web 2.0 has the potential to not only fundamentally change the
nature of learning and teaching but through the creation of learner-controlled Learning
Webs it may challenge the role of traditional institutions in a way that previous
technologies could not.
While institutional PLEs can deploy some Web 2.0 features, it may be that the Myspace
generation wants to keep their formal learning separate from their activities in Web 2.0, at

least for the present. What the Gartner Hype Cycle suggests however is that in time Web
2.0 may progress through the curve to the plateau of usefulness. Quite what form this
will take remains to be seen, but given the rate at which Web 2.0 is growing we should be
preparing for it now. Experiments such as using ITunes, Flickr, YouTube, blogs and even
PLEs are a start but we need to think about these issues at the level of institutional
strategy as well. As for VLEs, it is clearly not yet time to switch off the servers, but it
seems reasonable to wonder how much longer the return on investment will stand up to
scrutiny.

Acknowledgements
This paper is based on a keynote address delivered to the Cranfield University e-Learning
Seminar, 20 June 2007 Cranfield University, UK. The author wishes to thank various
anonymous reviewers for the helpful comments and suggestions they made on earlier
drafts of the paper.

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