I’ve recently started a new position in charge of eLearning for a college that is investing in the area for the first time. We have a VLE in place, but the question arose as to how we refer to that system, and the support structures surrounding it.
I’m personally completely against referring to the learning environment by the technology that powers it (“Blackboard”, “Moodle” etc), as I feel this is meaningless to the student using it. But the question is – what do you then call it?
Some institutions refer to it as “My <insert institution name/acronym here>”, but to me this seems like a better approach for the main portal to the institution, as it should include all aspects of student life – studies, finance, accommodation, social etc.
I’ve seen others using acronyms (in my past life I had once touted the idea of calling our VLE “DeLVE” – Dynamic eLearning Virtual Environment. Cheesy, I know. I was young and naive!). Again, this doesn’t really tell the students exactly what it is, at least in simple terms.
So what does that leave us with? Descriptive titles like “My Studies” or “Online Campus” may fit the bill, but also seem somewhat… lacking in dynamism I guess.
This is the dilemma I’m currenly faced with, so let me ask – how do you think a VLE should be named?
Actually, this problem came up for me in a similar position as well. I was working on a catchy name, then I stopped and decided to do a VLE user survey. I asked a thousand students (or got that many replies out of 15,000 depending on how you look at it) and surprisingly, more than 75% of them already knew what Moodle was.
So based on that, I kept the in-house brand (GO) for the Sharepoint Portal to all campus services, and made Moodle one of those services amongst many.
Two big advantages – students knew what they were getting, and teachers knew to say “oh we use that too!” when they went to learning conferences. So I got the best out of the Moodle brand, and the in-house brand.
Just my two pence – I suspect with adult learners the dynamic might be different.
I think my idea is to have a name that is easily referred to, to help those with no knowledge of what “Moodle” or “Blackboard” might be, but at the same time have a note to those with an understanding as to what the system actually is (something like “Powered by Blackboard” at the bottom of the screen, or some such).