The whole range of “learning environments” – and what they are is cropping up a lot in conversations at present; in particular those that facilitate collaborative opportunities.

From a digital point of view, we are starting to think about the VLE and other digital provision we have in place at Dundee. It’s currently Blackboard, with Campus Pack bolted on. Across the university, Moodle is also in use at the Medical School (supported by WordPress). We also have Office 365, so the groups tool in that is available (and hopefully teams will be coming).

I have used Google Groups in the past – and find them to be generally more useful and flexible than Office groups, especially when it comes to sharing links to them / sending invitations, as a way of inviting others to join (rather than forcibly adding them.

It’s very useful, therefore, that JISC have just started a discussion around “The Next Generation of Digital Learning Environments” as part of the co-design16 project. There have been some good online discussions – Lawrie Phipps is keeping an ongoing post storifying all the key points.

One thing that’s clear in Lawrie’s post is that so many are looking at the future. UCL make the very good point that in real life, students are welcomed to the physical classroom, but told “it’s impossible” to enter the virtual classroom for those subjects they’re interested in.

In a related area, I have been involved with a group looking at the library re-development we are undertaking this summer. (CTIL, the eLearning team, is based within the library). I was particularly interested in the space available for collaborative learning. We visited a number of University libraries across Scotland and Northern England. One of thing that struck me was that many of the Universities had group working space, large tables etc., complete with a shared screen. More often than not, though, that wasn’t in use, though the students were clearly interacting with each other. What wasn’t clear was what they were doing: Were they collaborating on an item of work, but too shy to let others see? Were they collaborating on an item of work, each doing their own chunk, intending to stick it together right at the end (with the inevitable inconsistencies)? Were they working together on an assignment that was meant to be individual? Were they just friends, doing multiple different subjects? Or were they doing what I’d love students to do, generating research and discussion around a point that had cropped up in class, not directly related to an assessment, but something about which they just wanted to know more.

It’s a while since I started this post, and I need to get back and read a few more of Lawrie’s summaries of the latter stages of the co-design2016.