Virtual learning environments are too often little more than a ¡°repository for PowerPoint slides¡± and fail to enthuse students, a seminar has heard.

A technology-themed Westminster Higher Education Forum event was told that universities should consider using social media or business-orientated software to engage with students instead.

Peter Tinson, executive director of the Universities and Colleges Information Systems Association, said that there was ¡°a lot of bad use of VLEs¡±. Too many are ¡°a repository for PowerPoint slides and the like¡±, he said. ¡°It¡¯s almost [as if] institutions said ¡®you must have an online element¡¯ and that was the response, the minimum in order to comply.¡±

A few universities have turned their VLEs off because they are so underused, the event heard.

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In response to a suggestion that universities should engage with students on social media sites that they already used, such as Facebook, Mr Tinson said that students were ¡°reticent¡± to allow their institutions to ¡°meet them in their space¡±. The focus should be on tying use of VLEs to pedagogical innovation, he argued.

But Lawrie Phipps, senior co-design manager at Jisc, said that the response to using social media for academic purposes was ¡°more nuanced¡± when universities presented it as an opportunity to learn and connect with coursemates, not lecturers.

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Mr Phipps added that VLEs were never used in the workplace, where sharing platforms such as SharePoint and Google Apps were more common. ¡°We need to start using more of the technologies that are in the workplace,¡± he said.

The event, held on 24 June, also debated the digital capabilities of students and staff.

Mr Tinson said that undergraduates were ¡°always online but rarely possess the skills to use the technology effectively in their learning¡±. Similarly, staff need to understand how to use technology to develop new teaching and assessment models.

The solution, Mr Tinson suggested, was to make digital skills training credit-bearing for students, and to incorporate digital activities into academics¡¯ performance reviews.

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chris.havergal@tesglobal.com