David Davies' Radio Weblog

There's a feature that's common to most if not all commercially available VLEs. As a student, you only have access to the learning materials while you're an enrolled member of the course. Leave the course and the materials are no longer available to you and very likely any material you created as part of your course is also lost. It may be archived in the institution hosting your course but it's probably no longer available to you.

Maybe what we need are teaching & learning web services. Plug-and-play services that deliver learning objects to the user to meet their needs, whether they're enrolled in a course, updating themselves as part of CPD or just plain curious and eager to learn.

Interoperability would be nice, such that information providers can provide pedagogically neutral content that you can adapt for your own needs, in your own personal VLE. This personal VLE is not just a VLE in the limiting sense of present VLEs. This is your own personal online presence, your lifelong learning record, your weblog, your Memex.