On Learning Platforms

I've been involved with the procurement, installation, training and ongoing development of 2 learning platforms now. Several years ago we felt the need to unify our existing systems (intranet, email, shared learning resource folders) and provide 24/7 external access to them (along with "My Documents"). At the time, we were slightly ahead of the curve and we struggled to get a solution that was really tailored to the education market. In the end, we went with MS SharePoint Server 2003, customised by a local firm. This was not without problems (like synchronising Class Server and Active Directory via CSV files!), but served us well until recently, when MS began to withdraw support for the old version of SharePoint and totally phased out Class Server (the "VLE" bit of the solution, which allows teachers to allocate work to students, mark it and give it back).

There is a new version of MS Learning Gateway which includes the free SharePoint Learning Kit to replace Class Server. However, the old issue of the whole thing looking like it was designed for business then rebranded remains. We decided to look around and found that things had moved on significantly in the marketplace. At BETT 2008 we tried out systems from the major manufacturers and decided that although there were many more systems and they were much prettier than our current offering, they didn't add significant functionality (and many reduced it). The only system we were interested in was Frog.

Although I've been less involved in the Frog implementation I'd say the key things we've tried to do differently this time are:

• transfer files over for teachers, rather than asking them to do it themselves (the downside to this is that junk isn't cleared out)
• involve the tech support team and admin staff (who will need to update content) much more from the beginning - with SharePoint we had a teacher who set the whole thing up and maintained it and when he left we were in trouble: I think this "sustainability" issue is the big one for many small or medium sized organisations and it ties into my comments on other systems we use or have created.

I'm still not convinced about the concept of Learning Platforms: I think 24/7 access to email, My Documents and learning resources is excellent (and the hit stats bear me out), and as a school we could make more of some of features like surveys and forums. I also think that the line between website and Learning Platform is blurring and we need to be smart about this process ensure there are simple ways for staff to update content so parents and students always have up to date information. However, it's the VLE bit I worry about. I really can't see the day (yet) when all work is set, completed and marked electronically. There are many obstacles to such a situation: individual access to computers all day at school, training, link to the school MIS, workload... let alone tasks which are just better done "by hand" (like making a papier maché volcano!).

Frog are working on a number of new projects, one of which is the Parental Engagement Portal. This looks interesting in the context of Online Reporting. 14-19 collaboration is another of their projects, and this is certainly an area which could benefit from joined up solutions to sharing data. I suspect that whatever is developed now will be OK, but stymied until SIF (Schools' Interoperability Framework) is properly in place across the UK. This standard should allow different systems in different schools to share data properly at last. We'll see!

I'm interested to hear how others are getting on with Learning Platforms, especially the VLE element.