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If there was an environment for you to view answer these questions

1. Was it clear what was to be done at the environment? Why was it clear? Why wasn’t it clear?
2. Do you think the target audience would be able to do the task?
3. Do you think the environment chosen was appropriate?Why Why not?
4. Make any suggestions for alternatives, additions or clarifications or simplifications that you believe would improve the learning?

Peer review is a nice idea but it seems everyone or every system has different ways of administering it or different expectations of what it might involve.

So the jam was I set a deadline for the submission of work in the software – so that at that date the reviewers of the submissions could start to do do their reviews because they could start to see the submissions that they were to feedback their ideas on.

This is logical – but my expectation was that there would always be late submissions – it is a fact of life at university level – and usually we make minor allowances for late submission. In another peer review environment I have used you can reopen the submission process to allow for these late comers – and then you manually allocate the latecomers some reviews to do and so reviewers to review their late work- you may even allocate the latecomers to a tutor or the lecturer to review.

But the blackboard environment perhaps logically is not so forgiving. A deadline set is a deadline set and no change can be made.

So a manual work around is necessary that does not involve the software for peer review having to accept any new submissions or edits to submissions. This work around is only possible because outside the peer review area the students were using their blogs and PLEs as unofficial peer review sites before we even started the official software delineated process.

The group really does not need a blind peer review process like the one in the LMS because they pretty much know what each other is doing and probably may even reveal their own identity to whoever they review in the LMS process just by the turn of phase or writing style they use.

The reality is that they were peer reviewing each other even before we stated the software peer review area – and this brings up the question – is a blind peer review process better than one where the submitter and reviewer know each other?

I ask the question is it the learning or the environment that is virtual in a VLE? But maybe the answer is not of consequence Tim found this quote in Wikipedia…” A more correct term may be a virtual environment for learning, rather than virtual learning environment. This removes any ambiguities and identifies that it is the environment which is virtual and not the learning.”

Maybe that settles the issue of virtual but what if you are participating in a SO (social object) and your network of participants are building relationships between things in ways you have never considered – the SO while you were part of it was morphing ideas and throwing up very successful solutions and possibilities – the network starts making amazing associations that are break through ideas or concepts only possible because of the network.

Your contributions to that network brought about the break throughs along with all the other contributions – everyone was learning by just being part of the network and even after the break through happened – more learning was to occur in future – is the learning described as virtual then – or is it still only the environment that is virtual?

Another feature that might be included at a basic level is what Elluninate and the Blackboard virtual classrooms both have and that is a shared white board. This might seem very much like a “real” classroom and therefore might seem to be an essential ingredient in a definition – but it is not always necessary, available or used even if available. That is it is both not essential and not like a “real” whiteboard. Generally the whiteboard feature is more like an “interactive whiteboard” – the big difference though from real classrooms is that in a virtual classroom the teacher is not necessarily in “charge” of the white board – that is the standard set up in most VCs is to enable contributions from anyone to the whiteboard.

The second difference is the whiteboard is not really a whiteboard in that generally it can also be used to share things other than real time scribbles of the teacher and the students – so usually it can be used to share type written text, to draw perfect circles, or act like drawing application software – it may allow the sharing of images. The Elluminate whiteboard allows the sharing of Powerpoint slides.

I have not finished this yet but perhaps others might be able to identify some other basic differences between “real” classrooms and the virtual ones. Any ideas?

Except if you confuse – as I do – virtual learning (sorry Tim should be virtual learning environment not virtual learning – the learning is not virtual the environment is – but then again it is an interesting idea to have some sort of way of referring to that kind of learning) with virtual classrooms and then you begin to wonder if the object should be like a classroom? – But that is a mistaken way to think of either virtual learning environments or virtual classrooms – they are both not like classrooms – at all – that is right isn’t it?

Is a learning object a mini virtual learning environment and can it ever be a mini virtual classroom?