Abstract
Virtual Learning Environments (VLEs) are important infrastructure and digital educational spaces that are widely used. The lecturers’ voices on VLEs and their use were not adequately captured in the #VLEIreland project. Therefore, following the development and piloting of a questionnaire consisting of a common set of questions, lecturers were surveyed across seven Irish higher education institutes. There were 580 responses from staff who use the VLE, with the analysis based upon the 521 valid responses. The findings will explore the VLE features or tools used by lecturers, their attitude to the VLE, and barriers to the use of the VLE and related issues, including that of intellectual property ownership. Lecturers are broadly positive about VLEs, with 7 in 10 of those who use the VLE strongly agreeing that it is helpful. However the adoption and use of VLEs is not without difficulties. In particular, time pressures emerged as barriers to use, limiting the use of VLEs and engagement with training. Despite this, 91% of respondents answered Yes to the question “Are you interested in making more use of online tools in your teaching?” Drawing on the issues highlighted in the findings, this paper will explore the attitudes of lecturers to the VLE and the enablers of, and inhibitors to, their greater engagement with the VLE.
Highlights
The need to develop academics’ digital capacity and digital pedagogical knowledge has been identified as a strategic goal at national (National Forum, 2015; National Forum, 2016) and EU level (European Commission, 2014; OECD, 2012)
There is almost universal use of the Virtual Learning Environments (VLEs) to share learning resources, the advantages of which are noted by this lecturer who states that: It is useful for storing material when teaching on several different courses, seeing if students are using it, maintaining contact with students when they are on placements, providing additional resources for students who may need particular support
While we acknowledge the potential for self-selection bias of the sample, we suggest that this research does give room for some degree of optimism
Summary
The need to develop academics’ digital capacity and digital pedagogical knowledge has been identified as a strategic goal at national (National Forum, 2015; National Forum, 2016) and EU level (European Commission, 2014; OECD, 2012). The VLE staff survey was developed to, as well as giving individual institutions useful information, increase knowledge around lecturers’ use of, and attitudes to, the VLE. Following a summary of research methods, this article presents and discusses an analysis of academic staff’s views on the use of VLEs across higher education in Ireland. We focus our analysis on the 521 responses from staff in seven Irish higher education institutions who reported using VLEs. The basis for this article stems from conference papers (Farrelly et al, 2015 and 2016) and we would like to acknowledge the valuable contributions of all our collaborators in the development of the survey, and for collecting and sharing data. The findings are discussed along with other research and some implications are drawn
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