Does MLE really mean ‘muddled language: explain’? 4 June, 2004
In educational technology circles the talk used to be about VLEs (virtual learning environments) that brought together content, assessment, discussion and personalisation. This was the future and would improve learning. There was lots of money floating about so everyone went out and bought or (in some cases) built a system. And then they realised that these systems needed to talk to other systems and that universities weren’t just about learning and thus the phrase managed learning environment (or MLE) was born. But no-one really seems to know what an MLE is? Unlike CRM or intranets there are no distinct products that will give you an MLE. IT departments tend to deal in products, rather than concepts and so I wonder if Jisc’s notion of an MLE is actually doing more harm than good.