A Virtual Learning Environment (VLE) is a system specifically designed to facilitate the management of educational courses by teachers for their students. It predominantly relies on computer hardware and software, enabling distance learning. In North America, this concept is commonly denoted as a "Learning Management System" (LMS).
Terminology Key terminology to describe virtual learning environments include: Computer Based Training (CBT) Learning Management System (LMS) Massive open online course (MOOC)
Pre-1940s
1728: March 20, Boston Gazette contains an advertisement from Caleb Phillipps, "Teacher of the New Method of Short Hand," advising that any "Persons in the Country desirous to Learn this Art, may by having the several Lessons sent weekly to them, be as perfectly instructed as those that live in Boston."From correspondence to cyberspace: Changes and challenges in distance education Beverly L. Bower and Kimberly P. Hardy, New Directions for Community Colleges, Volume 2004, Issue 128, pages 5–12 – also published by DW Bethany, "Societal Issues in Distance Learning", September 2001, University of South Florida, again in "Technological Rug down the Hallways of Distance Education", November 2001, Empire State College – Prior reference by RW Gattenberg (1971) and Ken Freed (1988) 1840: Isaac Pitman begins teaching shorthand, using Great Britain's Penny Post. 1874: Institutionally sponsored distance education began in the United States US in 1874 at the Illinois Wesleyan University. 1873: The University of the Cape of Good Hope (the current University of South Africa www.unisa.ac.za, Cape Town, South Africa, Africa) was launched in Cape Town, based on the existing University of London, UK, with accreditation Boucher, M 1973 Spes in Ardius The history of the University of South Africa, Pretoria, Unisa, p. 2-8, following on the start of the South African College with a Council of Examinations in 1829 to use written examinations to certify work abilities of clerks (not verbal or status as ability). This followed similar initial developments around 1854 spearheaded by the University of London and Queen's University Ireland, and expanded to Canada, Calcutta, and India. 1890: International Correspondence Schools (ICS) is launched by newspaperman Thomas J. Foster in Scranton, Pennsylvania and becomes the world's largest study-at-home school. 1883: The Correspondence University of Ithaca, New York (a correspondence school) was founded in 1883. 1892: The term "distance education" was first used in America a University of Wisconsin–Madison catalog for the 1892 school year. 1906–7: The University of Wisconsin–Extension was founded, the first true distance learning institution in America. 1909: The Machine Stops a short story by E. M. Forster, which describes an audio/visual communication network being used to deliver a lecture on Australian music to a remote audience. 1920s: Sidney Pressey, an educational psychology professor at Ohio State University, develops the first "teaching machine." This device offered drill and practice exercises, and multiple choice questions. 1929: M.E. LaZerte, Director of the School of Education, University of Alberta, developed a set of instructional devices for teaching and learning. For example, he "developed several devices and methods to minimize instructor-as-testor involvement, so as to increase the likelihood of gathering data in a consistent manner." One mechanical device that he developed was the "problem cylinder" which could present a problem to a student and check whether the steps to a solution given by the student were correct.Hunka, Stephen and Buck, George (1996) "The Rise and Fall of CAI at the University of Alberta's Faculty of Education" . Canadian Journal of Educational Communication, 21(2), 153–170. (also: full journal issue)
1940s 1945 Vannevar Bush describes a hypertext-like device called the "memex" in his article As we may think in The Atlantic.
1948 Norbert Wiener writes about human-machine communications in his landmark book "Cybernetics or Control and Communication in the Animal and the Machine" (MIT Press, 1948).
1950s
1953 The University of Houston offers the first televised college credit classes via KUHT, the first public television station in the United States. The live telecasts ran from 13 to 15 hours each week, making up about 38% of the program schedule. Most courses aired at night so that students who worked during the day could watch them. By the mid-1960s, with about one-third of the station's programming devoted to education, more than 100,000 semester hours had been taught on KUHT.
1953–1956 B. F. Skinner develops "programmed instruction" [B.F. Skinner Foundation – Better Behavioral Science for a More Humane World] and an updated "teaching machine".B.F. Skinner Foundation – Teaching machines
1956 Gordon Pask and Robin McKinnon-Wood develop SAKI, the first adaptive teaching system to go into commercial production. SAKI taught keyboard skills and it optimized the rate by which a trainee keyboard operator learned by making the difficulty level of the tasks contingent on the learner's performance. As the learner's performance improved the rate of teaching increased and instructional support was delayed.
1956–1958 Harvey White, a physics professor at U.C. Berkeley, produced 163 high school physics lessons at Pittsburgh's PBS station WQED that were broadcast into public schools in the area. Each 30 minute lesson was also filmed and subsequently distributed to dozens of educational/public television stations. In the academic year 1957–1958, White's television physics course was used in many thousands of public school classrooms across the nation in which over 100,000 students were enrolled. This course already made evident two important characteristics of distance education that carry over to contemporary online instruction: enormous economies of scale and higher labor productivity of the classroom based teacher/tutor/facilitator.
1957 Frank Rosenblatt invented the "perceptron" in 1957 at the Cornell Aeronautical Laboratory in an attempt to understand human memory, learning, and cognitive processes.Rosenblatt, Frank (1958), The Perceptron: A Probabilistic Model for Information Storage and Organization in the Brain, Cornell Aeronautical Laboratory, Psychological Review, v65, No. 6, pp. 386–408. This was the beginning of machine learning.
1958 Charles Bourne and Douglas Engelbart publish an article in the DATAMATION magazine that outlines the requirements of and a proposal for a National Technical Information Service for the USA.
1959 Rath, Anderson, and Brainerd reported a project using an IBM 650 to teach binary arithmetic to students.E. Galanter (ed.) Automated Teaching: the State of the Art, John Wiley and Sons, NY, 1959 Pp. 117–130 The University of Chicago first produces Sunrise Semester, a series of courses delivered via broadcast television.
1960s
1960 PLATO (Programmed Logic for Automated Teaching Operations) system developed at the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign in a project led by Dr. Donald Bitzer. Some rights to PLATO, including the trademark, are now owned by Edmentum (formerly PLATO Learning), which delivers managed course content over the Internet. The PLATO system featured multiple roles, including students, who could study assigned lessons and communicate with teachers through on-line notes, instructors, who could examine student progress data, as well as communicate and take lessons themselves, and authors, who could do all of the above, plus create new lessons. There was also a fourth type of user, called a multiple, which was used for demonstrations of the PLATO system.Fundamentals of PLATO Programming, Celia R. Davis, Computer-based Education Research Laboratory, University of Illinois, Urbana, Illinois, February, 1980 Project Xanadu, the first known attempt at implementing a hypertext system, founded by Ted Nelson. Teaching Machines Inc, a group of psychologists produced a series of programmed learning texts. The texts were based on the work of B.F. Skinner, breaking complicated tasks to a one-step-at-a-time activity (terminal learning objectives). Grolier and TMI marketed Min-Max (a teaching machine) with machine programs and programmed text books.
1962 Douglas Engelbart publishes his seminal work, "Augmenting Human Intellect: a conceptual framework". In this paper, he proposes using computers to augment training. With his colleagues at the Stanford Research Institute, Engelbart started to develop a computer system to augment human abilities, including learning. The system was simply called the oNLine System (NLS), and it debuted in 1968. The initial concept of a global information network should be given to J.C.R. Licklider in his series of memos entitled "On-Line Man Computer Communication", written in August 1962. However, the actual development of the internet must be given to Lawrence G. Roberts of MIT.
1963 Ivan Sutherland develops Sketchpad, the first graphical user interface for a computer, and publishes a description of it in his PhD dissertation at MIT. The first computer for instruction is installed at Orange Coast College, California. A chapter in the Daily Express Science Annual, entitled Teaching Machines and Programmed Learning, describes interactive teaching machines and shows photos of a number of systems including The Grundy Tutor,For a photo of the Grundy Tutor see . The date shown "c. 1945" is incorrect. The curator confirms that according to the accompanying documentation the approximate date of production of the Grundy Tutor was 1962 and the online caption will be amended. The Auto Tutor and the Empirical Tutor. These electronic devices present frames of information followed by questions, and branch to other frames depending on the button pressed by the learner. The article states that the Auto Tutor was designed by Norman Crowder, an American psychologist. It describes a British machine, the Empirical Tutor thus: "In addition to the printed programme it can use film sequences, slide projectors, tape recorders or even real apparatus, which the student may use to help him to decide how to answer the question in the frame". The article also refers to a language teaching system developed by Professor Rand Morton of Michigan University. A science fiction story in the same Annual, by Brian Aldiss, predicts mobile learning, wearable computing, brain–computer interfaces, the development of personal computing in the nineteen-seventies, and concern over global warming. Douglas Engelbart invents the computer mouse, and a prototype is constructed by Bill English. Engelbart was awarded a patent in 1970 for an improved version of the mouse.
1964 The first authoring system for developing lessons and courses on a computer system is produced. CATO, ("Compiler for Automatic Teaching Operations") on the PLATO system allowed the development of various forms of "teaching logic" for fields varying from mathematics to the behavioral sciences.Bitzer, D., Lyman, E., and Easley, J. (1965) The Uses of PLATO: a computer controlled teaching system. Urbana, Ill., Coordinated Science Laboratory, University of Illinois, Report R-268 The Computer Assisted Instruction Laboratory is established at Pennsylvania State University, College of Education.Hall, Keith (1970) Computer Assisted Instruction: Status in Pennsylvania. Bureau of Educational Research, Pennsylvania Department of Education, July 1970. The Altoona Area School District in Pennsylvania began to use computers to instruct students.
1965