Jump to content

History of virtual learning environments: Difference between revisions

Edit links
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Browse history interactively
← Previous editNext edit →
Content deleted Content added
VisualWikitext
Softcafe (talk | contribs)
80 edits
Softcafe (talk | contribs)
80 edits
No edit summary
Line 2: Line 2:


==Unknown Dates==
==Unknown Dates==

* History of any <b>art prior to 1990</b> with regard to remote teaching and interactive communication.


* MIT/Sloan School of Management's dotLRN (See [http://www.dotlrn.org]) Start date unknown - around by at least 2002... anyone have a better date?
* MIT/Sloan School of Management's dotLRN (See [http://www.dotlrn.org]) Start date unknown - around by at least 2002... anyone have a better date?

Revision as of 15:00, 3 August 2006

This page outlines the history of Virtual Learning Environment (VLE) development. (The term "Virtual Learning Environment" probably came into use in the early 1990s.)

Unknown Dates

  • History of any art prior to 1990 with regard to remote teaching and interactive communication.
  • MIT/Sloan School of Management's dotLRN (See [1]) Start date unknown - around by at least 2002... anyone have a better date?

http://web.archive.org/web/20011204023947/http://dotlrn.mit.edu/

  • I have an e-mail from Sloan dated 8/1/01 which states "I'm writing because OpenForce is ready to begin porting SloanSpace to ACS 4". I would call this the start of the dotLRN effort. Does anyone have any better info?
  • CAI learning environments in the military: The US military has traditionally been the greatest consumer of computer based education as early as the 50's and 60's.

2006

2005

2004

  • The Sakai Project founded, promising to develop an open source Collaboration and Learning Environment for the needs of higher education.
  • Public release of Dokeos open-source VLE.

2002

  • Moodle version 1.0 released in August
  • Fle3 version 1.0 released in February - the first Open Source version of FLE software

2001

  • The Bodington system released as open source by the University of Leeds, U.K.
  • LON-CAPA is first used in courses at Michigan State University.
  • version 2.0 of COSE is launched after further funding from the JISC

2000

  • Blackboard Inc. application for patent is filed. Patent claim covers a number of features of VLEs, including network-based architecture, course and role based access via login, electronic assignment submission, online assessment, synchronous and asynchronous communications, and self-registration.
  • Blackboard Inc. acquires MadDuck Technologies LLC, developers of "Web Course in a Box".

1999

  • The Oncourse Project invented and introduced the notion of “Enterprise Course management system” where data from the Student Information System (SIS) was used to automatically and dynamically create CMS course site for all the courses offered at the IUPUI Campus (more than 6,000 courses offered to more than 27,000 students). http://www.aace.org/PUBS/webnet/v1no4/Vol._1_No._4_Jafari.pdf
  • The LON-CAPA project is started at Michigan State University.
  • The University of Michigan launches CourseTools, originally a product of the UMIE project (launched in 1996), and moved into its own development and production team due to the scale and scope of the LMS being launched and created.
  • September 1999 - The brand new Technical University of British Columbia admits it's first students. Their 'Course Management System' is a home-grown system with 2+ years of development behind it at this point.
  • WebCT purchased by Universal Learning Technology. Roughly 1000 campuses using WebCT by end of year.
  • Wolfgang Appelt and Peter Mambrey publish a paper on using BSCW as a virtual learning environment.
  • Washington State University publishes online a comparison of 24 VLE's, focusing on 8 that were considered candidates for adoption at WSU. (Note: Only the final draft survives in the archives.)

1998

  • In the spring of 1998 TeLeTOP, a set of fill-in forms on top of Lotus Domino, saw the light at Twente University, The Netherlands. It was not the first ELO that was used there, but it was the first one where teachers themselves could create a course without any ICT knowledge. Core of this product was and is the central task-scheme ("The Rostar"), where the teacher could create a row of activities for each week. (Typical activity set: before the session, during the session and after the session you must do...) A demo course has been available online since 1998. You still can login with UN: docent.test and PW: docent.test.
  • The Cisco Networking Academy Management System (CNAMS) is released to faciliate communication and course management of the largest blended learning initiative of its time, the Cisco Networking Academy. It includes tools to maintain rosters, gradebooks, forums, as well as a scalable, robust assessment engine. Cisco Networking Academy Program.
  • Humboldt State University's Courseware Development Center builds the ExamMaker application for online testing. ExamMaker supports banks of questions, which may include audio and/or video segments, that may be true/false, fill-in-the-blank, multiple choice, or essay. Essay questions are emailed to the teacher for grading, then sent back to ExamMaker to display the graded essays to the students. ExamMaker grades all other types of questions and provides the student immediate feedback as soon as the exam is completed, including an explanation of the correct answers, and automatically posts the grade. Full Description:ASSURED STUDENT ACCESS TO COMPUTING AND THE NETWORK
  • Nicenet Internet Classroom Assistant (ICA2) is launched with web-based conferencing, personal messaging, document sharing, scheduling and link/resource sharing to a variety of learning environments. See their website
  • DiscoverWare, Inc. builds and begins to deploy it's "Nova" course management system, involving a client/server architecture to deploy rich interactive content in a desktop application, and storing/sharing information on content, users, courses, and quizzes on a central server. This was an adaptive LMS, in that quizzes were generated based on the user's progress through the content, and courses were generated based on the user's responses to a quiz. The playback engine evolved a browser-based version that was SCORM Level 2 Compliant, enabling deployment of DiscoverWare content in third-party LMS such as Pathware.
  • Blackboard Inc merges with CourseInfo a corporation created by Cornell University to acquire its core course management software.
  • WebTestr [3] built and deployed by Nicholas Crosby at SIAST [www.siast.sk.ca].
  • Fretwell-Downing Education Ltd (now part of Tribal Group plc) builds a pilot web-based learning environment for use in delivering accredited courses in internet skills (information retrieval, web design and online collaboration) in the UK. The learning environment is a contribution to the work of the Living IT consortium, which includes The Sheffield College and Manchester College or Arts and Technology as well as Fretwell-Downing Education Ltd, and which had been delivering these courses since 1997. (In 1999, the company demonstrates this learning environment as part of its successful tender to build a larger, more sophisticated learning environment for learndirect, which was subsequently used by hundreds of thousands of learners in England and Wales.)
  • Future Learning Environment (FLE) reserarch and development project releases the first version of FLE software. The FLE software is afterwards known as Fle3.

1997

  • Lotus LearningSpace deployed as the learning and student team environment for the Indiana University Accounting MBA program and reported in the proceedings of HICSS-32.
  • The Bodington VLE deployed at the University of Leeds, U.K.
  • Ziff Davis launches ZDNet University for $4.95/month. Offering courses in programming, graphics and web management. See the Archive at Archive
  • Cisco Systems In 1993, Cisco embarked on an initiative to design practical, cost-effective networks for schools. It quickly became apparent that designing and installing the networks was not enough, schools also needed some way to maintain the networks after they were up and running. Cisco Senior Consulting Engineer George Ward developed training for teachers and staff for maintenance of school networks. The students in particular were eager to learn and the demand was such that in 1997 it led to the creation of the Cisco Networking Academy Program, see Cisco networking academy. The Cisco Networking Academy Program, established in 1997, teaches students networking and other information technology-related skills, preparing them for jobs as well as for higher education in engineering, computer science and related fields. Since its launch, the program has grown to more than 10,000 Academies in 50 U.S. states and more than 150 countries with a curriculum taught in nine different languages. More than 400,000 students participate in Academies operating in high schools, colleges and universities, technical schools, community-based organizations, and other educational programs around the world. The Networking Academy program blends face-to-face teaching with web-based curriculum, hands-on lab exercises, and Internet-based assessment. Click here to learn more from Cisco Systems on how this program began, and click here for a pdf document to learn more about the program today Program History PDF.
  • WebCT spins out of UBC forming independant company with several hundred university customers.
  • Release of TWEN (The West Education Network), a system which "connects you with the most useful and current legal information and news, while helping you to organize your course information and participate in class discussions". (See archived homepage from archive.org)
  • Future Learning Environment (FLE) research and development project starts in Helsinki, Finland (See: http://fle.uiah.fi)
  • A collaborative writing project between Jr Hi students and University pre-teachers, using Filemaker Pro to create collaborative writing spaces, Jan-Mar, 1997, later described in Payne, J Scott and N. S. Peterson. 2000. The Civil War project: project-based collaborative learning in a virtual space. Educational Technology & Society 3(3).
  • The Manhattan Project (now known as the Manhattan Virtual Classroom) is launched at Western New England College in Springfield, MA as a supplement to classroom courses in February 1997. It is later released as an open source project. The Manhattan Project (history and description)
  • Delivery starts of the Learning To Teach On-Line course [4] in South Yorkshire, England. Characteristics: delivery over the Internet; materials, tasks/assignments, discussion-board. chat system all accessible by browser; browser-based amending of the materials; learners and tutors all over the world, with learners enroled to several of the institutions in the (then) South Yorkshire Further Education Consortium, and tutors employed by several different institutions.
  • An undergraduate software development course tackles a problem of Distance Education. The purpose was to allow interaction between students and instructors located in remote sites by using a computer network, such as the the internet. Included in the software requirements was a linked web-browser system, a synchronized blackboard application, and a student/instructor chat tool. There were two levels of access, seperately for the instructor and for the student. The sinple software suite was accomplished in 1997.
  • An undergraduate software development course at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill included a team addressing the problem of Distance Education. The purpose was to allow interaction between students and instructors located in remote sites by utilizing a computer network, such as the the internet. Included in the software requirements were a linked web-browser system, a synchronized blackboard application, and a student/instructor chat tool. There were two levels of access, seperately for the instructor and for the students. The simple software suite was accomplished in the spring semester of 1997.
  • The Web Project at California State University, Northridge, adapted HyperNews, a shareware discussion board that created specific courses with faculty and students. In addition, QuizMaker from the University of Hawaii, and Internet Relay Chat (IRC), were shortly thereafter added to the shareware suite and indexed to faculty webpages. The Virtual 7 were seven faculty who began to teach online in 1997, with this software.
  • Pioneer developed by MEDC (University of Paisley) Pioneer was an online learning environment developed initially for colleges in Scotland. Pioneer was web-based and featured: online course materials (published by the lecturers themselves); integral email to allow communications between students and tutors; forum tools; chat tools; timeatable/calendar; activities. The main driver for Pioneer was Jackie Galbraith. When MEDC was closed, the Pioneer development team moved to SCET in 1998 taking Pioneer with them when it became SCETPioneer. SCETPioneer was used by Glasgow Colleges and a number of other colleges and schools in Scotland. SCET merged with the SCCC and became Learning and Teaching Scotland

1996

  • The UCLA Periodontics Information Center was established in 1996 within the UCLA School of Dentisty with generous gifts from the Tarrson Family and Sun Microsystems. The initial thrust was to provide the most comprehensive website on Periodontics including Tutorials, Case Studies and Contining Education Credits.
  • Webtester and ChiTester developed at Weber State University through a grant from the Utah Higher Education Technology Initiative. ChiTester early history
  • In January, Nat Kannan, Carl Tyson, and Michael Anderson form UOL Publishing (now VCampus) and release an Internet course delivery platform; the Java client accesses PLATO content on a CDC mainframe. In November, UOL releases a browser-based course authoring and delivery platform based on the Informix OO database.
  • Electronic, network-based assignment submission tool in use at Australian National University Department of Computer Science. Web-based course pages also implemented at ANU DCS (both submission tool and course pages may have been in use prior to 1996).
  • The University of Michigan launches the UMIE project (the University of Michigan Instructional Environment), a combination of systems to enhance learning online and to create a Learning Management System for use by the campus.
  • University of Southern Queensland (USQ) offers its first fully online program, a Graduate Certificate in Open and Distance Learning, using a system that linked together course materials presented in web pages, online discussion via newsgroups (NNTP) and a purpose-built system for online submission of student work.
  • The development of COSE was funded from September 1996 to August 1999 by the JISC Technology Applications Programme (JTAP). COSE has continued to gain support from the JISC in its work on interoperability.
  • Pitsco, Inc. (See [5]) ships an updated version of its Synergistic Systems modular education curriculum which includes computer-based assessment and network-based reporting and gathering of assessment results.
  • World Wide Satellite Broadcasting (WSB) Inc. develops a satellite-based distance learning system using synchronized video and audio courseware provided by UCLA. Content is delivered via Philips' CleverCast content distribution system to Windows PCs running Active Desktop via the Astro MEASAT Direct To Home (DTH) network, covering Malaysia, Thailand and India.
  • The TELSI (Telematic Environment for Language Simulations) VLE is developed at the University of Oulu in Finland.

1995

  • Lotus Notes used for course materials, syllabi, handouts, homework collection, teams, and multi-instructor, multi-team teaching in the MBA program. Results reported at several academic conferences (ICIS-17, AIS-2) in 1996.
  • Mallard web-based course management system developed at the University of Illinois (Mallard overview). See also CyberProf (also copyrighted in 1995 from University of Illinois)
  • WOLF (Wolverhampton Online Learning Framework) is developed at the University of Wolverhampton's Broadnet project under the guidance of Stephen Molyneux to deliver training materials to local SMEs (Small to Medium Enterprises). In 1999, WOLF is both adopted as the University's VLE, and sold for commerical distribution to Granada Learning, who rebrand the product in partnership with the University and market it to the UK FE and HE sectors under the name Learnwise. WOLF is still in use at the University today, and undergoing continual development to meet the ever-changing needs of education.
  • Murray Goldberg begins development of WebCT at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, Canada
  • WeBWorK Online Homework Delivery System is developed by Michael Gage and Arnold Pizer at the University of Rochester.
  • Virtual Science and Mathematics Fair used static HTML pages created by children and a threaded discussion for comment posts left by judges and visitors. PhD research reported by Kevin C Facemyer, 1996.
  • The Project for OnLine Instructional Support POLIS is made generally available to faculty at the University of Arizona for managing courses online.

1994

  • CALCampus launches online-based school through which administration, real-time classroom instruction, and materials are provided. Origins of CALCampus
  • The Tarrson Family Endowed Chair in Periodontics at UCLA is establish with a testamentary gift to design, develop and launch the UCLA Periodontics Information Center for sharing periodontal practices and concepts with the worldwide dental community via CD-ROM and the Internet.
  • SUNY Learning Network begins in 1994. Traditional faculty were hired to create online courses for asynchronous delivery into the home via computer. Each faculty member worked with an instructional design partner to implement the course. From the fall of 1995 through spring of 1997, forty courses were developed and delivered. SLN now supports over 3,000 faculty, 100,000 enrollments on 40 of the State Univeresity of New York's campuses.
  • WEST 1.0 is released by WBT Systems. It eventually is renamed TopClass.
  • The Project for OnLine Instructional Support POLIS is designed and developed at the University of Arizona. This tool provides innovative dialog-based lessons to students. To support use of these lessons a method for providing online course context, course organization and course communications tools is created.

1993

  • Jakob Ziv-El of Discourse Technologies, Inc. files for a patent for a Remote Teaching System (# 5,437,555), referencing his 1991 patent. The patent is granted in 1995. The patent is referenced in a 2000 patent filing (# 6,988,138) by representatives of BlackBoard, Inc.

1992

  • CAPA (Computer Assisted Personalized Approach) system was developed at Michigan State University. It was first used in a small (92 student) physics class in the Fall of 1992. [6]
  • UNI-C [7], the Danish State Centre for Computing in Education (which became a Blackboard user in the 2000s) supports a wide range of online distance courses using PortaCOM, a conferencing platform, for example in the TUDIC project, funded under the EU's COMET Programme. Extensive theoretical work undertaken by, amongst others, Elsebeth Korsgaard Sorensen [8], whose web site has an extensive bibliography.

1991

  • Jakob Ziv-El of Interactive Communication Systems, Inc. files for a patent for an Interactive Group Communication System (# 5,263,869), referencing a 1990 foreign patent. The patent is granted in 1993. The patent is referenced in a 2000 patent filing (# 6,988,138) by representatives of BlackBoard, Inc.

1989

  • Networked Educational Online System (NEOS) developed and deployed at MIT. The system provided coursework exchange between different roles allowing for grading, annotating, and public discussions. Nick Williams, William Cattey, "The Educational On-Line System", Proceedings of the EUUG Spring Conference, EUUG, (April 1990)
  • Scardamalia, M., Bereiter, C., McLean, R. S., Swallow, J., & Woodruff, E. (1989). Computer supported intentional learning environments. Journal of Educational Computing Research, 5, 51-68. Paper discusses CSILE project and related software.

1983

  • McConnell, D. and Sharples, M. (1983). Distance teaching by Cyclops: an educational evaluation of the Open University’s telewriting system. British Journal of Educational Technology, 14(2), pp. 109-126. Paper describes the CYCLOPS system, developed at the Open University UK in the early 1980s, which provides multi-site tutoring through a shared whiteboard system providing voice conferencing combined with synchronous handwriting and real-time annotation of downloaded graphics.

1982

  • The Computer Assisted Learning Center (CALC) founded as a small, offline computer-based, adult learning center. Origins of CALCampus
  • Edutech Project of Encinitas California (now Digital ChoreoGraphics of Newport Beach,CA) implements PIES, an interactive online educational development and delivery system for the PILOT author language, using a client-server paradigm for online delivery of personalized courseware to students via popular video-game consoles and micro-computers. The system was used by Pepperdine University, Georgia Tech, San Diego County Department of Education, and Alaska Department of Education for distance learning.

1981

  • School of Management and Strategic Studies at the Western Behavioral Sciences Institute in La Jolla, California starts an online program. Feenberg
  • University of Sussex, UK, implements Poplog, an interactive learning environment for AI and computing students. It includes hyperlinked teaching materials, an extensible text editor, multiple programming languages and interactive demonstrations of AI programs. [9]

1976

  • Edutech Project of Encinitas California (now Digital ChoreoGraphics of Newport Beach,CA) develops DOTTIE, a TV Set-Top device linking the home TV to online services such as CompuServ and The Source via a common household telephone.
  • Development of the language Pop11 (derived from the Ediburgh AI language Pop2) and its teaching tools started in 1976 in Sussex University. This later evolved into Poplog. More information is available here: [10]
  • Development of the KOM computer conferencing system begins at the University of Stockholm. Jacob Palme's history of KOM is here: [11]

1969

  • The US Department of Defense commissions ARPANET (and thus the Internet as we know it). Hobbes' Timeline

1966

  • IBM introduced COURSEWRITER for the IBM 1500, an online interactive CAI system in the 1960's. The system included course management features and roles for the users such as instructor, manager, and student, and allowed intercommunication among them. Stanford University participated in the research and development that predated the IBM 1500's release.

1960

See also

Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=History_of_virtual_learning_environments&oldid=67448074"