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The Open University is switching its VLE from Blackboard and Web CT to the open access system Moodle. “We are moving to Moodle because it is an open-source, open-tools, collaborative environment,” says the OU’s Peter Scott. “The market for VLEs is being driven by universities and by students and their requirements.”

He anticipates that cutting-edge web technology will vastly improve the storage capacity of VLEs and enable a better interaction with the student. This is why the OU has begun organising content into databases that will facilitate sophisticated research.

“We generate data so that students can search for meaning rather than content and syntax,” says Scott. “It is called semantic web research and is very different from web-page formatting on HTML. A semantic-based system is a lot more powerful. Much of the groundwork is going on at the world wide web consortium headed by Tim Berners-Lee.” Moodle may not provide the entire answer but its design is moving in the same direction as OU’s semantic web research.

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