Does your VLE support Lifelong Learning? With Martin Bean CBE
How can you tell if your VLE supports Lifelong Learning? Martin Bean CBE shares some of the signs.
How would I define lifelong learning given that it's my entire life right now in the work that I do as an academic, but also the work that I do through the Bain Center? I guess I would describe it as the continuous pursuit of knowledge and skills. How about that? The continuous pursuit of knowledge and skills. And I've I've I've deliberately picked both of those domains because I think universities and tertiary education providers really get our students ready for life and work. And the reason why lifelong learning is so important now, no matter who you are, where you operate your institution, what sort of student type that you have, it's because it's all about staying competitive and adaptable in a rapidly changing world. The pace of life, the speed of innovation and disruption, the ever shortening shelf life of skills, be those tech those technical skills or even our enduring human capabilities, it requires us dialing in to a society that no longer thinks of education as a once in a lifetime experience, now thinks of education as a lifelong experience. My whole life's work now is around lifelong learning.
I'm sort of a self declared skills nerd, and this is the life that I lead. And I particularly focus on the future of work and the future of leadership in work. So often I get asked to come in and talk to academics or leaders of institutions around how they can embrace lifelong learning. And and it's not long in the conversation before I start to run into how their technology is inhibiting their ability to fully embrace lifelong learning. And often when I run into that technology, I run into the limitations of their VLEs.
And so I thought I'd just share with you sort of reasons why legacy VLEs will hold you back from embracing lifelong learning. The first is they often lack flexibility and scalability, which really limits the ability to fully embrace sort of diverse learning pathways. Even the ability to be able to develop, launch, assess, and measure the outcomes of micro and alternative credentials which are relevant, timely, and necessary to embrace lifelong learners is just one example. A lot of legacy VLAs never contemplated that we would offer anything other than traditional awards in the work that we do. The second way they hold you back is just poor integration with modern tools that creates a really fragmented learning experience.
And we have an expression in Australia called a dog's breakfast. And often when I walk into a legacy institution, they're running what could be literally hundreds of different tools and systems in their institution, but there's no way to integrate them all together. There's no way to be able to build a composite view of the student. There's no way to elegantly support teaching academics. It really is a mess.
The third is that they often result in an outdated user experiences that discourage our students and staff using the VLE, especially for mobile learners. You know, we are all, addicted in our daily lives to the use of mobile devices. So when I walk into an institution and I look at a great implementation of a VLE, there's a there's a few things that that come to mind. The first is flexibility and scalability to really accommodate all of the different learning formats, all of the different durations, all of the different student types. It's all about flexibility and scalability.
The second is that seamless integration with modern tools and, educational resources no matter where they come from. You know, the the days of an institution defining themselves by the content they create, oh my goodness, I'd like to think they were over in the nineteen nineties, but they are certainly over now. So the ability to find awesome content no matter where it lives and integrate it into our learning experiences, that's what defines a really great VLE. The third is AI driven personalization features to really be able to tailor the content to the individual learner needs. You know, I've been talking about personalization in education literally since the nineteen eighties.
It's always been the holy grail, the thing publishers wanted to talk about, EdTech companies wanted to talk about, institutions wanted to talk about, but it's real now, You know, and we're really just starting to see it accelerate. The promise of generative AI to create rich, meaningful, personalized learning experiences that allow me to learn when, how, and with the content that I choose with an intelligent tutor sitting by my side that's always with me where all of those things adapt and adjust to help me be successful. No longer a dream, now a reality. You need a VLE that's going to run right next to you continuously to adopt and deliver that innovation for you to keep pace. And the final one is really user friendly mobile design to allow me to get access to my learning, my systems, my support, my belonging, my socialization twenty four seven, no matter where I am from my pocket or my hip bag.
That that's what we need. That's what we expect. And a modern day VLE, cloud based, mobile first by design, it'll do that for you. Legacy, on prem, built in yesterday's world, not today, it's gonna hold you back, not liberate you. So those are the things I'd look for when you're considering a contemporary VLE, particularly if you wanna embrace the lifelong learner.
I'm sort of a self declared skills nerd, and this is the life that I lead. And I particularly focus on the future of work and the future of leadership in work. So often I get asked to come in and talk to academics or leaders of institutions around how they can embrace lifelong learning. And and it's not long in the conversation before I start to run into how their technology is inhibiting their ability to fully embrace lifelong learning. And often when I run into that technology, I run into the limitations of their VLEs.
And so I thought I'd just share with you sort of reasons why legacy VLEs will hold you back from embracing lifelong learning. The first is they often lack flexibility and scalability, which really limits the ability to fully embrace sort of diverse learning pathways. Even the ability to be able to develop, launch, assess, and measure the outcomes of micro and alternative credentials which are relevant, timely, and necessary to embrace lifelong learners is just one example. A lot of legacy VLAs never contemplated that we would offer anything other than traditional awards in the work that we do. The second way they hold you back is just poor integration with modern tools that creates a really fragmented learning experience.
And we have an expression in Australia called a dog's breakfast. And often when I walk into a legacy institution, they're running what could be literally hundreds of different tools and systems in their institution, but there's no way to integrate them all together. There's no way to be able to build a composite view of the student. There's no way to elegantly support teaching academics. It really is a mess.
The third is that they often result in an outdated user experiences that discourage our students and staff using the VLE, especially for mobile learners. You know, we are all, addicted in our daily lives to the use of mobile devices. So when I walk into an institution and I look at a great implementation of a VLE, there's a there's a few things that that come to mind. The first is flexibility and scalability to really accommodate all of the different learning formats, all of the different durations, all of the different student types. It's all about flexibility and scalability.
The second is that seamless integration with modern tools and, educational resources no matter where they come from. You know, the the days of an institution defining themselves by the content they create, oh my goodness, I'd like to think they were over in the nineteen nineties, but they are certainly over now. So the ability to find awesome content no matter where it lives and integrate it into our learning experiences, that's what defines a really great VLE. The third is AI driven personalization features to really be able to tailor the content to the individual learner needs. You know, I've been talking about personalization in education literally since the nineteen eighties.
It's always been the holy grail, the thing publishers wanted to talk about, EdTech companies wanted to talk about, institutions wanted to talk about, but it's real now, You know, and we're really just starting to see it accelerate. The promise of generative AI to create rich, meaningful, personalized learning experiences that allow me to learn when, how, and with the content that I choose with an intelligent tutor sitting by my side that's always with me where all of those things adapt and adjust to help me be successful. No longer a dream, now a reality. You need a VLE that's going to run right next to you continuously to adopt and deliver that innovation for you to keep pace. And the final one is really user friendly mobile design to allow me to get access to my learning, my systems, my support, my belonging, my socialization twenty four seven, no matter where I am from my pocket or my hip bag.
That that's what we need. That's what we expect. And a modern day VLE, cloud based, mobile first by design, it'll do that for you. Legacy, on prem, built in yesterday's world, not today, it's gonna hold you back, not liberate you. So those are the things I'd look for when you're considering a contemporary VLE, particularly if you wanna embrace the lifelong learner.
"Lifelong learning is so important now, no matter who you are, where you operate your institution and what sort of student type you have. It's because it's all about staying competitive and adaptable in a rapidly changing world."
- Martin Bean CBE former Vice Chancellor at Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology, a Canvas VLE Customer