Networked learning

Implementing a fully flexible, multi- institution network of elearning provision

Abstract

The increasing power of networked computing and the next generation Internet, often described as Web 2.0, has enormous potential for institutional collaboration on the development, delivery and sharing of educational resources, courses, faculty and students. Building on a number of TEC funded eLearning developments over the past four years; the Tertiary Accord of New Zealand, (TANZ) took the step of piloting a proof of concept for networking the Moodle instances of the six TANZ member institutions.

The pilot was designed to test the network’s ability to enable the sharing of courses, resources, learners and tutors. Moodle is an open source online Learning Management System (LMS), that has had extensive development and wide adoption in New Zealand. This paper examines the experience of this initiative through the lens of a Participatory Action Research project that ran alongside the pilot, the themes that emerged from the research and the guiding principles for future networked provision of eLearning that the project generated.