Bloomsbury Learning Environment (BLE)
The Bloomsbury Learning Environment (BLE) is made up of a number of shared electronic resources including a learning platform (the Blackboard Academic Suite). The collaboration was established by the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, the Royal Veterinary College and the School of Oriental & African Studies in 2004. This partnership was joined by the Institute of Education in 2005 and Birkbeck in 2007.
The BLE Blackboard site is the first example of a cross-institutional implementation of the Blackboard Academic Suite in the UK. Each College has its own unique site but they are managed under one licence. The joint collaboration provides many benefits including sharing technical support, pedagogical expertise, cost efficiencies on licence fees and collaborative funding opportunities. The Colleges also share costs for remote hosting of Blackboard, freeing up dependency on IT infrastructures and support within the Colleges.
Blackboard is used by students who can remotely access lecture notes, PowerPoint presentations, podcasts (recorded audio) of lectures and other course-related materials added to dedicated course areas by their tutors. Students can submit electronic copies of their assessments through the platform. The BLE can be used to track students’ progress, monitored by both students and their tutors. A variety of tools are available, which provide opportunity for student-led content, both individually and collaboratively authored. These tools include discussion boards, wikis (areas which can be collaboratively edited) and blogs (online journals). The BLE supports and encourages collaborative and personalised learning, which supports students of all learning styles and abilities.
Other shared resources in Bloomsbury
include Elluminate (webcasting software), Echo360 (lecture capture technology), Wimba Create (web authoring software) and Turnitin (plagiarism detection software).
BLE Management
A group of senior managers from each of the Colleges, who meet on a monthly basis, steer the work of the BLE. The BLE Technical Group, which reports to the Steering Group, meets monthly to ensure the BLE resources are running to optimal functionality. Three annual E-Learning Academic Showcases successfully ran in February 2007, 2008 and 2009 attended by over 150 staff from across the six colleges. The BLE provides a fantastic example of the Bloomsbury Colleges collaborating and assisting each other in the application of online learning and teaching.
Bloomsbury e-Learning Academic Showcase 2009
A successful E-Learning Academic Showcase was held in February 2009 attended by over 100 staff from across the Colleges. The BLE provides an example of the Bloomsbury Colleges collaborating and assisting each other in the application of online learning and teaching. In addition the Colleges organise a number of cross-campus courses for academic and technical staff.
To find out more about the BLE, please contact Sarah Sherman by email: s.sherman<at>bloomsbury.ac.uk