I’m sure everyone who was lucky enough to attend this immensely engaging session will remember it for a long time. Its provocative title certainly grabbed everyone’s attention and ensured that it played to a packed house. It’s on video now, so if you fancy an hour of edifying but entertaining debate, then watch it here.

Josie Fraser, who was chairing, kicked off by saying how delighted she’d been to have landed this particular gig, which turned out to be a well-structured (and very well-chaired) debate between four learning technology luminaries, each taking a distinctive stance on the controversial subject of the VLE (or LMS, for those of you outside the UK).

First up was Steve Wheeler, who proclaimed that VLE has had its day; it’s not fit for purpose and VLE stands for VLE! What the VLE really is, Steven went on to say, is a CMS – only the tools connected to it promote learning, the VLE does not. Interestingly, he referred back to an article that Mark Stiles (in the audience) wrote called Death of the VLE?: a challenge to a new orthodoxy. I say interesting, because I’ve always regarded, and frequently alluded to, this concise article as a perfect expression of what the VLE should and should not be. The VLE homogenises content, and yet the student body is understood to be increasingly diverse. He also pointed out the limitation of the VLE for discursive types of learning – the large-scale discussion facilities are poor, and block interaction beyond the institution.

Graham Attwell took a broad view on a similar position. He explained that the education system itself, modelled originally on factories, is now dysfunctional and doesn’t fit need. And technologies such as VLE are modelled on that outdated paradigm. The VLE has to be seen in the context of the managerialism of the late 1990s, and had efficiencies as its central concern. He asked the audience why should we tell students to go to the VLE for learning materials when it isn’t where we would go ourselves if we wanted to learn stuff. We have social software now, which people are able to shape themselves.

James Clay took a very different tack, pointing out, with faux weariness, that we’ve spent the last 10 years saying that the VLE is dead. He does believe that we’ll bury the VLE one day – but not today. We’ve abandoned the idea of the Google generation (throughout the conference it was clear that there is broad consensus on this position in the learning technology community). Students still need guidance at this stage; neither they nor academics have the confidence to make good use of social networking tools, and that’s where the VLE comes in.

The final speaker was Nick Sharratt who also pointed out the lack of clear generational characteristics coming through. His central point, though, was hat the VLE is not yet complete. Students aren’t pushing for it, and he perceives an element of eagerness to play with the latest toys, rather than a genuine sense of freedom in stepping outside the VLE. He’s concerned that the PLE amounts to little more than a bunch of heterogenous tools held together with string.

In the lively discussion that ensued, Mark Stiles predicted that the PLE would probably go the same way as the VLE as we’re already giving it a label. Scott Wilson swiftly pointed out that the PLE is not meant to be a “thing”, but a point of discourse to reveal the deficiencIes of the VLE. Another point of disagreement occurred over informal learning – James Clay believing that it can’t be designed, and Middleton countering this by saying yes, you can allow it to happen by signalling that it is an ethos.

James Clay believes that the problem with the VLE is that it’s being run by the Innovation Prevention department, the sort of people who say you can’t have an iPhone because the institution only deal with T-Mobile. This chimes with a point that Nick Sharratt made, namely that you have to separate the issues that are intrinsic to the VLE from institutionally-generated problems.

But the best thing about this session was that at the end a show of hands revealed that the majority of the audience had reconsidered their original position on this question over the course of the debate. I thoroughly recommend you watch the video if you haven’t already done so.