andykemp.org.uk

A few weeks ago following a conversation between myself and @warwickrobotics about who runs the VLE in different schools, and the concept of a director of e-learning I decided to put together a google form to explore this question…

I am very grateful to the 48 people who took the time to respond and I hope the information that I gathered is useful to other people as well.  All responses were anonymous…  Part way into the survey it became obvious that it would have been useful to know a little more demographic information (independent, state, secondary, primary etc) so this question was added in but sadly wasn’t included for all responses.  So what did we find out?

What follows is the raw summary produced by google but this only tells part of the story…

Who runs the VLE in your School?
	Director of Whole SchoolICT 6 12% Head of ICT (Curriculum) Department 10 20% Director of E-Learning 4 8% Enthusiastic Teacher 9 18% Assistant Head 5 10% Other 15 31% People may select more than one checkbox, so percentages may add up to more than 100%.

How is this role renumerated?
	Paid Role 14 29% Non-Contact Time 5 10% Paid & Non-Contact Time 1 2% None 15 31% Unknown 5 10% Other 9 18% People may select more than one checkbox, so percentages may add up to more than 100%.

If the person responsible for your VLE had non-contact time for the role please indicate how much?
	No Non-Contact Time 14 33% Less than an hour a week 1 2% 1 to 2 hours a week 4 10% 2-3 hours a weeks 1 2% 3-4 hours a week 2 5% 4-5 hours a week 0 0% more than 5 hours a week 3 7% Don’t know 10 24% Other 7 17% People may select more than one checkbox, so percentages may add up to more than 100%.

Is the person responsible for your VLE on the School Leadership Team?
	Yes 14 29% No 33 67% Don’t Know 2 4% People may select more than one checkbox, so percentages may add up to more than 100%.

Do the Support Staff in the school provide any assistance with the VLE?
	Routine Maintenance 27 56% Adding Content 20 42% Devising new activities 6 13% No Support 9 19% Other 9 19% People may select more than one checkbox, so percentages may add up to more than 100%.

Who runs the technical admin side of the VLE?
	School Technicians 25 53% Teaching Staff 6 13% Managed Solution 6 13% Don’t Know 0 0% Other 10 21% People may select more than one checkbox, so percentages may add up to more than 100%.

Does your school have nominated VLE ‘evangalists’?
	Yes, one in each department 10 21% Yes, a few self-nominated teachers 20 42% No 15 31% Don’t Know 0 0% Other 3 6% People may select more than one checkbox, so percentages may add up to more than 100%.

How many years have you had a VLE in your School?
	Less than a year 18 38% 1-2 years 15 31% 2-3 years 5 10% 3-4 years 3 6% 4-5 years 6 13% more than 5 years 1 2% People may select more than one checkbox, so percentages may add up to more than 100%.

How many departments are properly using the VLE?
	Just one 10 21% 2 or 3 departments 12 26% about half the school 8 17% most departments 7 15% Every department is using the VLE 4 9% Other 6 13% People may select more than one checkbox, so percentages may add up to more than 100%.

What type of School are you?
	State Secondary 20 83% Independent Secondary 2 8% State Primary 0 0% Independent Primary 0 0% Other 2 8%

This summary gives you some idea of the situation but you need to dig through it a bit further to see the details…

Some interesting things that stood out to me in analysis:

• Of the 19 Heads of ICT and Enthusiastic Teacher who were running VLEs over half (11) were receiving no time or money to do the role.
• Of the 4 people who identified themselves as Directors of E-learning none were on SMT/SLT.  However the 6 Directors of ICT (Whole School) were all on SMT.
• Almost two thirds of the responders (20/32 – 10 don’t knows) received no time at all to run their VLE – Of those that did the modal class was 1-2hours.
• Pleasingly in almost half the schools (20/42) the technicians were involved in adding content (and in 6 devising new activities) as well as routine maintenance.
• In over half the schools (28/47) schools the technical administration of the VLE was maintained by non-teaching Technicians/Network Admins.  But there were still 10/47 schools were the technical side was run by teaching staff.  The remaining schools were mostly using managed solutions of sort or another
• About two thirds of schools had VLE ‘evangalists’ of one sort or another and of these most were self-nominated individuals although 10 schools reported having one in each department.
• The majority of schools (33/48) have been running there VLE for less than two years, with only one school now reaching it’s 5th year – It should be noted that this school was also on its 3rd VLE in this period.
• About half the schools surveyed had the VLE running with 1-3 departments with less than 10% of schools feeling their VLE was being used through the whole school.
• Of the 4 schools who reported full usage of the VLE across the school there was no consistency as to who ran the VLE, but in these schools all 4 reported that the person who ran the VLE was paid for the role (although only one was given non-contact time)
• Those schools who were given no time and no money for running the VLE were split with about a third having only one department on board, and a third having around half the school.

The overriding thing I have taken from this short survey is that there is still little consistency in VLE deployments in schools and the majority of schools have not yet reached the point where there VLE is widely used throughout their school.

The only general trend seemed to be that schools where the person responsible for the VLE is either paid for the role (or it forms part of their main job description) then there seems to be a generally higher uptake throughout the school.  This isn’t really surprising as VLEs which are run by enthusiastic teachers and Heads of ICT tend to be very well used by the teacher or department but it is obviously much harder for them to spread this idea when there is no direct imputus for them to spend time enthusing and training others…

Feel free to have a dig through the original data and see what else you can find…