Soaking in a hot body of water is a dangerous thing. As your body relaxes your mind can begin to wander and return to the big question of the day, What is a Digital Learning Environment?. Having just finished the second six hour Zoom meeting with the Judgment Team, on the long weekend, this question was still foremost in my head. The class debate statement was “Be it resolved that all digital learning environments are equal and can be created and managed as such”. But what is a Digital Learning Environment?
According to a Google search, based on the prompt, “what is a digital learning environment”, “A digital learning environment (DLE) is an online ecosystem that integrates technology, educational software, and digital resources to facilitate teaching and learning. It serves as a virtual counterpart—or modern enhancement—to the traditional physical classroom.”
The definition of Digital Learning Environment is very elusive and changes from author to author depending on the focal point of the paper. Is the environment centred on outcomes, resources, platforms, ideologies, or some other theory. It becomes a necessity when debating the idea of DLEs to frame the definition into a statement like, “for the purposes of this discussion, we are defining a Digital Learning Environment as ……”, so that you have a solid base to build off of.
Because the definition of a DLE is not clear or easy to define it becomes a difficult topic to discuss and a great topic to think on. What is your definition and is it changing, I am not sure what mine will end up being.