BLE History
History
The BLE collaboration was established by LSHTM (the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine), the RVC (Royal Veterinary College) and SOAS (the School of Oriental & African Studies) in 2004, and was joined in 2005 by the IoE (now known as the UCL Institute of Education), Birkbeck in 2007, University of London in 2015 and UCL in 2019. The BLE's core services have been to provide mutual benefits, including shared technical support, pedagogical expertise, cost efficiencies on licence fees and collaborative funding opportunities. The BLE partners also share costs for remote hosting of the learning platform Moodle, freeing up dependency on IT infrastructures and support internally. Each partner has its own unique Moodle site but they are managed under a common licence.
The BLE collaboration was established by LSHTM (the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine), the RVC (Royal Veterinary College) and SOAS (the School of Oriental & African Studies) in 2004, and was joined in 2005 by the IoE (now known as the UCL Institute of Education), Birkbeck in 2007, University of London in 2015 and UCL in 2019. The BLE's core services have been to provide mutual benefits, including shared technical support, pedagogical expertise, cost efficiencies on licence fees and collaborative funding opportunities. The BLE partners also share costs for remote hosting of the learning platform Moodle, freeing up dependency on IT infrastructures and support internally. Each partner has its own unique Moodle site but they are managed under a common licence.
I'm proud to support and chair this valuable and successful collaboration.
Jonathon Thomas, Associate Director of Learning Solutions at University of London Worldwide and Chair of the BLE
Brief timeline including milestones of organisational development
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Service
Over the past 15 years, the BLE Service has grown and developed into a wider digital education service, adding project development and staff development to the core service. During this time, the partnership has been awarded external grants from funding bodies to extend the impact that digital education can provide. Working together as a consortium enables the BLE partners to develop training materials and provide shared expertise and support that they might otherwise be unable to offer individually. The BLE portfolio of shared technologies includes the following:
All of these technologies complement and integrate with Moodle, although some partners can opt to use them as stand-alone tools as well. A number of BLE Technology Enhanced Learning (TEL) events and special interest groups are organised for the partners to facilitate the sharing of good practice, staff development and support of technological tools. |