NGDLE stands for Next Generation Digital Learning Environment and was introduced by a paper written for EDUCAUSE in April 2015 titled “The Next Generation Digital Learning Environment: A Report on Research”. Malcolm Brown from Educause Learning Initiative, Joanne Dehoney from EDUCAUSE and Nancy Millichap from Next Generation Learning Challenges are the authors of the paper. The paper articulates what the authors believe to be the core criteria for meeting the “changing needs of higher education”. One of the key findings is that the Learning Management System (LMS) becomes only one part of the digital learning environment, albeit a key component, rather than the entire learning environment as it view by many today. The authors suggest an ecosystem based on standards that make it easy for institutions to add new or switch out elements of the learning ecosystem as the needs of the institution change.
NGDLE has five core domains of functionality:
- Interoperability and Integration
- Personalization
- Analytics, Advising, and Learning Assessment
- Collaboration
- Accessibility and Universal Design
Below is a brief glimpse of why they are important to instructors.
- Interoperability and Integration
- Makes it easier to change out tools to better meet your teaching needs as your teaching needs change.
- Makes it easier to move your content, activities, etc… from one tool to the next with less work.
- Systems work together so faculty and students have a consistent experience throughout the learning environment.
- Personalization
- Allowing alternate pathways through content for students.
- Allowing students to customize their learning environment in meaningful ways to them.
- Allowing the system to scaffold learning based on student’s interaction with the system.
- Analytics, Advising, and Learning Assessment
- With systems that can “talk the same language” and share data, we can get a better idea of what is working well and needs improvement all the way from the departmental level down to a single topic in a course.
- Advisors will have access to a wider variety of information and give them more complete and up-to-date information when advising students.
- Better positions us to move toward competency-based education.
- Collaboration
- Moving away from the “walled garden” effect where everything is locked into a single course.
- Providing students with individual spaces that persist across their entire academic career (or even beyond).
- Allowing faculty to decide at a more granular level which learning experiences should be public or private.
- Accessibility and Universal Design
- Working towards an environment that does not disadvantage any teachers or learners.
- Tools designed with accessibility and inclusiveness in mind from the ground up resulting in less need to adapt materials.
- Focuses accessibility on people and experiences.