An impact of Virtual Learning Environments on communication process between students and instructors

Another function performed by the electronic library is the development of necessary academic skills for students, including information search and evaluation, work with primary sources, compilation of annotated bibliographies, implementation of research projects, etc. For this, the library's website hosts the necessary resources, examples, and exercises for independent work. One of the basic skills that a college seeks to immediately teach a student is honesty. To identify plagiarism, online systems are used to verify the authenticity of student work.

Networking tools for recording, editing and reviewing lectures are rapidly entering the practice of UK and Russian universities and, probably, in the near future will turn into an indispensable condition for conducting both remote and "ordinary"

1.2.1 VLE as a new medium for communication

The scientist V.P. Tikhomirov believed that such a medium between actors of university life and new technologies is primarily a system of distance learning and full-time education and there is an inextricable link. With the help of distance technologies, the possibilities of full-time education are expanding, the availability of remote teachers, students and specialists is increasing. The goal of virtual education is the person's achievement in the real world, which can be combined with virtual and other possibilities. Economic literature interprets the virtual educational environment as the informational content and communicative capabilities of local, corporation and global computer networks, and these technologies are used by participants in the educational process. Teachers and teachers need to constantly improve their professional activities, this is necessary in order to achieve optimal results in pedagogical work. Virtual educational environment is created for effective communication of all participants of the educational process. For the information society, the skills of owning information technologies are necessary and the educational environment in modern conditions must already satisfy the needs of the individual, society, and promote social adaptation in professional development. Domestic and foreign literature considers the virtual educational environment in the works of such scientists as F.F. Andreev, V.P. Tikhomirov, I.V. Kholodkova, A.V. Khutorskaya. Virtual educational environment is a new model of continuous professional development and here the benchmark is on the effectiveness of technology. Information, culture is formed and the formation is based on cultural learning. Scientist A.Yu. Uvarov virtual educational environment is an open educational architecture with the main goals, methods and organizational forms, where there is a woven communication, information and physical space. A.V. Khutorskoy considered that the educational environment is, first of all, the conditions for the development of the individual. V.A. Yasvin educational environment is a system of influences and conditions for the formation of the personality according to the basic pattern.

Learning in a virtual educational environment is an absolutely new education paradigm and it focuses on the functional effectiveness of technologies of information and communications and then forms a special learning culture. Note that within the virtual educational environment, an innovative resource has its advantages and disadvantages. The virtual educational environment is more verbal and non-verbal elements that are needed primarily to convey personal feelings and emotions and this is a sign of effective communication in a virtual educational environment. It should be noted that among the main parameters of the virtual educational environment, the most effective are the presence of feedback and the level of interactivity, linguistic diversity and means of expression, personal orientation. For the participants of the educational process, the availability of technology, its cost and the skills of using technologies are of great importance. An open educational environment arises from the interaction of virtual educational space and centers on the Internet, this environment allows you to revise the curriculum and allows you to assess your knowledge of the subject, because the landmark goes to different points of view. The technological aspect of considering the virtual educational environment is primarily the information space and there is an active interaction of participants in the educational process, which is a complex of computer tools and technologies that allow to manage the content of the educational environment and communication of participants. For today the computer replaces traditional methods of training, but for this purpose perfect possession not only information but also pedagogical technologies is necessary. From our point of view, a virtual educational environment is a complex system that provides a link between the teacher, students and other members of the training organization. There are new open models of individual learning with the use of resources and opportunities for technology and information and communication. In the new format, education allows to mobilize a virtual educational environment and in today's realities it is a multifunctional system and it contains primarily innovative and traditional technologies and they are specific for the interaction of the participants in the educational process in the framework of, first of all, an open model of individual education. The main functions of the virtual educational environment are informational and educational. Information can be presented in a variety of forms, communicative ie, training with participants in the educational process, control and administrative, various kinds of comprehensive measures for assessing knowledge, skills and habits can be conducted. A virtual educational environment is one of the priority areas for the implementation of continuing education, and the main issue here is the role of the educator in the educational environment. In the new conditions of the educational environment for the teacher, it is important to adapt to such features as a new form of communication, there can be a virtual discussion and an additional means can be a reflection in communication, which certainly raises the level of thinking. A special moment is the individualization of education, where for each participant, for each participant, its own trajectory for innovative work is built, the possible structuring of the educational environment, which is flexible and open, the creation of a new concept and teaching methods. To date, modern technology is a springboard for major changes in continuing education. Summarizing the above, we note that a virtual educational environment is an environment that can implement educational communication at a distance. To date, a virtual learning environment allows you to create innovationist approach to professional development, is primarily the implementation of continuing education and is building a path of professional growth of the student and all of this leads to the educational resources available regardless of the location of the learner, and so on. D. It should be noted that modern education has been built on the use of a virtual learning environment that is today the main means of communications between the teacher and the student.

1.2.2 Potential for VLE use in university science classrooms

Roth et al. (1996) noted that science educators have often been `unabatedly enthusiastic about the possibilities for learning with VLE while Linn (1998) suggested that the use of VLE technology is `often viewed as a catalyst, panacea or solution to limitations in students' science understanding' (p. 265). Not surprisingly therefore, the advances in VLE software and hardware and the introduction of such technologies into universities have been warmly welcomed with a sense of anticipation by many science teachers and science education theorists. Reviews on the uses and potential of VLE in science classrooms are increasingly commonplace in the science education literature (see, for example, Berger et al., 1994; Plomp & Voogt, 1995; Linn, 1998). Typically, authors outline the potential value of the VLE in terms of specific tasks that the VLE, its associated interfacing and, where necessary, other associated apparatus (e.g. probes and sensors) can perform for students. Each of these applications has potential educational value and may be seen as compatible with the broad contemporary goals of science education which increasingly focus on providing students with opportunities to explore and understand workplace applications of science, to develop strategies of investigation, reflection and analysis, and to create and=or refine knowledge. The development of higher-order reasoning encapsulated in such goals, coupled with the goal of increasing students' conceptual understanding of the science they study, are central to reform directions in science education (Bybee & DeBoer, 1994). There is no doubt that VLE have the potential to be used for multiple, valuable purposes in science classrooms. Past use of VLE in university science classrooms and the effect of such use Despite such potential, much of the past research in relation to the learning outcomes resulting from university science students' use of VLE may be considered as generally ambivalent, providing little firm justification for implementing the innovation. For example, Plomp & Voogt (1995) noted that `the anticipated effects of using new technologies often are not yet supported by empirical evidence' and that in secondary science education, `the effect of VLE assisted instruction on pupil performance is relatively small' (p. 175). Such findings are also reflective of reviews of specific uses of VLE technology in science classrooms. For example, in a review of the effect of MBL on practical university science, Rogers and Wild (1996) asserted that it was `easier to describe data-logging activities than to define their benefits to pupils' learning and understanding of science' and that most reports were `mainly articulated through professional opinion and anecdotal evidence rather than through rigorous examination' (p. 131). In a meta-analysis of 50 published, peer-reviewed articles from the period 1988±95 Weller (1997), building on a previous review (Weller, 1996), noted that over one-third of the studies reported little or minimal advancement of science learning as a consequence of VLE use. Weller's reporting that two-thirds of the studies described positive outcomes may, on face value, be cause for celebration and provide further justification for increasing VLE use in science classrooms. However, Weller carefully elaborated that the majority of the studies in the meta-analysis were comparison studies in which one type of instructional delivery medium was pitted against another ± as he put it leaving unexamined confounding variables and not considering possible rival hypotheses' (p. 4). He also suggested that the studies forming the sample of his meta-analysis had not targeted how teachers and students used the technology for teaching and learning with their predominant focus being on a `very small number of variables, often assessing dependent variables with one or more post-tests' (p. 5). Importantly, Weller also added that most of the studies `did not aim to investigate comprehension in the products and processes of science' (p. 5).

The lack of such research into the use of VLE in university science classrooms, like much science education research, is symptomatic of the general lack of studies that focus sharply on teachers' and students' actions and discourse in science classrooms and university science laboratories as suggested respectively by Roth et al. (1997) and Hodson (1990, 1992). Until recently, there have been few fine-grained studies on the use of VLE in science classrooms that closely examined (a) what students and teachers do when they interact with the c VLE technology (b) the reasons behind their actions and=or (c) how teachers' and students' interactions with the technology affect students' learning. Yet, as was foreseen by Weller (1997), recent, longer-term investigations using predominantly qualitative data collection and fine-grained analysis have yielded rich information and provided insights into the ways teachers and students use and interact with VLE technology in the contexts of their classrooms, schools and societies. Constructivist and situated cognition perspectives of education have often informed such research. Research in science education increasingly views classrooms as complex learning sites where multiple variables interact. It is valuable to review the main findings from a selection of these studies and seek to integrate these findings with relevant science education theory to develop guidelines for the purpose of advancing and enhancing the use of VLE in university science classrooms.

1.2.3 Recent research findings

Roth et al. (1996) reported mixed findings in their study on how a VLE micro-world contributed to students' interactions and their learning of physics concepts as evidenced by changes in students' discourse. On the positive account, they concluded that the microworld could be used to facilitate the negotiation of meaning because the display provided an `anchor for the conversational topic' (p. 1009). By representing common history for the students the micro-worlds provided students with opportunities to collaborate towards achieving a common goal, to clarify the meaning of ambiguous terms and to focus others' attention on specific aspects of the display. On the negative ledger, these authors found that the VLE divided the physical space, constraining the joint use of the interface, resulting in the exclusion of some group members from the interactions. Hence the level of shared understandings and educational opportunities between the group members was found to vary. Roth et al. (1996) concluded that, on balance, the disadvantages of the use of the technology, in this instance, outweighed the advantages for the teacher and some students in the study. In recent interpretive research, McRobbie & Thomas (2000), found that a teacher introducing MBL into her Year II chemistry classroom did so solely, in practice, to improve the quality of the data that was collected by students from their experiments. The teacher suggested initially that a prime reason for implementing VLE use in the classroom was to enhance students' thinking. However, in class she showed little interest in the development of either students' cognition or any conceptual understanding that may have resulted from the use of the technology, confirming such an interpretation of her actions during interviews. She cited her predominantly objectivist epistemology as a major justification for her teaching practice. Such a finding supports Bigum's (1998) contention that once a technology is put in place it is possible that little interest may be shown in using it for the purposes for which it was originally purchased. McRobbie&Thomas also noted that when the data obtained using the VLE was not of the anticipated quality, the teacher cast aside that data and used idealized data in her discussions with students in relation to the experiments. In this case study, the technology was introduced into the teacher's otherwise unchanged pedagogy and as Salomon&Almog (1998) have suggested, `when some technology can be assimilated into existing educational practices without challenging them, its chances of stimulating a worthwhile change are very small' (p. 224). Notably, the students in the study were content to accept such a limited use for the technology as such a use was generally congruent with their broader views and expectations for their education and their understanding of what should occur in their senior chemistry classroom. McRobbie&Thomas found that the students' learning was not advanced through using the computer technology. Their findings highlight the centrality of teacher and student epistemologies and beliefs about teaching and learning in determining the use of the technology. On a more positive note, in research that subscribed to a `learning as conceptual change' perspective, Tao&Gunstone (1999) found that quality reasoning occurred using CAl, although the effect of the VLE use was uneven across the student participants. Discrepant events within a force and motion micro-world were used to stimulate cognitive conflicts for the students in an attempt to induce them to reflect on the conflicts and try to resolve them. A key aspect of Tao&Gunstone's research was their use of Predict-Observe-Explain (POE) tasks (White, 1988; White&Gunstone, 1992) to initiate the cognitive conflicts with students. Such tasks have been shown to be powerful aids in probing students' tacit and revised understandings of phenomena and for stimulating students to engage in conceptual change. Tao&Gunstone found that a VLE supported collaborative learning environment provided those students who were both (a) cognitively engaged with the learning tasks, and (b) willing to reflect on and reconstruct their conceptions in the light of new encounters mediated by the technology and their interaction with their peers, with `experiences of co-construction of shared understanding' (p. 39). They also found that personal and social construction of knowledge interacted to facilitate conceptual change but that, while social construction was important, whether or not individual conceptual change occurred was strongly influenced by each individual's learning dispositions. Also, reporting findings in a positive vein, Bell (1998) found that `with appropriately designed curriculum and software, students were able to construct conceptually-focused arguments about a topic under debate' (p. 1). His research, conducted on the Knowledge Integration Environment, focused on understanding how conceptual change in relation to specific science concepts could be induced via argumentation and debate. Such a perspective regarding the importance of argumentation is becoming increasingly widespread in the science education literature with theorists such as Kuhn (1991, 1993) highlighting the centrality of argument as a means of bringing about conceptual change and seeking to increase the prominence of such thinking in science classrooms. Students were asked to undertake inquiry with the aim of contrasting theoretical positions concerning the propagation of light. This inquiry involved students' `interpretation and critique of a set of networked multimedia evidence from both scientific and everyday sources' (p. 5) and their construction and refinement of an argument in support of one of the theories. Although not explicitly stated by Bell, such thinking would have involved students in theory=evidence coordination, another activity for students which is prominent in perspectives proposed for enhancing science education (see, for example, Kuhn et al., 1988; Leach, 1997). A key element of Bell's study included the use of the Sense Maker argument building tool that enabled students, either individually or in small groups, to organize evidence in support of particular statements linked to theories. In this way students' thinking was made visible for the mind for others in the form of the on-screen artefact. Making students' thinking visible is a key element in developing their metacognition, a key determinant of expertise and expert learning (Glaser & Chi, 1988; Gunstone, 1992).

In what might be considered watershed research, White&Frederiksen (1998) reported on the development, in collaboration with classroom teachers, of the Thinkers Tools curriculum and pedagogy. Their package incorporated a constructivist, metacognitive focus and a general model of the scientific inquiry and learning process with computer models and simulations. The Thinkers Tools software embodies `increasingly sophisticated models for how forces affect motion' (White, 1998, p. 307). Explicit in this research was recognition of the need for students to investigate and learn about the nature of scientific models. Consequently, students were challenged to create conceptually complex scientific models through the generation of new simulation situations and experimental plans aimed at enabling them to test the rigor of their existing models and to construct new models that accommodated their emerging understandings of force and motion phenomena. An inquiry spiral that might be considered as a scaffolder series of POE tasks was used in this research. Responsibility for initiating and managing the inquiry was increasingly turned over to students. Through this pedagogy, students were informed of how scientific inquiry proceeds via experimentation through the successive refinement of models. The metacognitive element of the curriculum took the form of a Reflective-Assessment Process in which students monitored their progress against criteria characterizing good scientific research. White and Frederiksen reported that such integrated use of VLE enabled students to develop conceptual models for force and motion that they were able to transfer to new, real-world situations to enable them to understand those situations. Such an approach helped a wide range of students to learn and was particularly successful in assisting low-achieving students. White and Frederiksen noted that skilled teachers, possessing a solid conceptual framework for characterizing good inquiry teaching and able to manage classroom conversations, were essential elements of the learning environment. They also noted that some students voiced disapproval of the curriculum on the grounds that there was too much self-assessment and too much repetition.

1.2.4 The way forward: propositions and challenges

This more recent research into VLE use in science classrooms, like other science education research in general, illustrates that not all science instruction is effective, including that utilizing computers. These studies are complex, multi-faceted and not concerned with examining a small number of variables. Rather, they provide insights into the complexity of learning in classrooms where VLE were being used. Before the use of any ICT technology in science classrooms can influence science learning to the extent that it is mooted by pro-information technology advocates, numerous issues relating to the quality of science teaching and learning that are often found in the science education literature need to be addressed. In particular, a reevaluation of the teaching=learning orientations of classrooms' participants are required. Such a call is not new in science education. Assuming that such a challenge can be addressed solely by the introduction of information technology into science classrooms, where past reform agendas have had patchy success, is clearly inappropriate. Simply providing VLE for teachers and students to use in high school science classrooms is insufficient itself to bring about improved science learning. Several themes emerge from the review of such research and these themes can be shaped into guidelines for advancing and enhancing VLE use in high school science classrooms.