Uses

Having skewered the tabloid press in her fourth 'Harry Potter' book, J. K. Rowling turns in the fifth to contemporary (secondary) education. That a Quality Audit Regime at Hogwarts should temporarily overshadow the threat of Voldemort should have come as no surprise to most teachers in British HE; and, as usual, Rowling's command of detail is impressive.

Within the wider narrative of managerial zealotry, even Harry's Christmas presents pick up on the theme of educational improvement: Hermione's talking homework planner (all admonitions against slacking and procrastinating) and Sirius and Lupin's more exciting set of volumes on practical defences against the Dark Arts (with 'superb, moving colour illustrations of all the counter-jinxes and hexes it described,' J. K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, London: Bloomsbury, 2003, p. 442).

Reading this scene on publication, towards the end of our main project year and in the thick of 'dissemination' events, we were also struck by its neat mirroring of our own (Muggle-world) VLE — In our visions, the place where we would create dynamic resources, transforming our teaching, and dazzling all onlookers; in practice, more often, a reminder-board and homework diary.

In offering examples of some of the ways we used Blackboard, we know that most are nearer the 'planner' end of the spectrum. Sometimes shortage of time necessitated compromise; sometimes lack of expertise; elsewhere, debates and questions about the nature of 'best practice' itself. But we hope that even these more mundane items might suggest ways that a VLE might supplement or even enrich individual teachers' current practices, give alternative ways of working, enliven students' experiences, or simply just make some things easier.

For staff, after all, some items seemed truly 'magic' - whether being able to point students directly to an online exhibition at the Smithsonian, remembering a vital notice and using remote access to post it from home, avoiding a trek back to the department, emailing 300 students at one click, or, when stranded without the promised live-link for a duo dissemination event, being able to visit the module site, to create an instant Powerpoint demonstration, from an internet café near Senate House ...

In what follows you will find:

• screenshots - dip into these images for a (somewhat random) selection of examples of the ways various staff used duo across different modules; the commentary here focuses on general topics;
  
• early 'no frills' contents list - an example of getting basic information online; if you feel daunted by the thought of using images, you can simply start with something like this;
  
• one user's approaches - a brief overview of an individual teacher's ways of using duo on three different kinds of module, from the small MA group to the mass lecture course; this section returns to some of the screenshots above, to sketch their specific teaching and subject contexts - in modules on American Fiction, Children's Fiction and Edith Wharton;
  
• student-initiated uses - suggestions, comments and examples.