This final posting provides a summary of my personal experiences studying for the e-Learning and Digital Culture module during the autumn semester 2009.
The following aspects will be addressed:
1. Interface and Technology used
2. Community activities
3. Digital artefact creation and ethnographic micro-study
4. Online communication 

1. Interface and Technology
This was my first experience of a learning environment outside the comfort of a VLE and admittedly (i) I was very keen on experiencing it and (ii) wondered how it would work within a distance-learning context.
The written instructions and guidance provided by the tutors was enough to get one going. WordPress configuration and setting up the Livestream plugin was relatively easy and the interface was easy to manipulate and very little effort was required thereafter.
I found the Digital Culture-ed  Web-site well organised and frequently updated to account for the progression of learning during the weeks; it also had a nice personal touch of communication. I particularly enjoyed the iconic choice of images changing nearly from week to week.
The only issue encountered was the fact that accessing the institutional VLE was not seamless and required a separate login which as I found out would not work from within Mozilla Firefox.
The fact that the content was set to ‘public access’ did not bother me too much as I found myself confident enough to go public with my blogs after two years on this MSc course. 

2.      Community activities
The tutors set up a couple of quite interesting community tools, the Wallwisher app right at the beginning to serve as an ‘icebreaker’ and for that it worked quite well and then again towards the end as part of a reflective ‘summing-up’ exercise. I personally liked the Wallwisher tool as it provided an opportunity to put something personal online which satisfied my requirements in regards to visual/graphical learning modality.
The second activity known as the Film festival was undertaken as part of the Utopia/Dystopia theme by way of several YouTube clips of well known movies such as Bladerunner or 2001: A Space Odyssey. It provided a rather original introduction to this topic; they were entertaining, thought provoking and an appropriate connector to the topic of study – a very original idea. 

3.      Digital artefact and ethnographic microstudy
These two activities were at the heart of the module. They consisted of individual project work of one’s own choice relating to the themes of Popular Cyber Cultures and Virtual Communities respectively.
Although it did require a disproportionate amount of time to create both of these for me they were the highlight of the learning experience, emphasising the importance of social constructivism, i.e. ‘learning by doing’ by way of peer learning via sharing and critiquing by the class community. 

4.      Online Communications
A mixture of open (Twitter, Skype) and institutional online communication tools were deployed. Unsurprisingly perhaps the WebCT Discussion board remained very much on the fringe with most communication relocated on Twitter albeit by a minority of participants. Not being a ‘Twitterer’ myself this may be seen as an ‘opportunity lost’ but nevertheless this module was also about new and potentially ‘uncanny’ learning spaces and in order to experience this the VLE had to remain ‘outside’. 

Conclusion
Clearly a lot of thought and effort has gone into designing and implementing this learning experience and the tutors should be congratulated on this.
From a pedagogic point of view this has worked very well for me despite the fact that it was ‘early adopter’ territory and for that reason still experimental’.
Given those circumstances I would state that it was a full success and my thanks go to both Sian and Jen for demonstrating that there is life beyond the VLE; and they must be greatly relieved about the outcome of this ‘experiment’.
There remains the question from a tutor’s point of view: How does this project compare with a traditional VLE-type offering in regards to staff time required, not necessarily in setting it up (this is largely a one-off investment) but in maintaining it, providing feedback and monitoring student learning and the overall requirement for formative and summative assessment.
And yes some aspects have been uncanny – but then again I guess the same could have been said about the VLE about 10 years ago.
In conclusion the format chosen could well set the stage for things to come in online distance learning.