**2. A contemporary technology enhanced learning ecology**

To exemplify the premise that the LMS/VLE is now a more sophisticated networks of tools, the following illustration (**Figure 1**) suggests that the LMS/VLE on its own cannot support an institutions approach to learning and teaching, rather it is part of a complex ecosystem of interconnected technologies providing a range of services to faculty, students, and universities. Common connections include systems operating content management, including copyright compliance; visual media recording and delivery; assessment and feedback processes; student records management; collaboration tools; social media; and student services and support. Interestingly, and more recently, the technology that is making significant inroads into academic practices have been the advent of productivity and communication tools, such as Office 365 Teams, Slack and Trello, and most importantly, since COVID is the use of environments that facilitate the use of synchronous video collaboration such as Zoom and Teams [4]. Beyond this, there is the vast array of general and educational tools and services available from hundreds of vendors that are able to be used by staff and

**Figure 1.** *The ecology of tools used for technology enhanced learning.*

students for learning activities and assessment. These tools include media streaming and lecture recording platforms, virtual classrooms, collaboration tools, plagiarism checking, ePortfolio, voice interaction, peer-review/learning, brainstorming, H5Ps and the list goes on.

Brown [5] similarly considers the complexity of the evolution of university learning environments. The functionality they identify includes the LMS within a web of systems enabling course material delivery, content discovery and creation, data warehousing, analytics, dashboards, student advising, student progress monitoring, assessment, adaptive learning, social networking, and competency-based learning. All of these needing to address a complex array of requirements including accessibility and universal design, collaboration, personalization, and interoperability. Really, all that is left for the traditional LMS to do is to mediate these tools, house and collate assessment and scaffold the different learning scenarios.
