Increasingly educators are being asked to locate a proportion if not all of their teaching within a virtual learning environment. Yet frequently the designers of such educational activities have not been educated in the use of new technologies or how to exploit them to their full potential. Thus, contemporary educationalists are increasingly reliant on the abilities of the e-learning technologist. Significantly educators and technologists now have to work in partnership if the educational process is to be effective. However, each party speaks a different language; more importantly, the e-learning technologist may not appreciate that there is a need to draw on educational theories particularly when designing new units or programmes of learning. Frequently therefore, the design and educational developmental process is in danger of being driven simply by what the VLE will do; the VLE itself ultimately shapes the content and more especially the interactivity of the learning objects it may be possible to incorporate into the intended teaching and learning strategies. Often educators may want the VLE to resemble a virtual classroom where students can engage with each other and share ideas in a similar manner to how this may occur if they were undertaking group work around a small table within a face-to-face environment.

Significantly therefore, it is often the limitations of the selected VLE that ultimately drive what can and cannot be achieved within an e-learning environment. This paper will debate whether or not e-learning technologies are increasingly becoming the main driving force behind educational design and delivery. To do this, the paper will first explore whether reliance on e-learning technology is the right way to go, or whether the technology should play a secondary role to the educational process particularly if learning and teaching is to be fit for purpose.

Second, the paper will draw on data generated from the experiences of a group of healthcare educators from the United Kingdom when attempting to implement a new educational initiative designed to bring together midwifery and pharmacy students as part of an interprofessional learning innovation. In order to achieve the latter the paper will draw on data generated from post-unit evaluation questionnaires completed by students and facilitators plus direct quotes from two focus group discussions undertaken with a self-selected group of students. In doing, so the paper will examine how the limitations of a newly selected VLE impacted on the students', facilitators' and technologist's educational experiences.

In particular, the paper will explore to what extent the limitations of the VLE itself essentially became a barrier to effective learning. For this reason the paper will focus on two aspects of the study results that were directly related to the educational process.

1 Lack of ability for students to self assess their formative reflective logs within the actual VLE
2 Non-integration of the available wiki within the VLE

The two foci selected have been chosen because they were highlighted by students and staff as being particularly problematic. In essence, it was the latter two aspects that coloured both the students’ and facilitators’ views regarding the success of the educational innovation rendering the whole process a technologically-driven as opposed to student-centred learning experience.