Onlline Facilitation Workshop

Another wonderfully informative session.
Catriona session on online facilitating was very useful and interesting. She offered lots of appropriate strategies. I could really relate to what she was saying about getting the students to "gel". I also felt more at ease about being an online faciliator, recognising that a whole new set of skills will need to be developed. I challenge I'm happy to take on...
Gilly Salmon's 5-stage model will also be very useful. Recognising that different methodologies will need to be used to ensure students can cope with their online learning environment, and how best to do that.
The LOAG (lacking any obvious goals or guidance) - Poison Pills activity was useful - to re-iterate what's required to be successful in facilitating in the online mode - and a very clever play on words - some GOALs can now be cemented.
It was an interesting task having to brainstorm our online facilitation activity. It's great to work with success professional and supportive people. This will give us the opportunity to put some of our theory into practice. I think we've mapped our programme out and will be able to handle the task well.
If was great to hear the excellent work people have done so far in getting their onlline projects up and away. A lot of hard work has gone into these projects - well done everyone - take a bow!
Allison Miller

My Own e-learning project

What is my Project?
Introduction: I faciliated, in a blended mode, four Certificate IV in Business Administration units online during Semester 1 and I have worked with the students on ways that this online environment could be improved. I have also designed another two units at the Diploma level for use, again in the blended mode, for Semester 2.
My Project (and my desire) is to provide a more "interesting" and "useful" online learning environment (and one which could eventually be used for "external" or distance students) by introducing some e-learning tools. The types of tools I'm looking at include:
- multiple-choice and true/false quizzes
- introducing a wiki to organise the agenda for our fortnightly meetings (and for other possible uses)
- making better use of forums - where students can post questions about the course or their learning for me to promptly reply to, rather than have to wait for the weekly classes
- a survey to determine the usefulness of these tools
- as well as investigate the toolbox currently available for the Diploma in Business Administration, and determine whether anything can be "uploaded".

How far along am I?
I have been working with some of our support staff to introduce some of the quizzes. I have also been "redesigning" the Cert IV online units to make them more coherent.
We have updated the forum for the Question and Answer forum.

What are the barriers?
TIME - we need to have the courses ready for quality assurance early next week. TIME - to muck around with what's around and then experiment with them. TIME - to have the brainspace to be creative in adapting the learning material into some really "groovy" learning activities. TIME - to offer the support that students will need once their using the online materials/tools. How to overcome? - Perserverence (sp?), Motivation, some excellent support staff (thanks Michael & Chris), more investigating/networking, some Good time management skills, making use of the "annoucement" section to update students of any new tools I'll add during the semester (eg the wiki and the survey), and what I'm learning during this Start up programme.
EXPERTISE - the quiz tools within the Janison platform (where TAFE puts their online learning stuff) are very hard to work with. How to overcome? Luckily I have some really excellent support staff (thanks Michael & Chris again :)) who can do the hard work of designing the quizzes and presenting them appropriately. I just need to come up with some more good ideas to implement!!!

e-learning skills - what's required?

Current Perceptions of the skills required for e-learning:
My thoughts about how my e-learning information is presented has changed since putting some our Cert IV in Business Administration courses online, and again since I've started this Start Up Programme. I've realised that being about to clearing communicate your ideas is a lot harder when presented electronically and static, then when you are presenting these same ideas to a face to face audience. I've found that you have the body language and the ability to question the audience to determine whether your information is being understood. However, in electronic format it requires the students to "trial" how it works and then ask the students for lots of feedback about how useful or easy to use it was. Making the information or task relevant to their learning is also important.
Students with good computer skills take to the e-learning platform quite easily, but the techno-immigrants (the bodies who are still a little computer shy) do struggle with accessing information this way.
Skills needed for e-learning:
- enthusiasm and a need to discover
- risk taking
- some 'internet' & computer experience
- problem solving skills
- group workshops to get that the "human" touch and to be able to check whether you're on track or not
- hard copies of the information being used electronically
- interesting and useful content & activities
- access to 'fast' internet connection and reliable computers - and some time of "back up" support if struggling
- time to 'play around' and discover
- an understanding of how to download and retrieve software/information
- ways of keeping track of useful information, as well as log-on ids and passwords
Ways of motivating students to participate in e-learning:
- set as part of their assessment
- we run group meetings to share and discuss usefulness of the e-learning material/platform and its application in the workplace/real life
- set up the e-learning platform to that information will appear only once previous tasks have been completed
- having the facilitator respond to the student's work during their e-learning or during a forum etc.