Facilitation Plan

A synchronous session will be run on Thursday the 31st January at 3.30 pm using eLluminate on the subject of Introducing Entry Level (L2 & L3) Students to the Online Learning Experience. The session participants will all be familiar with using a computer - they will either be currently teaching, or work with computers on a day to day basis.

Medium Choice
eLuminate was chosen as the session medium because of its capability to cater for various learning styles, because it is a synchronous environment, and because all session participants lacked familiarity with it and hoped to learn enough about its use/capabilities to enable them to incorporate it as a teaching tool in their various programmes.

Meeting Purpose

The intent in running the session is that the participants can explore the issues that might prevent students at this level from participating fully in an online program, and attempt to provide answers to any problems a facilitator may encounter.
Information pertaining to the session will be passed on verbally, and via email.

Strategies

Initially once participants are connected it it planned that we will make use of the tool in an informal way, load images, draw on the whiteboard, and engage in a little idle chat. Doing so will alow participants to relax a little and gain some experience in using the medium. Questions will be asked of them (e.g. Can you write your name on the board?) to ensure that they know how to contribute. If replies are negative then a solution can be found.

Email Content sent to Participants

'Below are headings of areas we might wish to explore in the discussion. They can be added to or omitted as the case may be during the session. What I am attempting to achieve by running the session is to extract(?) and discuss information from your vast knowledge and experience that would assist a person who is attempting to teach L2 & 3 students via the online method. I hope that we can identify pitfalls and solutions to the many problems such a student faces and that the information would be of assistance to anyone setting up/facilitating classes of students at this level who will be taught online. I also hope that participants will gain knowledge themselves that will be useful to them when faced with teaching online in the future.

Introducing Entry Level (L2 & L3) Students to the Online Learning Experience

Issues for Discussion

Skill levels – computing

• Internet access/usage
• Broadband
• Hardware & software requirements
• Software knowledge requirements

Social Interaction

• Isolation
• Creating a sense of Community
• Creating a sense of ‘belonging’
• Times for idle chat?

Facilitation

• Timely Responses
• Readily available ‘Expert’ assistance
• Pastoral care
• Course material

Look forward to seeing you online later today.'

Participants

• Anne Macleod
• Julie Notman
• Phil Morrison
• Paul Hamilton
• Rob Patterson

All participants except Rob know each other well and work together on a daily basis. The session that Rob attended was limited to the two of us.
Learning styles of the group were not ascertained prior to the session but as eLluminate encompasses visual, auditory and kinesthetic learning styles, it was felt that, providing elements of each of these styles were used, knowing what individuals preferred was not necessary for the session.

Ages of all participants are in the 40s or 50s.

Skills Required

Maintaining a successful online community is different yet not different to maintaining a f2f community. The successful facilitator will actively encourage participation in both arenas by various means, including encouragement, positive and timely feedback, elucidation of responses, provision of adequate resources, and normal pastoral care.

With online communities the facilitator must be much more disciplined as its easier to overlook the 'lurkers' or occasional participants and concentrate on those who participate more fully. In f2f communities the lack of participation is much more apparent and more likely to be mitigated with timely responses.

Part of the reasoning behind the choice of medium for this session was that the participants wanted to gain some familiarity with it and evaluate it as a tool they may use it the future. All agreed it is very usable with great functionality and would become part of their arsenal of teaching tools.

Another aspect was whether or not people with limited prior knowledge could be brought up to speed with eLluminates usage remotely. We found that, providing the meeting link emailed out worked, the only limiting factor was getting set up with a headset. Being able to take control of users computers remotely mitigated this successfully.

IT/Systems Support/Alternative Media

ITS Helpdesk - available during normal business hours. Support can be obtained outside these hours by prior arrangement.

Bronwyn Hegarty (course facilitator) offered to be on call if need be.

I ran a test session prior to the actual event in order that any potential problems could be identified and eliminated. None were found other than those involving setting up headsets for attendees.

In the event of eLluminate not starting or malfunctioning a call would be made to ITS for rectification of the problem. Any issues that arose around usage could have been corrected by calling Bronwyn for assistance.

No issues that couldn’t be dealt with by me arose.

If they had, we would have re-scheduled the session but running a test session on the morning of the actual event indicated that there were no issues anyway. As we wanted to test the platform itself we didn’t set up Skype or MSN as a backup as we saw no need to.

A recording of the event was made by selecting Auto on the drop-down box when setting up the event. I ran the recording after the event to check on a few items in the discussion (Recordings tab on http://elluminate.tekotago.ac.nz/index.html). No others who took part wanted to access it so it was deleted after a few days.