Some Reflecting

eLluminate was seen by all who took part in the session to be an excellent teaching tool that has very good functionality and is fairly straight forward to use. New users can be brought up to speed quite quickly. As a tool for facilitating an online community of L2 & L3 students, eLluminate was considered by all who took part in the test sessions to be eminently suitable, in the words of one of the Lecturers who took part, ‘really good’.

It was mentioned that Lecturers would themselves benefit from taking part in test sessions on eLluminate prior to attempting to run online courses, and some wondered if I was being paid to run the session for them!

Introducing entry level students to the online learning experience is not without its pitfalls but all were in agreement that it can be done successfully and that none of the potential problems that could be encountered were insurmountable.

My own feelings on the subject of facilitating online communities of any level is that, aside from experience in using computers, most of the issues we came across during this exercise would be common to all levels and not just at the entry level. Issues such as dealing with isolation, timely expert responses etc are common to all. The exception would be for inexperienced learners who may not have the dedication needed to complete courses per se without the communal encouragement one gets in a normal classroom situation. That would be the challenge for the course facilitator, to keep these students engaged and succeeding so that their experience in the online arena is positive and rewarding. If it is, the chances of them not completing are vastly reduced.

Session Points of Success

Attendees learnt a little about the platform used - all managing to log in and take part successfully.

eLluminate ran faultlessly in all sessions. As the main group of participants worked in the same building it was felt that there was no need to have an alternative platform in case eLluminate fell over as, for them, part of taking part was that they could gain some experience in using it. If there had been problems the session would have been re-scheduled.

The icebreaker used (doodling on the whiteboard, loading images, general chat) proved to be very successful. All participants took part in it.

Participants contacted f2f after the session all commented that they'd learnt something on the topic and that it was a very useful exercise for them.

Session Points of Failure

There was only one: one person left the session early as they had misinterpreted what it was about.

In any future session I would make certain that participants were clear in their understanding of what would be taking place.

Strategies

There were several used:

• · Idle chit chat at the beginning of the session
• · The use of the whiteboard for doodling/displaying of images/websites
• · Asking questions
• · Discussing an element of the topic then asking for comments
• · Having a clear map of what would be discussed during the session and returning to it if speakers went off subject too much
• · Stepping in when talk stopped
• · Complimenting and thanking speakers on and for their input

Were these successful? A resounding yes they were. The session flowed very well and participants continued to discuss the topic right till the end.