Sylvia Riessner

Please join me in our first LIVE (synchronous, online) Blackboard webinar (webmeeting?) session tomorrow,

• Wednesday, August 5th from 11:00 am to 12:00 noon PDT (see your time zone)  
  Remember to have a headset with a microphone (a webcam would be great too so we can meet "face2face" but it's optional) Try to join a little ahead of the scheduled time so you can complete the audio setup wizard (instructions on the first slide when you enter the room)

• To get to the room:  http://urls.bccampus.ca/scopeevents

Note:  If you run into trouble, I'll be monitoring the chat window in Collaborate. If you can't connect, email me sylviar@northwestel.net (I'll keep that open too).

Exploring Options, Selecting Approaches

During the LIVE session, I'd like to spend some time talking about engaging students AND how to get started on your online learning activity plan / build project. My proposed agenda:

• Introductions and sharing your objectives / intentions for the seminar
• Addressing any questions / confusions
• Quick recap of the reason we're using the Bonk and Khoo book "TEC-Variety" to frame our seminar work (see "A Starting Point: Framing Our Approach".)
• Discuss questions embedded in Linoit bulletin board shown in:  First Steps: Planning Your OLA  We can talk about some of the practical questions about how we can best share our developing plans to gather feedback from experienced online facilitators.
• Review the connections I presented in the topic thread:  Finding OLA Ideas & Resources - between the motivational elements in the 10 Principles, the additional Padagogy Wheel resource.  I'll ask you for suggestions as to the best way to share additional ideas for learning activities and/or tools/apps that might be useful (using the 10 principles to organize our growing collection? and where?)

If you can't make the synchronous session, we will record it and post it as soon as possible.

If there are questions you'd like us to consider, please post them to this forum before 10:50 am tomorrow!

Cheers

SylviaR

I think we all struggle with trying to create engaging online activities without creating too much additional work to learn how to use the tool. While I want my learners to focus on the content or topic of the activity, I'm also trying to build their familiarity and comfort with online learning using a range of tools (not just Facebook ;-)

I'll be curious to read what other experienced online facilitators suggest but I try to keep it simple if I know my students are unfamiliar with learning technologies or have limited access to technology and connectivity. I make sure I have some simple tutorials (or "how-to" documents or screencasts) that I can share if required. If I'm in a blended situation as you are describing, I might set aside 5-10 minutes at the start of each class to "work out the bugs" .

What can make this kind of decision even more challenging is when you are hired as a sessional instructor (as so many teachers are these days) and you're assigned to teach a course you haven't taught before to a student audience that are completely unfamiliar. In situations like this I've tried to tease out student comfort levels and knowledge through introductions or by having them complete brief surveys.

My hope for the practical focus of this seminar is that you will actually apply your questions (and the others on the bulletin board) to your selection of the type of learning activity you will test and the tool(s) you choose to build it. YOU get to choose the complexity of the learning activity and the tool you want to use to build it.

And if you can get it roughed out before August 15, then you have an audience to present it to who will help you figure out ways to improve it or to make you think ahead to avoid challenges you may not have perceived yet.

I've reset the preferences on the bulletin board. You should be able to post stickies now. It may ask you to sign up - not absolutely sure that "guest" privileges require identification.

Just select the colour of sticky you want to use and click on it. It will open a sticky and you can type in your question - you can select different font sizes or it provides access to more colours to choose from - for sticky backgrounds and for font colours. Click "Post" when you're done. You can click and drag the sticky to a location on the board; resize it by clicking and dragging the bottom right hand corner.

Audible presentation is now embedded in the post instead of being downloadable. Should be a lot easier for you to view and review.

Nice to see you back in SCoPE again Nellie. I know you're always an active contributor and I look forward to your participation in this seminar.  Thanks for sharing your background and experience. 

Hope you enjoy the seminar!