Open College of Ireland

As a fan of online learning, even I am a little surprised by this result.  I always admit to people that if you can get it, good face-to-face can’t be beaten.  I argue that despite that, online can be very powerful and effective and of course one of the main motivations for moving online is that it is much more accessible for the learner.  So what might be the reasons behind this finding?  Could it be that online trainers try harder?  Read more in the NY Times…

The UK Association for Learning Technologies (ALT) are webcasting their keynote speeches (in fact all the invited speakers) next week.

The keynote speaker schedule is:

* Michael Wesch, Assistant Professor of Cultural Anthropology at Kansas
State University, Tuesday 8 September, 09.25 to 10.25 UK time;
* Martin Bean, Vice-Chancellor Designate of the Open University,
Wednesday 9 September, 11.55 to 12.55;
* Terry Anderson, Professor and Canada Research Chair in Distance
Education at Athabasca University, Canada – Canada’s Open University,
Thursday 10 September, 11.55 to 12.55.

For the timings and details of the invited speaker sessions consult go to the schedule at http://www.alt.ac.uk/altc2009/index.html

They don’t seem to have any instructions on accessing the webcasts on their site so I will replicate them in full here:

To join the Keynote speakers and invited guests remotely during the conference please follow the below instructions: On the day, browse to http://elluminate.alt.ac.uk (pre-registration is not required). There will be a list of conferences available to join for that day. (or if you click on this month below the calendar you can see all the sessions listed). These conferences will appear as grey text, but 30 minutes before the session is due to begin they will appear as blue text which you can then click to join. Once you have clicked an active, blue, link you will be prompted to login as a guest: Email Address – Please enter your email address. Display Name – This is the name you will be identified by in the virtual conference, which will be seen by other delegates. Once you have entered your information click ‘login’, this will launch you into the session. During Keynote sessions you will have the ability to join Q&A sessions via the text chat, please bear in mind all delegates, physical and virtual will be able to read your text. Quick Start Guide for Elluminate’s virtual Classroom Elluminate is the world leading web conferencing provider exclusively serving the needs of education, training and e-learning environments. For more information on Elluminate visit www.elluminate.com Before you join your first ALT-C 2009 Elluminate Live session: We recommend that before you first attempt to join a meeting you visit this webpage www.elluminate.com/support/ and follow the 3 step process which will test that your computer and network is configured properly, as well as providing some background information on Elluminate. Should you have any difficulties with any of 3 steps then please contact our 24×7 support help desk by calling 0808-101-1432, where we will be pleased to help you with any questions you may have. Please be sure to have a headset or built in speakers. For these sessions you will not need a microphone. Questions will be possible via chat.

Could the development of remote collaboration skills be a side benefit of taking part in an instructor-led,  communication-based online course?  In this blog posting: Is the face to face meeting dead?, Verity Gough points out some of the difficulties of online communication, but suggests that these can be overcome by some good practices.  A good instructor-led course will make use of such good practices, not just in live video-conferencing but also in asynchronous (non-live) group collaboration.  So employers, send your staff on instructor-led online courses, even if it is just to make them into better remote workers.

This article by Jennifer Imsande, talks about the problems of assuming that online learning is just about posting notes on the Internet and/or recordings of face to face sessions.  Online learners need to feel that they are part of a class group, both by contributing to the classes and also between classes.  Apart from having the immediate effect of making them feel more connected, it also can make them think more actively about the content being covered.  The areticle has some further interesting observations on education and you can find it here: http://minnesota.publicradio.org/display/web/2009/08/20/imsande/

This article posted by Verity Gough on Trainingzone aregues that e-learning growth is being driven by learners who want more convenience and more relevance to the workplace.  However, it also argues that learning needs to continue beyond the courses into continuous sopport on the job and that online learning is best placed to provide that also.  My own view is that one way of achieving that is by building online communities of graduates of particular courses.  Have a look at the article here.