I'd like to conclude my review of last Friday's eLearning Network Thinking Synch event by expressing my surprise at just how inventive people are becoming at using synchronous e-learning technologies. I've seen some really good web conferencing sessions but more often than not they're simple presentations with slides, sprinkled with interactions. Now, when you have a good speaker with good slides and meaningful interactivity then that's a good combination whatever the medium, but I think it's fair to say that most facilitators shy away from formats that challenge this rather safe model.
So, I was pleased at the event to hear about the many ways in which people are adopting more innovative approaches:
- Val Brooks and Judy Hooton of Stockton City Learning Centre have been setting up sessions where kids can interview a top rocket scientist from Houston; in another session they have had teams of children engage in online grand prix racing (I'm not sure how - I didn't get to ask).
- Brian Bishop of Caspian Learning, showed how Teletech@Home used web conferencing to run highly authentic role plays for call centre operators based at home.
- Ron Edwards of Ambient Performance showed how sales and customer service role plays could be conducted with great realism in Forterra. The videos Ron showed just blew me away - so much more realistic and flexible than classroom role plays. See for yourself - you can download the videos from the Forterra site).
So, it seems that synchronous e-learning simply can't be put in a box labelled Second Best but Very Cheap: you're not restricted to short sessions, you can do a lot more than inflict online death by PowerPoint, and design it well and you can achieve better results than you will in a classroom. And that's progress.
I completely agree, virtual classrooms even offer advantages over f2f environments.Once you are over that strange feeling of talking to the ether that soon passes, I feel like the intimacy and intensity generated by having the headphones on and the work right in front of me on screen, filling most of my field of vision, creates a performative space where i get energised and excited just as much as in a f2f lecture. in fact the fact that i cant see my audience in a way enhances this, because I don't get upset if someone looks like they are dropping off! From the feedback we are getting from the participants (there are 16 on the course each year), they feel a similar sense of engagement. One proof of this is that although the sessions are all archived, our attendance levels for the live sessions are typically around 75-805 which isn't bad for a traditional lecture, never mind one that crosses transatlantic time zones and freelance work patterns.
ReplyDeleteAnother major advantage I think is that they are all archived and stored with an easy to navigate timecoded system that makes going straight to a particular part of a talk or session very easy.
But the real killer app is the range of feedback options that the participants have. They can put in chat/text messages, either to the whole room or privately, and in a good session this amounts to a running commentary on the presentation, with approvals (and disagreements!); questions that can then be rolled into the talk; and even a whole team of 'researchers' who can quickly google a reference when its mentioned in a presenation and post the url to the group.
Wimba has various emoticons and yes/no tick boxes, an they too add to the sense of involvement, its easy to ask 'is everyone following this' and thne get a series of green ticks if they are, or red crosses if they are not.
And there's nothing quite like a round of virtual applause emoticons at the end of a great session!!
Wow - I just watched the Forterra video. It's an amazing and really powerful concept which could aid collaboration in a more effective and speedy (and less costly) way.
ReplyDeleteIt also has massive learning potential too. As you say yourself the use of realistic role plays is taken to another level.
Thanks for sharing it...
Chris
http://learn2develop.blogspot.com