Bright ideas ...

Blended learning and online tutoring contains many bright ideas on using online tools for tuition and support to students.  They range from ways to help students feel comfortable at the start of the course, to ideas on helping them to make sense of the things they have read by discussing ideas with others, or perhaps constructing a concept map, or just keeping in touch, or posting resources.   A couple of contributions from the book are pasted below to give you the flavour.        I expect that most of your examples will illustrate the use of email or online forums, because they are probably the most common tools in use for teaching in Higher Education. But it would also be interesting to hear about your use of other tools - whether they are blogs or wikis, instant messaging, sms, or perhaps audio or video conferencing.   I've started to make a few sub sections for contributions: Icebreakers Bringing concepts to life Keeping in touch Assignment feedback Explaining difficult concepts

Your contributions Press the Edit button, type blearn for the password and get typing.   Over several weeks I regularly emailed my student group about the night sky. During this period very bright planets Venus and Jupiter seemed to move closer together, passed and separated. This generated plenty of interest, as students realised they could see the changes from night to night. The night these planets passed each other was cloudy, but people were still able to see the event through the clouds. I received several emails from students about the excitement of watching these planets, and there was lots of discussion at tutorials. This brought to life some of the abstract course material on orbits. (Dave Edwards, OU tutor)  In Blended Learning & Online Tutoring     The Yahoo chat group was a valuable experience because it allowed external tutors, who had not met the students in face-to-face classes, to get to know their designated groups and to begin to form some impression of  individual students – which student logged on regularly, how they interacted with each other online – for example ‘slanging’ matches between the young men, teasing a female student about her height, discussing what they would do in their spare time and generally ‘chatting’, often using abbreviations used for cell-phone text messages in addition to written forms of the local dialect. Chats with tutors were usually more deferential particularly with an unknown foreign tutor ... often centred round the students’ reactions to the course. (Ardus & Fabi, Istituto Tecnico Agrario Statale, Italy)  In Blended Learning & Online Tutoring     From my own recent experience as a student in an online programme, I think it helps to date every entry, everywhere, and if possible to remove 'old' 2006 material (?) (Maureen, OU tutor)    Something that I did for one of my courses was make up a list of frequently asked questions, culled from emails and questions in previous years' courses.  I use these in my tutor group forum, by drip-feeding them in, a few questions every few weeks.  I send round a group email when I post the questions, reminding everyone that the forum is there for discussion and telling them there are new FAQs there.  It's a way of getting them to log in and read the messages every now and then, and helps for keeping in touch - because they have an incentive to visit. (Anne Campbell, OU tutor)   Janet I've just returned from Hong Kong where I worked at the local OU. We did a lot of work on integrating forums into our courses in maths. My main steps for ensuring that the forums worked well were: (a) a guaranteed 24-hour turnaround (to compete with the immediacy of the telephone and to establish a relatively fast pace) (b) intense involvement of the central academic over the first month (students initially like the idea of being able to interact with the 'expert' {as they seem him/her}) (c) extensive use of sub-forums by which messages on a similar topic could be grouped usually by the manager (this facilitates finding appropriate messages especially when the number of messages becomes large) (d) clear code of conduct prominently advertised and implemented (e) a separate forum for non-academic exchanges (f) providing several services that students couldn't get through other means: TMA summaries, even assignment questions (to encourage the initial involvement) (Mike Robertshaw, OU MST121 tutor R10)   As a technology tutor I have been using conference forums for a long time.  It has become very clear to me over the years that students have become increasingly adept at using the 'blend' of electronic communication resources tailored to particular activities. While the forum is the main platform for sharing decisions and for making arrangements, students have made regular and effective use of 'chat' facilities in FirstClass to negotiate and share ideas. They have found the synchronous immediacy of the experience 'satisfying' in terms of 'getting things done quickly' - it allows for more immediate interaction. They have also been enthusiastic on further face-to-face meetings at tutorials when there is a group activity to be completed. Not all students do all things, but many students are involved in a variety of platforms which has allowed them to accommodate and tailor different learning outcomes and content (where group tasks vs individual tasks) into busy lives. The point about the 'blend' is that it is the students who are the 'blenders' while the teacher/tutor has a facilitator/mentoring role to support the diversity. I find that this whole approach is a natural consequence of a 'situated cognition' model for how learners learn and teachers create rich and interactive learning contexts. Shaun Harley - OU Tutor

I have found it very difficult to get involvement in a forum that is developmental but have tried to encourage this by the following initiative in my U213 forum where1) I took a task that students had been directed to in preparing for a TMA and isolated one small element of it, asking students to post a response and then 2) responded to it by prompting to indicate where it needed extending, by linkage to theory, 3)got a replywhich needed refining and did so by adapting the sentence written by the student to a more appropriate form showing by example what they could afford to leave out when including quotation/evidence .See below EXERCISE A    Will any brave souls try to give one piece of evidence which supports one of the scenarios, written into a sentence which clearly indicates which scenario and also properly references the sources? It would be good if we got examples for each scenario.   S     My example that supports the scenario that China is heading towards a transition to capitalism comes from the vice-governor of Yunnan province who stated that 'the proportion of industry in his province in non-state hands is expected to rise to 50% in 2005, up from 30% now' (J.Kynge, The Financial Times, 24 March 2004. In Transitions theme update, 2006.) A    Thank you for your prompt reply and appropriate selection of properly referenced evidence. If you were arguing that China is on the way to capitalism you would be putting this evidence in a context of theory-what theory and how could you incorporate a reference to both the theory and the evidence in one sentence as if it were in the middle of your essay-another task if you have the time for it...! S   Within the context of economic theory, evidence to support the view that China is heading towards a transition to capitalism is, 'the proportion of industry in Yunnan province, in non-state hands, rising to 50% in 2005 up from 30% now'. (J.Kynge. The Financial Times. 24 March 2004. In Transistions theme update, 2006.)  A   What about Kornai-have another go!  S   Janos Kornai, the Hungarian economist, viewed the dominance of private property as a major characteristic in a capatilist system, eveidence that supports the theory that China is heading towards a transition to capatilism is 'the proportion of industry in Yunnan province, in non-state hands, rising to 50% in 2005 up from 30% now. (J.Kynge. The Financial Times. 24 March 2004. In Transitions theme update 2006.) A    Yep that's the format-though you need to take care to close the quote with a speech mark too! Another way of writing the same thing would be something like   'According to Kornai (ref) the dominance of private property is one of the defining characteristics of the capitalist system and the projection given by Kynge's article (ref) that the proportion of private industry in Yunnan province China would rise to 50% by 2005, indicates therefore that China may be on a trajectory that would be considered capitalist'    i) is there any other similar property/ ownership related data in Transitions itself and in the rest of the update material ii) logically you need to give the most recent also iii)you need to look at the evidence critically-is the source of the data in the article reliable / is the fact that there is a lot of private ownership in Yunnan repeated in other parts of China iii) what is the legal definition of ownership in China iv) does ownership alone reflect capitalism as the west defines it and could it be possible to regulate capitalism differently than the western model? (indicates a different development trajectory than 'following in the footsteps of the west' NB anyone else reading this got a different point linked to another issue-labour/ political structures etc? END The problem I see with this is that it needs to avoid extension into doing the tma for them but the relevence of linking a task directly to the tma seemed useful. However this was the only exchange that happened and I have no idea if the seven (out of 23) students reading the forum found it useful. Ann Garnham (OU AL)