I think your questions are a little broad. Seriously, you could write books around those two questions. So let me respond by asking you some questions...
"Howdo you think student-teacher collaboration can be improved in e-learning?"
Do you mean synchronous or asynchronous?
What setting are you talking about? (college, industrial training, corporate training)
What are you basic assumptions? That is to ask why do you think student-teacher collaboration needs to be improved? Is there any data that suggests that this is an issue?
I agree with Charles re: narrowing your definitions or categorizing the various elearning channels.
Your questions also imply there are problems or, at the very least, areas for improvement in elearning. Can you share some of the areas you've identified as needing improvement? That might help frame some of the replies.
2. university, industrial training and corporate training
3. Mainly student-lecturer interaction is done by forums most of the time. But the lecturer has to answer the questions of the forum without knowing the student level of understanding. Sometimes students are given to discuss on some topics on a forum which will be monitored by the lecturer. But students doesn't get the actual feeling that he's actually residing in a classroom. Therefore some students get really bored on the current system.
It sounds like based on your assumptions, you focusing on a professor moderated course, like you might find at an online University. Is that right?
I was very nearly a student of an online university last year, enrolling only in their pre-course oreintations before untimately dropping out before beginning classes. But I did get a flavor of the experience from the orientation course, which had assigments and discussions and classes like the real thing. I must say I was disappointed at the lack of media tools available for creating interaction between the profs and students. Video chat or even real time audio chat would have made it much better. Having done corporate elearning for many years, I was expecting something similar - like a webinar class (live or recorded) as a primary eLearning tool, followed by a forum for discussion, tutoring and assigments. I was hoping for an emmulation of the traditional classroom and campus - a "face-to-face" class followed by time with the school community. But instead of leveraging a live session in anyway, it seemed like posting to the forum was the end all experience.
While not the primary reason I did not continue, the experience and controls of the classroom didn't help. I don't know why there isn't any effort made to substitute a lecture time or providing any non-text-based interactivity. Maybe the university I looked at was not the cutting edge of online college, but it claimed to be and I think it's one of the top handful you would think of. The forum-based approach has a lot of upside, and I think corporate training by and large could be improved by developing a moderated community of participants, something many companies are not taking the time to establish. It is obviously valuable to have peer-to-peer teaching and disucssion to fill in the gaps of knowledge from a course, it's a great way to share and retain resources, and it allows the company to post a less narrative jumping off point for conversations. But I think the text only enviironments cater to a certain type of learner. With the technology availble to online Universities today, I'm surprised they aren't more aggressively integrating techniques for other learning styles.
Thanks for the post A @work! The main problem I have noticed is when the students posts on the forum, the lecturer must go through it and answer not knowing the knowledge level of the student. Therefore I think they have to come up with a different alternative solution. What do kind of system do you propose for this? What are the features you wish to include?
I really think that you have to establish assumptions in the beginning. Also students need to articulate their issues clearly. Even in a classroom setting it can be hard for a teacher to know the level of understanding for all students. You need a teacher that is committed to an online program completely and a student who thinks before they type.
I have done online college courses on several occasions and found that it was always best when the professor had a weekly online chat time. You could go in and ask questions talk about the program and solve problems. It is as simple as MSN chat, but most schools have a dedicated online delivery program.
To improve student teacher collaboration you have to have two participating parties that are invested. It is no different in the work environment. The teach however must be the driver. As an ID I have an obligation to invest time in learning or discovering new technology and ways of thinking to improve the process constantly. I have to be adaptable and willing to change (very hard). There are many tools available to open communication in a corporate and school environment.
Skype
msn chat
Rypple
Go to meeting
Screenr
All these tools are about communication. And that is what it comes down to in my opinion.
If we are talking about content collaboration then really it is not anything to do with the student and the teacher it is all about changing the curriculum. Best class i ever took in college was a case study course that in the end had little to no teaching requirements from the prof. We were given a business problem and we had to solve it. The prof gave basic direction and marked the work. Completely interactive in class learning. It was amazing. My prof was not lazy, he was smart. We have to look outside the same old same old and find ways to let students discover with guidance. It might not work for Stats or Theory based learning but it can work for many other topics. Like a literature course. Have a list of approved novels from a theme or writer. do a report that involves multimedia and out of the box learning. Assign a poem or story of the week and discuss it in an open forum. The responsibility that we always have is to know our audience. Accounting students don't want or understand the same things as art students typically. Just like accounting departments are very different from the web designers or what ever.
eLearning, Instructor Lead, Blended, etc is all about
Buy in for the ppl paying the bills
interaction
knowing your audience
quality content
visual stimulation
If we arm ourselves then we can only ever produce great material. The limitations on eLearning I think are mostly do to $$ because of buy in from the ppl paying the bills.
Thanks Zara for the well explained answer!! I have noticed in the current e-learning system there is no way to perform group activities. What is your idea on this? What suggestions or improvements can you propose for this issue?
For a student I think it is a great opportunity! And If we do it right we teach people how to work effectively over long distances. The world is shrinking because of technology. I have professional friends in Holland, UK, Italy, Australia and many many other countries because of communities like this one and twitter and #lrnchat.With that said the org I work for is all over Canada. I have SME's in Edmonton, Sudbury, Gore Bay, Montreal, Cargary, etc... I have to be responsible enough to coordinate with them to achieve a goal.
So why not trust? Why not assign a group and a task. Let them figure it out. Plan ahead with notification that this will happen and suggest ways to sharer responsibility and have positive communication. All the communication sites life Skype, MSN chat, Dropbox and even Rypple are designed to share and communicate.
If you let the new generation explore and encourage them to do so I believe they will. Bit idealistic perhaps but you do need to weed out the lazy for the strong.
Also Chandira, if you want to find out more about your target audience, why not conduct a learner analysis or give them a pretest before the course and a posttest afterwards. By doing this you will be able to find out more about your audience, regarding such things as prior-knowledge and entry behaviors. Even in threaded discussions, which are frequently used with course management systems, you can put your students into groups and have them interact and communicate among themselves before they post an answer to an activity on the discussion board.
Yes Pooja that's true. I have seen in certain DL discussion boards they mention not to spam. But spamming cannot be avoided. We only can take measures to reduce it.
What do you think about the questionnaires? I have seen the lecturer post questionnaires to test the knowledge of the students on that particular module. But is it enough? What are your suggestions and your ideas for improvement?
17 Replies
Chandira,
I think your questions are a little broad. Seriously, you could write books around those two questions. So let me respond by asking you some questions...
"Howdo you think student-teacher collaboration can be improved in e-learning?"
I agree with Charles re: narrowing your definitions or categorizing the various elearning channels.
Your questions also imply there are problems or, at the very least, areas for improvement in elearning. Can you share some of the areas you've identified as needing improvement? That might help frame some of the replies.
Yes charles i'll answer your questions.
1. synchronous and asynchronous.
2. university, industrial training and corporate training
3. Mainly student-lecturer interaction is done by forums most of the time. But the lecturer has to answer the questions of the forum without knowing the student level of understanding. Sometimes students are given to discuss on some topics on a forum which will be monitored by the lecturer. But students doesn't get the actual feeling that he's actually residing in a classroom. Therefore some students get really bored on the current system.
What is this for? Are you writining a paper? If so, how long?
This is for a research on e-learning.
It sounds like based on your assumptions, you focusing on a professor moderated course, like you might find at an online University. Is that right?
I was very nearly a student of an online university last year, enrolling only in their pre-course oreintations before untimately dropping out before beginning classes. But I did get a flavor of the experience from the orientation course, which had assigments and discussions and classes like the real thing. I must say I was disappointed at the lack of media tools available for creating interaction between the profs and students. Video chat or even real time audio chat would have made it much better. Having done corporate elearning for many years, I was expecting something similar - like a webinar class (live or recorded) as a primary eLearning tool, followed by a forum for discussion, tutoring and assigments. I was hoping for an emmulation of the traditional classroom and campus - a "face-to-face" class followed by time with the school community. But instead of leveraging a live session in anyway, it seemed like posting to the forum was the end all experience.
While not the primary reason I did not continue, the experience and controls of the classroom didn't help. I don't know why there isn't any effort made to substitute a lecture time or providing any non-text-based interactivity. Maybe the university I looked at was not the cutting edge of online college, but it claimed to be and I think it's one of the top handful you would think of. The forum-based approach has a lot of upside, and I think corporate training by and large could be improved by developing a moderated community of participants, something many companies are not taking the time to establish. It is obviously valuable to have peer-to-peer teaching and disucssion to fill in the gaps of knowledge from a course, it's a great way to share and retain resources, and it allows the company to post a less narrative jumping off point for conversations. But I think the text only enviironments cater to a certain type of learner. With the technology availble to online Universities today, I'm surprised they aren't more aggressively integrating techniques for other learning styles.
Thanks for the post A @work! The main problem I have noticed is when the students posts on the forum, the lecturer must go through it and answer not knowing the knowledge level of the student. Therefore I think they have to come up with a different alternative solution. What do kind of system do you propose for this? What are the features you wish to include?
I really think that you have to establish assumptions in the beginning. Also students need to articulate their issues clearly. Even in a classroom setting it can be hard for a teacher to know the level of understanding for all students. You need a teacher that is committed to an online program completely and a student who thinks before they type.
I have done online college courses on several occasions and found that it was always best when the professor had a weekly online chat time. You could go in and ask questions talk about the program and solve problems. It is as simple as MSN chat, but most schools have a dedicated online delivery program.
To improve student teacher collaboration you have to have two participating parties that are invested. It is no different in the work environment. The teach however must be the driver. As an ID I have an obligation to invest time in learning or discovering new technology and ways of thinking to improve the process constantly. I have to be adaptable and willing to change (very hard). There are many tools available to open communication in a corporate and school environment.
All these tools are about communication. And that is what it comes down to in my opinion.
If we are talking about content collaboration then really it is not anything to do with the student and the teacher it is all about changing the curriculum. Best class i ever took in college was a case study course that in the end had little to no teaching requirements from the prof. We were given a business problem and we had to solve it. The prof gave basic direction and marked the work. Completely interactive in class learning. It was amazing. My prof was not lazy, he was smart. We have to look outside the same old same old and find ways to let students discover with guidance. It might not work for Stats or Theory based learning but it can work for many other topics. Like a literature course. Have a list of approved novels from a theme or writer. do a report that involves multimedia and out of the box learning. Assign a poem or story of the week and discuss it in an open forum. The responsibility that we always have is to know our audience. Accounting students don't want or understand the same things as art students typically. Just like accounting departments are very different from the web designers or what ever.
eLearning, Instructor Lead, Blended, etc is all about
If we arm ourselves then we can only ever produce great material. The limitations on eLearning I think are mostly do to $$ because of buy in from the ppl paying the bills.
Thanks Zara for the well explained answer!! I have noticed in the current e-learning system there is no way to perform group activities. What is your idea on this? What suggestions or improvements can you propose for this issue?
For a student I think it is a great opportunity! And If we do it right we teach people how to work effectively over long distances. The world is shrinking because of technology. I have professional friends in Holland, UK, Italy, Australia and many many other countries because of communities like this one and twitter and #lrnchat.With that said the org I work for is all over Canada. I have SME's in Edmonton, Sudbury, Gore Bay, Montreal, Cargary, etc... I have to be responsible enough to coordinate with them to achieve a goal.
So why not trust? Why not assign a group and a task. Let them figure it out. Plan ahead with notification that this will happen and suggest ways to sharer responsibility and have positive communication. All the communication sites life Skype, MSN chat, Dropbox and even Rypple are designed to share and communicate.
If you let the new generation explore and encourage them to do so I believe they will. Bit idealistic perhaps but you do need to weed out the lazy for the strong.
Also Chandira, if you want to find out more about your target audience, why not conduct a learner analysis or give them a pretest before the course and a posttest afterwards. By doing this you will be able to find out more about your audience, regarding such things as prior-knowledge and entry behaviors. Even in threaded discussions, which are frequently used with course management systems, you can put your students into groups and have them interact and communicate among themselves before they post an answer to an activity on the discussion board.
Thanks Zara for your precious comments!! Agreed with helena. We have to conduct a learner analysis before the course.
Any other ideas?
Hello...
I think elearning would be greatly enhanced by the drastic reduction of spammers on DL discussion boards....
all above sugestions are also a good option for improving e-learning.....
thank you
pooja kryptonsoft
Yes Pooja that's true. I have seen in certain DL discussion boards they mention not to spam. But spamming cannot be avoided. We only can take measures to reduce it.
What do you think about the questionnaires? I have seen the lecturer post questionnaires to test the knowledge of the students on that particular module. But is it enough? What are your suggestions and your ideas for improvement?
So what other features do you guys feel which lacks in the e-learning environment?
Some methods to improve E Learning are:-
1. Synchronous Learning:- Live learning that should be used with online learning.
2. Asynchronous in which communication occurs through e-mail and discussion boards.
3.Forum is one of the part where student-lecture interaction is done most of the time.
For More information please fill the form related to e-learning.
Using through Rapid Learning – Authoring Tools
open navigation in elearning like "Recorded Lecture"
Reduce Content, Start on Screen One, Layer Chunks Repaint
For More Details please visit here : E-learning company
This discussion is closed. You can start a new discussion or contact Articulate Support.