Many OU courses do not have in-built activities around communication or collaboration although more...
47 views 1 favouriteMany OU courses do not have in-built activities around communication or collaboration although more and more ALs make use of communication technologies to keep in touch with their student group for tuition and support, as well as maintaining contact and support with other members of staff. Hear a tutor perspective on what it’s like to use the new technologies. See which tools are being used.
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Live blog of Clive Buckland's talk
Tutor from Scotland. Been working with programming for many years. Always keen to try new technologies.
His students are mainly studying for a named degree. Many are novices and many are geeks like him! All live in Scotland or Ireland. Any tutorial venue is problematic. Other technologies are vital:
Forums, wikis, mystuff, elluminate, skype, mobile phone
Forums
Difficult to get students involved in FirstClass - particularly since we removed compulsion for students to have a FC email account. So Clive now has to communicate through email. FC is withering and mainly used by ALs.
Moodle forums "fantastic". Sign up for tutor moderators course and you learn all about how to moderate them. Students can subscribe to a forum and receive email notifications.
Wiki
He uses Moodle wiki - share a wiki with fellow tutor in Scotland. Put mind map in there with links to each unit.
MyStuff
He puts in thoughts about forthcoming assignment - great for sharing documents.
Elluminate
Used to use Netmeeting but because it wasn't within OU classes would be interrupted. Lyceum had a barrier of having to have installed software. Now using Elluminate.
He puts objects from powerpoint presentations into Elluminate whiteboards and builds up diagrams. Not many technical problems with Elluminate.
He can see who's there and who's speaking. Gets votes from students on whether they're happy with what he's just said. Students put their hands up if they want to ask a question. Tutor moderators course now includes two Elluminate sessions.
He uses Elluminate Plan! to plan out sessions in advance.
Text chat useful for students with audio problems.
Breakout rooms for students to get to know each other.
He thinks video takes up too much bandwidth and they don't need to see his face. Nor has he found application sharing, web tours or file transfer necessary yet.
Difficult to get students involved in FirstClass - particularly since we removed compulsion for students to have a FC email account. So Clive now has to communicate through email. FC is withering and m [removed][removed] ainly used by ALs.
Moodle forums "fantastic". Sign up for tutor moderators course and you learn all about how to moderate them. Students can subscribe to a forum and receive email notifications.
Skype very useful.
Mobile he gives his number out and they text him any time. Better than home phone.
Niall Sclater
10:15am 9 February 2010 (Edited 10:34am 9 February 2010)
Discussion
The TELSTAR project (http://www.open.ac.uk/telstar) is developing some tools for sharing References in Moodle forums, wikis and blogs - you can see a demonstration at http://www.open.ac.uk/blogs/telstar/2010/02/05/sharing-references/ - any feedback is very welcome
Owen Stephens
11:33am 9 February 2010
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