I have now completed lesson 15, the last lesson in this level and the final lesson for this assignment. I certainly have learnt a lot about the Greek language and I am able to say a number of useable phrases. I can now look at Greek words and break them up phonetically so the course has been successful. I have certainly met my expectations for the course and overall it has been well presented and very easy to follow. The discussion forums and chat room in particular have been very valuable resources. The degree of collaboration between the students and facilitators has also been exceptional. I would recommend this course for any one wanting to learn the Greek language. This course was only the start of the journey as it was only the first half of the Elementary level, there are two intermediate and two advanced courses to follow which I am intending to follow through to.

Three hours into the course, have reached lesson 10. Although each lesson is around fifteen minutes have needed to revisit each lesson a number of times. Still no issues with the course, apart from there not being any formal quizzes included in the course. In the discussion forums some of the students have actually created review questions and these have been posted in the duscussion forums for all to use. You might call it Learner-Centred learning.

Reached halfway point – 2 hours. The lessons continue in same vein. Finding it easier to phonetically identify the greek letters. Still need to revisit each lesson several times. The discussion forums and chat room are a definite plus.

The home page for this site has a number of support and general information pages. Some of these are, News Forum; Technical Questions; Site News; Chat Room; Instructions; General Language Questions; and, a Contact Us link. There is very little advertising and what there is is very understated.

You now have a choice of courses to enrol in from Elementary through to Advanced. For my purpose I am choosing Greek 101 (Elementary) and the main page for this has quite an array of choices some of which are pasted below.

Activities Chats Activities Chats

Documents Relevant to All Lessons News forum Your Suggestions for Improvement Books for this course General Chat Room for Greek 101 Anyone from… ? Greek handwriting questions Greek alphabet questions Greek font/keyboard questions Greek music Dictionary for Lessons 1-15

In addition to these choices there is an Administration box, Lates News, Online Users and Course that you are enrolled in.

The central section has the individual lessons listed and you can move freely forwards or backwards as required. The first lesson has the most content

Lesson 001

Audio For Lesson 001

Notes For Lesson 001

The One Accent System

The Greek Alphabet 1

The Greek Alphabet 2

Greek Alphabet Handwriting

Greek Keyboard

Installing Greek Fonts on your Computer

Questionnaire 1 – what you value in an online learning experience

Questionnaire 2 – your attitudes towards studying and learning

Personal Journal For Lesson 001

Discussion Forum For Lesson 001 All the other lessons only have the Audio, Notes, Personal Journal and Discussion Forum. Now that I have established the layout of the course site I will now begin the learning process.

  The online course that I have chosen for this assignment is Learn Greek Online. The Site is sponsored by Cyprus Broadcasting Association and a site known as ΚΥΠΡΟΣ-Νet or Kypros-Net. This site is an internet information resource centre organization which has a goal to utilize the internet and particularly the World Wide Web system for the promotion of the world of Cyprus.

You are required to set up a free account through a registration process. The site does ask for donations of $1 – $20 towards helping with site development costs if you like the course and they have a facility on their site for that purpose. Once registered the courses are free and the site offers courses in Modern Greek from Elementary level through to Advanced level. It also offers a course in ancient Greek.

The site does not have stated objectives or outcomes as such but simply states that the course is provided to teach the modern Greek language.

My expectations are that after four hours I will have a much better understanding of the Greek language, both written and verbal and be able to speak some fairly simple phrases.

As far as the learning experience is concerned I hope it will be a positive one with well presented and easy to understand course content.

I am hoping there will be good support considering it is a course about learning to speak a foreign language. I would expect there will be sufficient resources to accommodate students from beginner level upwards.

The reading for this week  is Preparing E-Learners for Online Success by Ryan Watkins.

Watkins focusses on the demands placed on new e-learners with regard to study skills. He discusses some of the differences between traditional teaching and e-learning particularly the absence of the instructor when the learner may be struggling with a problem. He mentions that the learner needs to become more reliant on peer support.

We are told that the learner needs to be able to adapt existing study skills and habits learned from traditional study and develop and apply new e-learning study skills and habits.

He suggests that e-learners conduct a self-assessment survey to identify their strengths and weaknesses with regards to e-learning study skills. However he counters that suggestion with a comment that perhaps most potential e-learners would have limited exposure to the technology and study skills required for e-learning and hence would have difficulty carrying out a self-assessment on their capabilities.

The reading finishes with six tips that instructors might use to assist new e-learners. These are : 1) Include online activities as ice-breakers for learners. 2) Become familiar with the technologies used in current e-learning courses as well as other technologies that e-learners may ask about during the course. 3) Provide e-learners with the necessary information for getting in touch with technical support. 4) Offer learners opportunities to assess and improve their technology skills and e-learning study skills. 5) Supply learners with links that can prepare them with the specific skills for accomplishing the learning objectives. 6) Encourage learners to interact and communicate with other learners.

Reference

Watkins, R. 2005, Preparing e-learners for Online Success, Learning Circuits, ASTD, Virginia

http://www.learningcircuits.org/2005/sep2005/watkins.htm

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The lesson began with a discussion on the reading as summarised in the previous post. Particularly on the section relating to dealing with problematic students. Genearally the class felt that with face-to-face learning environments you were able to pick up on students body language and perhaps head off any problems before they become major problems whereas with online teaching the problem could readily get out of hand. Particularly with 24/7 internet activity between students.

One of the unanswered questions was with online learning how much time should the teacher put in and when should he/she be avaliable to respond to students who may be online at any time?

The remainder of the lesson was spent preparing for the last assignment which is to participate in a short online course and critique it.

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The reading for Week 9 was from Palloff & Pratt, 2001 Lessons From Cyberspace  chapter 7 ‘Working with the Virtual Student’.

One of the key points in this article related to the need for the learner to be aware of, and prepared for, the differences between traditional learning and online learning. One case is mentioned where the learning organisation actually ran a course to teach the learners how to learn online.

The often repeated comment is how the learner must take responsibility for their own learning and that online training relies heavily on collaboration between the learners and less reliance on the teacher. As a matter of fact the teacher is more a facilitator and guide. The article also notes that not all learners are suited to online learning and that research has found the most successful learners are self-disciplined, self-motivated, generally older and have voluntarily sought further education.

The article finishes with a number of tips for successfully working with Virtual Students. These are: 1) Do not assume students will automatically know how to learn online. 2) Provide some form of orientation to students as they embark on an online experience. 3) Construct a course that is varied and addresses different learning styles. 4) Encourage and empower students to take charge of the learning process. 5) Pay attention to changes in participation levels and address them promptly. 6) Stay present and be responsive to students needs and concerns.

Reference

Palloff, Rena & Pratt, Keith, 2001, Working with the Virtual Student in Lessons from Cyberspace, Jossey-Bass.

http://drr.lib.uts.edu.au/file/17282/013966_palloffworking.pdf

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In this article Kevin Kruse offers a well balanced look at this subject. He opens by warning that “…it is important to know exactly what e-learning advantages exist and when these outweigh the limitations of the medium.” 

His first section looks at the features that are unique to e-learning with some of the key points being that e-learning “…accommodates the three distinct learning styles of auditory learners, visual learners, and kinesthetic learners.” It also offered reduced publishing and distribution costs and can target a globally dispersed audience.

The article then goes on to provide an evenly balanced list of the advantages and disadvantages of e-learning to the Trainer, Organization, and Learner.

The article concludes by asking the question “Do the Benefits Outweigh the Drawbacks?” and the response given is “The pro’s and con’s of e-learning vary depending on program goals, target audience and organizational infrastructure and culture.” This is a refreshing view amongst some of the hype surrounding this subject.

An interesting article posted in the Guardian Unlimited -  

Guardian Unlimited – “Students Tell Universities” Get Out of MySpace” - reveals how students are not happy about lecturers accessing their social networking sites for academic purposes!!

The article is based on research that found that students want to keep their social lives separate from their university lives and did not want to be always available to their lecturers or bombarded with academic information.

Their message to trendy academics was loud and clear “GET OUT OF MySpace!!!!”

On the other hand the article did go on to discuss the need for universities to stay in touch with this technology and when used responsibly can provide valuable support to both students and lecturers as well as ultimately creating a virtual campus for distance learning students.

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The lesson commenced with a discussion of the reading for the week. The discussion was very interesting with many students entering into the discussion presenting their views on Watkins’ comments. Generally the class agreed with his views, especially with the statement that not all learners are suited to e-learning. The ‘Readiness Surveys’ created some healthy debate with some comments that the quoted questions were not relevant to todays’ students whilst other comments felt that the questions used were relevant for the target audience who were US Coastguard staff.

Assessment Task 3 was then discussed looking at the needs of this assessment task. It was noted that Activity 3.3 needs to be completed prior to commencing the online course. This allows each student to state what are the stated course objectives and outcomes and what were their expectations of the course. This information will be relevant when the reflection of the course is carried out.  

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Since the beginning of this semester I have read a lot of articles and books on e-learning. One of the observations made along the way is the internalising going on amongst the e-learning advocates as to what e-learning is and what it can do. I believe that this has not been helpful in establishing e-learning amongst the more traditional learning community. After all if the e-learning community can’t agree on these points then who can?

Another observation is that the “Get Rich Quick”  brigade have had a profound and possibly lasting damaging impact on the reputation of e-learning.

And finally, the lack of management understanding of the importance of needs assessments and program evaluations has also had disasterous consequences.

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I recently stumbled upon a fantastic case study on e-learning involving a Scottish company, Glenmorangie, who produce whisky. The case study - Glenmorangie takes shot at e-learning - revealed that the company wanted to improve the employees’ IT and business skills but due to staff being spread over a number of remote distilleries they decided to make use of the companies intranet and introduce e-learning.

The other problem was that the company had a large number of shift workers so with a show of progressive thinking the company decuded to have their learning centre open 24 hours a day.

The company also received government support as part of its learndirect flexible learning initiative. The employees were very enthisatic in their response and the company has seen high usage of the courses.

Due to this response and government support the company has extended the learning centre usage to workers’ families and friends and will soon be opening up to local organisations and schools.

A wonderful story.

Glenmorangie takes shot at e-learning

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Have been reflecting on the application of e-learning in a trade-based training environment. I am not sure how much competency type training can be converted to an e-learning context. Probably some of the theory content could be presented electronically, perhaps even demonstrations via video hookup might work. Most of the TAFE teachers seem to be struggling to grasp the whole e-learning thing.