Facilitating Online | OER Commons

This new resource by Tony Carr, Shaheeda Jaffer, and Jeanne Smuts from University of Cape Town is comprehensive, and freely available for your use with a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 2.5 license.

Facilitating Online | OER Commons: "The Centre for Educational Technology (CET) produced a Course Leader’s Guide as an Open Educational Resource to assist educators and trainers who wish to implement a course on online facilitation within their institution or across several institutions. The guide contains the course model, week-by-week learning activities, general guidance to the course leader on how to implement and customise the course and specific guidelines on each learning activity."

Online Discourse - e-Primer series

This next e-primer focusing on online discourse is #4 in a series written by Mark Nichols, an E-learning Specialist from Laidlaw College in Auckland, New Zealand. You know how some online facilitators just really stand out? Mark is one of them. I've watched him in action at ITFORUM and SCoPE where he is a master at advancing and summarizing online discussions. I also appreciate the way he acknowledges participants' contributions and cites articles and other resources in almost every post!

Online Discourse - e-Primer series: "In this e-primer, you will discover both the promise of formal online discourse (that is, conversation mediated through internet tools) for education, and good practice. Throughout, I encourage you to apply online discourse in ways that are conducive to teaching and learning. The focus in this e-primer is more on the discourse than the technology although, inevitably, we will consider technology."

txtng is gd 4 lrng

"Texting does not erode children’s ability to read and write. On the contrary, literacy improves. The latest studies (from a team at Coventry University) have found strong positive links between the use of text language and the skills underlying success in standard English in pre-teenage children. The more abbreviations in their messages, the higher they scored on tests of reading and vocabulary. The children who were better at spelling and writing used the most textisms. And the younger they received their first phone, the higher their scores."

Tips for Delivering a Successful Online Experience

The focus of the article is on synchronous online conferencing. "If you're new to presenting online or you're simply considering introducing it into your training repertoire, here are a few things to consider before your next presentation."

Moderating to the Max (book)

Author Jean Bystedt. (My link is to Lisa Neal's commentary on the book.) The book's title made me think it was about moderating online discussions (online learning being my focus). The book's subtitle implies otherwise: A Full-Tilt Guide to Creative Insightful Focus Groups and Depth Interviews. However, Lisa Neal comments on some of the content of the book are very apropos for moderators of online discussions and indeed for online instructors: " I never consciously thought about how many of the skills for teaching, moderating, and presenting overlap. The introduction to the book...says that moderators need to know how to lay the ground rules for participation, help people feel comfortable, encourage responses, ask questions, probe for clarification, segue between topics, and stay on course. This is the same as teaching and presenting."