E-tivities: The Key to Active Online Learning
E-tivities: The Key to Active Online Learning
Gilly SalmonKogan Page2002ISBN: 0749436867£19.99
Education institutions are under pressure to reduce costs, increase student numbers and improve teaching quality. Many see increased use of electronic learning as a way of dealing with these apparently contradictory pressures. Salmon, of the Open University Business School, bases her book on action research and a premise she admits is contentious – that teaching techniques are more important than "content" delivery. Her own research has revealed that "some very simple ideas, using cheap … bulletin boards,have the greatest, if largely unsung, impact".
Salmon defines e-tivities as frameworks for promoting online active and interactive learning. E-tivities, she says, are: motivating, engaging and purposeful; based on interaction between learners/students/participants, mainly through written message contributions; designed and led by an e-moderator;asynchronous (they take place over time); and cheap and easy to run –usually through online bulletin boards, forums or conferences.
The author explains the key features of e-tivities as: a small piece of information, stimulus or challenge (the "spark"); online activity, which includes individual participants posting a contribution; an interactive or participative element, such as responding to the postings of others; summary feedback or critique from an e-moderator (the "plenary"); and all the instructions to take part being available in one online message (the "invitation").
Part I of the book helps the reader to design and run e-tivities. It explores, through the lens of e-tivities, the five-stage model of teaching and learning online that the author presented in her previous book, E-moderating. It offers the story of one of her e-moderating courses based entirely on e-tivities, and a framework to help the reader to create his or her own e-tivities. It also provides insight into the roles and skills that e-moderators need in order to run e-tivities well. Part I includes a case study of the use of e-tivities for staff development at the University of Glamorgan, which readers of Education + Training will find particularly interesting. Part II is a set of 35 resources to help practitioners to think through, design, develop and run their own e-tivities.
E-tivities targets academics, teachers, course managers, teaching assistants, instructors, trainers and e-moderators, from any subject discipline or level of education, who are already online or wish to move online. There is also plenty to interest developers and trainers in corporate training and professional associations, as well as staff developers and teacher trainers. In addition, the author believes the book may be of interest to software and platform designers and providers, computer services and support staff, managers and administrators responsible for providing, evaluating or assessing online learning, and staff working online in contexts other than teaching and learning– for example, in community programmes or e-democracy.
