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5 stage model

People

I know there is an irony in writing a book about something that can only be tried online. However, some people like books to read on trains and planes, and others feel comforted by print based resources lying by their keyboards. The E-tivities book will help:

• Academics, teachers, course managers, teaching assistants, instructors, trainers or one of the increasing band of e-moderators from many disciplines, from any level of education, within any teaching tradition and in any country. You will be online or wish to ‘move online’.
• Developers and trainers in corporate training and professional associations
• Staff developers and teacher trainers

I hope there will also be some browsers, lurkers or vicarious learners from the book. You may be:

• Software and platform designers and providers
• Computer services and support staff
• Directors, managers and administrators responsible for the provision, evaluation and assessment of online learning in any educational context
• Staff working online in contexts other than teaching and learning, e.g. community programmes, e-democracy

The book is in two main parts. You can read the book in sequence or dip in, as you like. It doesn’t really matter too much. Part One, offers you encouragement to undertake designing and running e-tivities, the 5 stage model through the lens of e-tivities, the story of one of my e-moderating courses based entirely on e-tivities and a ‘how to do your own e-tivity’ framework. Chapter 3 also provides further insight into the roles and skills that e-moderators need to run e-tivities well. Part Two is a set of 35 Resources for Practitioners which I hope will provide you with support in thinking through, designing, developing and running your e-tivities. You can see some ‘tasters’ on this site, under the Resources tab.

I hope you will find some comfort, joy, success and a way forward in the e-tivities approach. The book will help you think through e-tivities for your topic, your subject, your course, your programme, your teaching practice, your discipline and your learners. This is how we shape the future of active and interactive teaching and learning online, together. Let me know how it goes!

How do we learn? How do we acquire knowledge? What are the differences between informal and formal learning? Why is working together so important? Why is activity associated with learning? These questions have challenged educationalists and philosophers throughout the centuries. Such debates resurface each time a new technology for teaching and learning become available. One way of addressing these thorny questions is to explore ‘what works?’ ‘How can teachers and learners use technologies happily’ and ‘how can we create environments to make success more likely?’

The pressures at every level of training and education in the 21st Century are paradoxical. We must reduce costs, increase student numbers and improve quality. But free education, born in the 19th century, with its rote learning and large classes is gone. We cannot bring it back nor would we wish to. Instead, we are moving away from ‘factory’ education - whether terrestrial or distance - towards provision for learning of a more experiential, applied and individual kind. ‘So, how can we personalise and customise learning and yet make it efficient and effective?’

Along the way, we’ve seen the somewhat painful birth of the ‘virtual university’ and its corporate brothers and sisters. As I write, some of the ‘hype’ around e-learning as the panacea and the trigger for changes in education is dying away. Reports of expensive failures of new forms of educational organisations continue to hit the headlines. Instead of the predicted replacement of education by electronic means, we witness a web of educational providers, using ever more sophisticated networked technologies, constantly repositioning themselves in a slippery market place. Whilst higher and corporate education are seeing the most dramatic challenges and opportunities, primary and secondary education is gradually digitising too. The educators’ heads spin and their computers burn red hot! ‘How can we now look beyond the hype and the rhetoric and into achievable worthwhile online learning?

E-tivities is the name I give to frameworks for enhancing active and participative online learning by individuals and groups. All the e-tivities that I discuss are based on low-cost computer mediated environments such as bulletin boards or forums. E-tivities are cheap and do not require equipment beyond the Internet and an interactive online platform as a setting for the interaction between people. These are usually text-based and asynchronous. They are scalable and customisable.

There are, of course, many ways to use new technologies for teaching and learning. But e-tivities are designed for efficiency. They are reusable and recyclable. Indeed they get better the more they are employed. They use other learners and readily available electronic resources. They can be used for participants who never meet or in combination with classroom activities or print-based distance learning. They can form a whole course or programme when sequenced carefully together or be included as a small part, to replace or support all kinds of other learning and teaching methods.

The e-tivities in this book are for everyone. They have attracted the interest of teachers and trainers from many sectors and levels of education. E-tivities can be adapted for use in any discipline and for all topics. They are cheap and they are in the hands of the educators. They are easy to try out and to change.

An e-tivity involves at least two people working together in some way. E-tivities take place online. The Web or other resources may be involved but usually to provide a stimulus or a start (the ‘spark’) rather than as the focus of the activity. They encourage a very wide variety of different perspectives and ideas. They do not depend on learners being physically in the same place. E-tivities are accessible to a wide range of people and many disabilities are unimportant, or can be assisted through the technologies.

Combining new ideas about computer mediated technologies and well-loved theories of learning and teaching results in fantastic possibilities but they need a little human time and energy to get them to work. High quality interaction, full participation and reflection do not happen simply by providing the technology. Hence the need to design e-tivities carefully, to reduce barriers and enhance the potential of the technology.