An opportunity to develop your skills, experience and techniques in creating, using and further developing successful interactive learning activities online, using Janison VLE.

This course is entirely online and runs asynchronously for 3 weeks.

E-tivities is the word Gilly Salmon gives to ‘frameworks for online active and interactive learning’. She further defines e-tivities as being:

• Motivating, engaging and purposeful
• Based on interaction between learners/students/participants mainly through written message contributions
• Designed and led by an e-moderator
• Asynchronous (i.e. take place over time)
• Cheap and easy to run- usually through text based bulletin boards.

She lists 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’)
• All the instructions to take part are available in one online message

Like the E-moderating course, the E-tivities course recognises that learning is a social process that requires participation and interaction, as well as reflection and evaluation of actions taken and comments made. It further acknowledges the importance of motivation to achieve participation. Learning is achieved through peer interaction stimulated by a ‘spark’ which is designed to motivate learners to undertake some task(s) online which require some form of collaborative interaction. Gilly Salmon’s 5-stage model of online learning introduced in the E-moderating course provides the conceptual framework for the E-tivities course also. Participants are encouraged to design E-tivities which will progress learners through the 5-stages of learning online.

E-tivity interaction is achieved using online discussion boards in Janison VLE and for this reason participants on the E-tivities course should be familiar with e-moderating groups.

The aim of the E-tivities course is to enable you to design, create, use and evaluate E-tivities which can subsequently be applied right away to your own modules, courses and programmes.

The E-moderating course offers a conceptual framework which lays the foundation for the incorporation of discussion boards into E-tivities. The E-tivities course, like the E-moderating course is based on a group of lecturers working online together, so it’s very important to start on time and continue to contribute throughout the 3 weeks.

The E-tivities course is aimed at those who have completed an E-moderating course or are already involved in online teaching and learning. The course accommodates lecturers, tutors and trainers from a wide range of disciplines and organisations and with a variety of experiences.

The course provides a series of group activities which are carefully paced throughout the 3 weeks. Your course will be facilitated by an experienced e-moderator under the overall direction and guidance of course directors Dr Gilly Salmon and David Shepherd.

In addition, you will have the opportunity to buy the companion text book, ‘E-tivities: The Key to Active Online Learning, by Gilly Salmon, at a special reduced price (see Application form) though recommended, this is not a requirement.

You should have first successfully e-moderated courses as the E-tivities course will build on the skills, knowledge and experience you gained in e-moderating.

You will need good access to the Internet, preferably from both work and home, and a flexible and open approach to exploring e-learning.

You will not need a high level of technical skill, nor any specialist software to get started.

You should be willing to log on at least 3 times a week over the 3 week period and take part actively online. The course requires at least 20 hours overall. Participants must be available to start on the day the course begins and maintain regular and frequent contact with other participants. You’ll get the most out of the course if you can log on regularly for an hour or so every day.

Gilly Salmon has recently been appointed as E-Learning Professor at Leicester University. She has spent 15 years at the Open University Business School where has been working online since 1988 and involved in online teaching and e-moderating since 1989. She has now been responsible for designing and delivering online e-moderator training for around 700 individuals across universities and corporate training facilities. She has also worked with a number of large scale international corporations at the forefront of online teaching and learning processes. In 2002 she published her book on ‘E-tivities: An approach to active learning online’, which is the basis of this course.

Critically, she believes that e-learning training should be undertaken in the online environment itself, and has proved it can be done.

David Shepherd has been extensively involved in development and e-convening a number of online e-moderating courses. He is a management development consultant, helping teams to improve their performance. Since 1995 he has been increasingly involved with online groups. He has helped to train e-moderators in the Open University and is Director of All Things in Moderation Ltd. He is a Council member of the Association for Management Education and Development (AMED).

Please complete as fully as possible

Completion of this application form does not guarantee a place on the course. Your application will be considered in the light of the number of applicants and you will be notified by email of the results of your application. No payment will be sought unless you are accepted onto the course.

The cost of this course is £295 + VAT per course place. Payment can be made directly to ‘All Things in Moderation Ltd’ and posted for the attention of:

David Shepherd
All Things in Moderation Ltd
99 Falmouth Avenue
Highams Park
London E4 9QR

Further details from David Shepherd