Summary of the Discussion on “Online Presence” by Lesotho College of Education.
After the facilitator had posted the question thus: “What are you going to add to your course so that the users are aware of you and your role in the online learning experience?”, the participants had the following contributions:
- Being online and make comments during chats. This will make reference to what is evolving during the chat. One participant agreed with being online but preferred comments to come at the end
- Nudge people who are not making progress using private emails
- Giving activities such as quizzes or assignments and give immediate feedback
- Prepare module activities with fixed milestones; chatting time clearly fixed
- Use group email address for participants in the course. Emails have been mentioned by more than one participants
- Maintain news forum where news and important announcements can be done with ease
- Facilitator and the learners will have to agree on what should be done including the day time of meeting, announcements in the news forum and sending email to all learners to remind them on the appointments. Reminding participants has been echoed by other participants
- There should be a timetable agreed upon by bot facilitator and the students on the days and times for computer conferencing. The facilitator will have to remind the participants a day before the conferencing
- Set a time for a chat like 4-5 on Fridays fortnightly. I will start and monitor the discussions and intervene when necessary
- Set a time limit for forums and being available to respond to concerns
- Provide other contact modes like twitter and Facebook.
- Keep constant communication so that the students feel your presence
- Use forum to provide for regular feedback sessions on how well participants cope with the moodle. This was also echoed by another participant
- Regular interaction between the learners and the facilitator, may be a chat once week whereby the facilitator could be wrapping up some of the concepts learned that week
- Design a course in such a manner that there is either a forum or a wiki or any other activity
Finally the facilitator commented thus: “Strategies not found above and gave the following:
- Record a message that relates to their progress or performance and upload the file. They will therefore hear you
- Use and update regularly the ‘Course News’ box at the top right hand corners of the screen.
You can download the document attached