Online Collaboration
I think Online collaboration and interaction had increase exponentially in the past few years. As more and more people get comfortable using the various tools out there to interact we are able to do much more as teachers and learners from a distance.
One of the main forms of communication is the still the email system. For the most part, if you are working somewhere, you will have an email address for that company to use or for them to contact you. Distance education is no different. You usually receive your own email address from the school upon sign up. This is your main form of communication from the school.
The newer ways that teachers and students are collaborating from a distance is through bogs, video chats, and web forums. They are easily able to work together on topics, projects, or even grading at just a click of a button. There is no need to wait until everyone can be face to face.
One thing I find to be most effective is a tool we use at our school called Elluminate.com. We are able to video chat, use a microphone to chat or a chat box, share documents, share a desktop, present information, go to different websites, and even record the meeting or class. This allows for everyone to participate and work together. It is also very easy to use. You just log in and you are there. Very little training is needed. I think that is important as well. As we use the new technology, we need to understand that it changes quickly so easy of use is very important.
I was reviewing the blog by a Stanford faculty member (http://derekbruff.org/blogs/tomprof/2012/02/13/tp-msg-1152-stanford-faculty-collaborate-to-improve-online-education/) and noticed that they were discussing a lot of ways that they had planned on improving their online collaboration. I believe that it is always good to try new and innovative approaches to an online program but also to make sure those approaches are going to be easy to use and understand as well as being effective. They handled it quite well. The ideas were presented and then tried out a specific group rather than a widespread change. Even though technology moves at a rapid pace, we need to test out the new collaboration tools before we rush into using them. It was nice to go through the step by step process on how those ideas were laid out and followed through.
In the next blog I looked at (http://llt.msu.edu/vol7num2/emerging/default.html) they laid out the different types of collaboration tools out there and how they worked. It was important to look at each item individually and see how the students and faculty could build on them. Most learners start out with the online instruction for collaboration and then move to video chats and then to blogs and wiki’s. As the learner becomes more comfortable with each medium, they are ready to take it to the next step. We do need to keep in mind that not all learners will ever be ready to communicate via web cams, blogs, or wikis, but it is important to help our students and educators push themselves to discover what is out there.
