Foundations to e-moderating (2’52”)

Acutely aware that there are still colleagues with little, or no, experience of supporting students online I thought I would start sharing some elementary resources.

Here’s a share of a short (2’52”) screencast video that walks through the five steps in Gilly Salmon’s E-Moderating model. While it is not universally applicable and it may depend on the discipline, context and level of students, it’s a useful guide to make sure new online facilitators are familiar (broadly) with the difference between technical support and facilitation. The emphasis is on ‘socialising the student’. Many adult learners choose NOT to engage and good course design will not compel them to participate without just cause.

Salmon, G. (2000). E-moderating: The key to online teaching and learning. Kogan Page.
These resources from 2013-2017 are being shared to support colleagues new to teaching online in the face of the COVID-19 pandemic.

DiAL-e Presented at ALDinHE 2011

Simon in front of the DiAL-e poster at ALDinHE 2011

It was a pleasure to join some 120 colleagues at ALDinHE 2011 at Queen’s University Belfast. From a range of different HEIs, and a diverse set of professional roles, participants came to share insights and good practice in a range of learning development-related activities.  The conference theme ‘Engaging Students – Engaging Learning’  was so closely related to the work the we have done on using digital artefacts (notably video) to support higher order thinking skills in students a submission was a must.

I presented to colleagues Wednesday 20th April. I had a 90 minute workshop entitled ‘Engaging Learners with Digital Resources’. I opted to use a single webpage on this site to support the workshop, with links to the relevant resources and exemplars, static images and the YouTube channel. So a PowerPoint free zone! After providing a bit of background on the thinking behind the framework I demonstrated a simple example of how what is NOT said or shown in a resource might be the catalyst for the ‘what else’ question that can, as Phil Race said in his keynote, be the most powerful learning question.

Participants then had the chance to consider how two other examples might support non-subject-related thinking amongst academic staff. The focus is on what the student is to DO with the clip, not what the clip is ‘about’.

There was some useful discussion and significant interest in the poster on display (available to download ). It was also, on a personal level, a great chance to meet up with former colleagues from the Open University and the University of Hull.

The Digital Artefacts for Learner Engagement (DiAL-e) in 5 minutes!

A brief 5 minute (exactly!) Prezi presentation, based on the ALDinHE poster has been added to the ‘What is the DiAL-e’ page and as the opener to the YouTube channel.

Can you spare 5 minutes?

YouTube Channel for DiAL-e: Digital Artefacts for Learner Engagement

A new YouTube channel has been produced in order to bring together a disperate range of video exemplars, explanatory videos and training & development material from the different DiAL-e projects in one place. We hope to develop this channel in the near future with your help, to make it a useful place to critique the framework and its applications, as well as a site to upload examples of good practice in using video resources.

Please visit the YouTube channel today and subscribe!

Screenshot of DiaL-e YouTube channel
DiAl-e YouTube Channel

We invite you all to join the site as a subscriber (we promise NOT to bombard you with emails) so that you can comment on the videos, provide insights for colleagues on what has worked best for you, and develop a community that is focused on using video resources in our teaching, particularly in higher education, as a focus for learner engagement rather than as ‘content’.

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