Escalate e-learning workshop

Last week a colleague and I attended the Escalate e-learning workshop event at Swansea Metropolitan

University. The humanities department, situated in the Townhill campus provided stunning views over Swansea bay which was reward in itself for the challenging walk up from the station!

Our motivation for attending this workshop was to find out more about how the PebblePad e-portfolio system was being used at the University of Wolverhampton. Julie Hughes gave us some valuable insights into how to support and facilitate a reflective community of students using a blogging network.

The Salmon 5-step model underpins Julie’s approach to online facilitation. The early stages of ‘access and motivation’ seemed particularly important which resonates with my experiences of facilitating learning communities using discussion fora. Access to participation was made easier through the provision of templates for setting up individual blogs and supported sessions in the IT suite. Julie taught through the blogs modelling the way in which she wanted to encourage the students to engage. Extrinsic motivators were used in the early stages for example the students were expected to write weekly blog posts to which Julie undertook to give feedback before the next session – these were turned around quicker than requests for feedback by other routes. The time students spent on blogging tasks was taken from face to face sessions rather than being added onto sessions.

Julie stressed the importance of the blogging environment as a social space (level 2 of the Salmon model) and how the writing was more akin to talk than formal writing. It would be interesting to see how the idea of e-tivities had been adapted and developed for this blogging environment.

An intense period of tutor feedback on individual blogs gave way to group blogs where peer support could grow. Each member of the group blog had their own named page signalling an expectation for contributions to be made by all members of the group.

Negotiation of rights and responsibilities of tutor and students and the development of appropriate online cultures seemed key in building the community that was to occupy this learning environment created out of networked blogs.

Although Wolverhampton has a VLE it did not feature in the course that was taught via the e-portfolio system. What was Julie’s advice for getting started? ‘Start small for example one tutor group, be willing to take risks and be ready to put in a lot of time up front giving feedback and support.

Interestingly Julie’s research webfolio gives useful insights into how the PebblePad e-portfolio system can also be used as a tool for research.

http://eportfolio.wlv.ac.uk/viewasset.aspx?oid=184235&type=webfolio