Bill Williams,

Barreiro Technical School, Setubal Polytechnic, Portugal

This tutorial takes a hands-on approach to the design of learner activities and grouping of learners so as to encourage active participation on an international online learning course. 

The aims are twofold:

1.      to introduce participants with little experience in online course planning to issues which can arise and approaches for resolving them;

2.      to invite those already working in the area to exchange and reflect on experience. 

Participants will be presented with a range of possible tasks and invited to work in groups to select learning activities and discuss different ways  learners could collaborate during a three week course module of an international online course. 

After each group has presented and discussed their chosen approach a case study of such a module will be examined to see how decision-making  regarding these issues could affect learner participation levels. 

This will be followed by a reflection on general guidelines for task selection and grouping  of learners on such an online course so as to encourage collaboration between learners and learner participation. 

KEYWORDS

learner participation, collaboration, online course planning.

Bio-sketch

 

Bill Williams:originally Irish but has  lived in Portugal since 1989 where he currently teaches Technical English to engineering undergraduates at Barreiro Technical School, Setubal Polytechnic.  

Having completed a Masters in Chemistry at the National University of Ireland he  has taught Chemistry, and more recently English, at second and third level in Ireland, England, Eritrea, Kenya, Mozambique and Portugal.

He coordinates and facilitates the Portuguese group of the Online Education and Training course run by the Institute of Education/ University of London. He has an interest in Participation in Online Learning and recently moderated an IFETs formal discussion relating to this theme (http://ifets.ieee.org/discussions/discuss.html).