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5 stage model

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Building e-tivities- key principles
The E-tivity Process from Chapter 4

1. Decide in advance of the participants logging on what you expect them to do and what the e-moderators will do.
   
   
2. Ensure the participants are clear about your intended objectives for an e-tivity. Start with the end in mind.
   
   
3. Ensure that your planned evaluation or assessment meets the purpose (s) of the e-tivity. If assessment is involved, look for alignment with tasks. Attempts to forcefully create participation through direct assessment are rarely successful.
   
   
4. Build in motivation as part of the process of undertaking the e-tivity itself and not as something separate from it. Motivation occurs because of the learning activities. Avoid trying to motivate people to simply log-on, and ‘discuss’, instead provide an e-tivity that makes taking part worthwhile.
   
   
5. Create an experience that is complete and worthwhile in itself. This includes setting short-term goals but ensuring there is a satisfying process and ‘flow’ of actions. In practice, e-moderators need to exercise judgement about when to go with the flow and when to guide participants towards expected outcomes.
   
   
6. Be highly sensitive to timing and pacing. Divide the e-tivity up into bite sized chunks – no more than 2 or 3 weeks’ work for a complete e-tivity, less if you can.
   
   
7. If you offer more than one e-tivity at a time, build them together in a coherent way to create a ‘programme’. Use the 5-stage model.
   
   
8. Ensure that the e-tivities are in some way focussed on sharing, shaping, elaborating or deepening understanding.
   
   
9. Ensure that participants need to work together in some way to achieve the learning outcomes. If you cannot see the way to make working together worthwhile, maybe using e-tivities is not the best approach?
   
   
10. Be generous in allocating e-moderator time, especially if the e-tivity is geared towards stages 1-3.
    
    
11. Be ready, be prepared, and don’t be surprised at serendipitous events.
    
    
12. Aim to provide just one instructional message, which contains everything needed to take part.
    Each instructional message e-tivity should include:
    
    
    1. The purpose of the e-tivity (why the participants are doing it). If the e-tivities is assessed, indicate what might indicate success and how they can achieve it.
    2. What participants should do and how they can go about doing it.
    3. How long it should or could take. An idea of when the e-tivity starts and when it should finish.
    4. How the participants should work together.

Build in Reflection
From Chapter 4

There are many ways to reflect. Some writers argue that reflection is essentially an independent activity. Others stress the importance of collaboration with others to the reflection process. Schön distinguishes between reflection on action (reflection after practice has been completed) and reflection in action (thinking that takes place in the midst of practice). I suggest you try out both reflection in action and reflection on action in your e-tivities and programmes since both are valuable.

Some e-tivity designers use the idea of encouraging learners first of all to recall a familiar experience, as a preparation for introducing them to a new one. The idea here is that experiences need to be interrogated and perhaps tested and challenged to avoid the unconscious assumptions that may reduce creativity and flexibility in attempting to understand or resolve a problem or explore a scenario. Another key aspect of learning through reflective processes is that each adult learner will have a different ways of dealing with ideas, using perhaps their well-established learning styles.

Reflection will be easier for some participants than others. Some people enjoy it very much, some prefer to “push on”. However as I think reflection is so important, I always include it as an essential activity. One point to emphasise: make it clear you are looking for participants’ views, feelings, experiences and ideas. So this is certainly one time when they can start their sentences with “I”. But encourage them to end their message with a question or challenge to others to encourage those others to reflect too.

As with all the e-tivities, I suggest you indicate why you are asking participants to reflect. In our courses, I pose a “point of learning” reflective question at key points and ask participants to look back through the course on a regular basis. They are invited to respond to our questions at the end of each session, usually once a week, and to the postings of others throughout. We also encourage them to revisit their own responses at any time. Nearly every active participant expresses surprise, even amazement, when they glance back along the path they have as the following examples show.

Seeing other points of view
I have tried on three different occasions to respond to this activity, but each time I enter the conference, there is another person's reflections which makes me reflect in a way not previously thought of. I think all the contributions to this section are interesting and thoughtful - that to respond to one is just not fair! NS

Recording emotions
Some interesting reflections posted for this e-tivity and it is heartening to know that others are feeling the same as me - being an e-learner has made me see the other side of the coin. I have learned a lot about learning on-line - a whole range of emotions from feeling very lonely at times, experiencing happiness when I achieve something and guilt when I know I am not contributing as much as I should be. CH