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8 Online Discussion Response Techniques Posted by: wiredinstructor in Course Design Reflections, Technology Integration, Top Posts, UW-Stout, Virtual School, e-learning, research, virtual high school Online discussion is the heart of a community of practice oriented e-learning course. However, it can be difficult to know how to respond. It's a good idea to think in terms of value added responses. What can you add to advance the discussion? I like to post the following list at the top of discussion forums in my online courses. It's a good reminder and a handy reference! Here are some suggestions to guide you as you respond to each other in discussion forums.

Welcome to LearnHigher LearnHigher - Excellence in Learning Development Who are we? The LearnHigher Centre for Excellence in Teaching and Learning (CETL) is a partnership of 16 Universities, led by Liverpool Hope University, committed to improving student learning through providing excellent resources to support students' learning development, and through practice-led research to inform the effective use of those resources.

"A free resource from the Social Learning Academy How to use Twitter for Social Learning "It's amazing what you can learn in 140 characters!""

"I'm delivering the opening keynote for Edinburgh University's IT Futures Conference today and was asked to deliver an expanded version of the work I've been doing on the physical spaces of learning, and how they transgress virtual learning spaces, too. The theme of the conference is fascinating, and a conversation I'd like to see happening more regularly in more schools: It will look at both the staff and student perspective of what the working space is, and is becoming. Where does technology fit in, and how do we work and study in this increasingly mobile world?"

Teaching/Learning Activities What do you want to use technology for? To help you answer this question, we've outlined some teaching/learning activities below that are used across the disciplines and tried to suggest through examples from the Web how each might utilize a certain kind of technology or a combination of different technologies to accomplish specific learning objectives. Each example represents a different discipline, and there are over 40 disciplines represented in the examples. Each example is associated with one or more interactive tool, and information about each kind of technology-what it is and how to use it-appears in the technologies section.

This Directory contains over 2,700 tools for learning in two main sections: 1. for creating, delivering and managing learning and performance support solutions 2. for personal learning and productivity, for sharing resources, as well as group collaboration (also includes some enterprise tools) The tools in this Directory are both freeware/open source and commercial.

"In January I published an artcile entitled 'Personal Learning Environments - the future of eLearning?' in the second edition of e-Learning Papers, a new journal published by elearningeuropa. The online journal subsequently invited readers to ask me questions about the paper. Very fine questions they were too. I have just got round to answering the answers will no doubt appear on the elearningeuropa portal shortly. "

"This is a moodle book I've put together to give people an introduction to open learning at UPEI… It still needs some work… but there it is. This topic considers the concept open learning and explores how being open as an educator can increase the chances for collaboration, access to knowledge and promote lifelong learning in students."

"Before Christmas I did an interview over Skype with Janine Schmidt, Dennis Brüntje, Franz Büchl, Oliver Härtel from the University of Ilmenau in Germany. the title of the interview was 'Identität 2.0 durch E-Portfolios' - Indentity 2.0 through e-Portfolios. They have very kindly sent be a transcriot of the interview. A slighly edited versiona appears below. You can also see n more of teh project work on the students' web site."

excellent survey of e learning pedagogical models by grainne conole

video clips from the JISC funded E4L project investigating the Learners Experience of E-Learning. The case studies represent learners from Adult and Community Learning (ACL), Further (FE) and Higher Education (HE) undertaking a variety of different courses on various subject areas.

Social Software Introduction When the web was originally introduced to the world it was seen as a means of dramatically improving the way in which people communicate and socialise. Tim Berners Lee, inventor of the worldwide web, saw it as a place where people could share information through a series of hyperlinked pages. "In 1989 one of the main objectives of the WWW was to be a space in which anyone could be creative, to which anyone could contribute." (Tim Berners Lee, 2005) Unfortunately, although the web became an excellent repository of information, it became a place where only technically adept users and organisations would author content. The arrival of new services (often referred to as 'Web 2.0') has helped to remove many of the barriers preventing users from participating. Thanks to this wave of new services we have seen a massive rise in the uptake of web authoring and collaboration. The term this new wave of social activity has been given varies i.e. Social Software, Social Media and Social Computing. The key word is 'Social'! Social software tools, such as blogs, wikis and bookmark sharing services, offer exciting new ways to communicate and collaborate online. Their potential is already being keenly explored in teaching and learning, but they also offer considerable possibilities for research and the business and community engagement (BCE) sectors within higher and further education, since their flexibility and ease of use are particularly well-suited to collaboration across different sectors. As a recent article explained, "The advent of social software has brought a new culture of sharing, and this time around, people are willing to give up some of their knowledge..." (Tebbutt, 2007). Furthermore, social software's increased emphasis on multimedia, as well as text-based content, means that universities can find new ways of harnessing and making their knowledge and research accessible, thus creating what has been described as "a new form of acade

"Using Twitter in a face-to-face Workshop I've just been reading yet another article that expresses the view that Twitter is a trivial, inconsequential tool and has no place in learning, so I thought I'd write this posting on my experiences of using Twitter in a face-to-face Workshop."

In March 1987, the AAHE Bulletin first published "Seven Principles for Good Practice in Undergraduate Education." With support from Lilly Endowment, that document was followed by a Seven Principles Faculty Inventory and an Institutional Inventory (Johnson Foundation, 1989) and by a Student Inventory (1990). The Principles, created by Art Chickering and Zelda Gamson with help from higher education colleagues, AAHE, and the Education Commission of the States, with support from the Johnson Foundation, distilled findings from decades of research on the undergraduate experience. Several hundred thousand copies of the Principles and Inventories have been distributed on two- and four-year campuses in the United States and Canada. (Copies are available at cost from the Seven Principles Resource Center, Winona State University, PO Box 5838, Winona, MN 55987-5838; ph 507/457-5020.) - Eds. Since the Seven Principles of Good Practice were created in 1987, new communication and information technologies have become major resources for teaching and learning in higher education. If the power of the new technologies is to be fully realized, they should be employed in ways consistent with the Seven Principles. Such technologies are tools with multiple capabilities; it is misleading to make assertions like "Microcomputers will empower students" because that is only one way in which computers might be used. Any given instructional strategy can be supported by a number of contrasting technologies (old and new), just as any given technology might support different instructional strategies. But for any given instructional strategy, some technologies are better than others: Better to turn a screw with a screwdriver than a hammer - a dime may also do the trick, but a screwdriver is usually better. This essay, then, describes some of the most cost-effective and appropriate ways to use computers, video, and telecommunications technologies to advance the Seven Principles.

Low-Threshold Applications and Activities (LTAs) An LTA is an activity or application of information technology that is reliable, accessible, easy to learn, non-intimidating and incrementally low-cost in time, money, and stress. 

Eduserv Foundation The Eduserv Foundation contributes to Eduserv's charitable mission, realising the effective use of IT for learners and researchers, by offering research grants, contributing to international interoperability standards-making activities, seed-funding and developing pilot projects and offering advice on good practice. We also sponsor meetings, events and other activities. We focus these activities in the following areas: * resource discovery, metadata and open access, * access and identity management, * service architectures and Web 2.0, * e-portfolios and the use of 3-D virtual worlds such as Second Life in education.

Weller works for the OU, and records his thoughts on educational technology, Web, 2.0, VLEEs, open content, e-learning etc

Welcome to JISC Casper The copyright advice & support project for JISC e-learning resources JISC CASPER will be supporting the 19 projects funded as part of RepRODUCE (Repurposing & reuse of digital University-level content and evaluation) as they engage with all of the issues related to IPR and copyright. JISC CASPER will be: * capturing their experiences - good and bad * guiding the projects to the wealth of rights related materials currently available and helping them apply it in their projects * developing new materials as required * undertaking rights clearance centrally when it makes sense by saving time and money for all * helping to build capacity in the sector All of the case studies and materials developed as part of JISC CASPER will be made available to the wider JISC community (some already are) on an ongoing basis both from this web site and by their deposition in JORUM.

"Join us 6th - 8th July 2011 for a creative approach to your professional environment! The University of Salford's 6th Education in a Changing Environment Conference, Creativity and Engagement in Higher Education, will explore and discuss international best practice in teaching and educational research in higher education. Through themes of Social Media; Learning, Teaching and Assessment; Networking and Partnerships, the Conference will identify creative models for engagement in a shifting educational landscape. "