You will learn how to

Create a welcoming atmosphere online that encourages participation

Engage learners in productive collaboration

Identify how activity design influences participant engagement

Collaborate and communicate effectively using asynchronous and synchronous communication tools

Promote learning without heavy reliance on pre-prepared content

Course benefits

Our course opens up the potential of working together online in a safe environment where you, as the learner, experience the issues that others will encounter in courses that you facilitate.

We introduce you to concepts and models that you can employ in your own context in this experiential course – you can’t learn this out of a book.

Our experienced facilitators are on hand to challenge and support you whilst modelling best practice throughout.

Who should enrol?

Trainers, teachers, tutors, course designers who need to better understand how to develop the social dynamics in an online course in Moodle.

Facilitators of online communities.

Individuals who want to explore online possibilities beyond content – you don’t even have to be a Moodler.

Do I have to participate online?

Indeed! The experiential nature of the course requires that all participants involve themselves in the course activities as well as private or open reflection on their anxieties, triumphs, challenges etc.

You’ll need to be prepared to log in regularly to the course site over the four weeks and accept emails from the discussions and other activities in the course. Most of the course activities are asynchronous allowing you flexibly schedule them within each unit.

You’ll need to be able to allocate around 4 hours per week for personal study and the group activities.

Course content

Unit 1. Skills needed for good online facilitation

Unit 2. Encouraging participation

Unit 3. Understanding online participation

Unit 4. Promoting deeper learning

 Participant requirements:

Participants have reliable access to the course website throughout the course using modern computer equipment (preferably with a minimum 1024 x 768 resolution monitor).

The computer above has recent versions of Internet Explorer or Firefox with JavaScript enabled and is able to accept cookies (this is the default setting). Other web browsers should be fine too, but we haven’t tested for them.

Participants provide an email account that they will check regularly throughout the course.

Participants have at least basic web browsing and keyboard skill e.g. familiar with typical navigation features of web-based applications e.g. hyperlinks, buttons, drop down boxes, radio buttons, check boxes; the general concepts of files, folders, upload, download; how to enter text into fields and text boxes.