Initial reflections

Originally posted to eBridge on Sunday 11 December 2011

I'm coming towards the end of the eTutoring practice and I've started looking back over the ideas I had the start to see how well I've been able to implement them. The original emphasis I had tried to work into the program, namely the use of the asynchronous tools within the VLE, has not been taken up as much as I had hoped, but the synchronous sessions have been highly appreciated by the participants. Web conferencing has allowed the participants to engage in dialogue more actively than they would otherwise have been able to. Quite a few of the participants have seen the video clips that were uploaded to the VLE, but there have not been any direct comments yet.

The range of involvement in the different activities should give an interesting scope for evaluation, by asking people who used the different features how effective they have found them, and asking those who did not use them if they would consider using them in future.

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Comments:

Hi James,

It is good to see the start of your ruminations and evaluations of the eTP experience and the student responses to various elements of the course. The contrasting responses to asynchronous and synchronous elements may make a useful focus for your Hot Seat discussion in Workshop 3 - you may find yourself drawn to exploring the pros and cons offered by the affordances of each.... just an idea of course.  one of the issues, which may or may not be pertinent in your own case, is that it can be easier for people to 'ring-fence' a particular slot when a synchronous event will happen rather than trying to make time for something as slippery as asynchronous discussion. Other issues too will, I am sure, come through in the evaluation.