How do I promote active learning in my own teaching? The course I am reflecting on is ACADPRAC 703: eLearning in University Education (a postgraduate paper). The course content is fully online hence majority of the facilitation of learning occurs online.

Teaching strategies and relevant graduate attributes
To enable students to develop (1) an “understanding and appreciation of current issues and debates in the field of elearning”, I incorporate exploratory exercises where students are prompted by a question or reference to find out more on a particular topic and feedback to the group. Since all this happens online, they are developing (2) the “capacity to locate, evaluate and use the information effectively”. By role modelling as an effective e-moderator, I encourage students to engage in discussions and develop their skills to (3) “make appropriate use of advanced information and communication technologies”. Apart from individual contributions, students are expected to collaborate on a group task to negotiate and determine the focus of their online report on ‘elearning futures’ and this hones (4) their “ability to work independently and in collaboration with others”.

Combined with the ‘physical’ presence in seminars and the demands for ‘virtual’ presence online, I attempt to balance the opportunities for communication and participation that is sensitive to different learner characteristics and experiences. The most important thing is to provide the opportunity and guidance so participants have the flexibility to become confident in navigating the space they are unsure of-this can be physical or virtual.

I use a variety of presentation techniques, including multimedia materials that are an added bonus of webspace, to add richness to content delivery while catering for different learning styles that could be made up of any of the VARK preferences.

Active learning strategies for the future
Flexibility afforded online can be seen as an opportunity or even excuse for superficial engagement. And this has been a major challenge in this course. How can the rigour of on-going assessment (as participation) be balanced with the flexibility of exploration that is an important part of this learning process? I intend to design a virtual conference on ‘contemporary issues in technology enhanced teaching and learning’ that will focus on online participation and presentation. Participants will:

1. Research, write and present a paper.
2. Moderate a discussion on their paper.
3. Review one other paper.

The above activities will demonstrate their understanding of the broad concepts and issues in elearning while drawing on their skills to (a) search, retrieve and use information appropriately and (b) create a community of learning where there is legitimate, meaningful interaction and sharing of information to build a shared knowledge base. The legitimacy, seriousness and usefulness of online contributions and interactions will hopefully surface as the by-product of this experience.