Reach Further

Whether you’re trying to create a learning community for the students starting your course or trying to nurture a community of practice for your business or organisation, one of the key elements of your strategy should be welcoming your participants. Every e-moderator should have welcoming techniques in their e-moderating toolbox.

Here are five top tips for creating a welcoming environment in that vital starting period.

1. Explore what your community software or VLE offers in the way of welcoming emails and the like. If there’s an automated email to members when they sign up, see if you can personalise it to your situation in a friendly and helpful way. If the only email they get is an organisational one, and you can’t edit it, send your own separate email through the situation to welcome them to your course or community.
2. Have an “Introduce yourself here” activity ready in the online discussions forum when your new users log on. Encourage them to share information about themselves in a non-scary way - ask for “safe” information but don’t expect them to reveal really personal details this early. Ask “What do you have on your desk?” or “What can you see from your window” so that they are encouraged to share information but it’s not as scary as being asked to detail their children’s ages or the A-level grades they got!
3. Welcome every contributor individually in your first discussion. Later on when the community is working well they will be happy to answer one another, and you won’t need to make so many posts yourself, but at first, it’s essential to make them feel welcome and valued as soon as they make their first post.
4. Offer a series of icebreaker activities (in the same way as you would in a classroom setting) to help the group begin to share information, respond to one another and begin to gel. Design the activities well so that purpose and task are clear, deadlines are obvious and you have modelled an appropriate response. Salmon’s e-tivities framework is an excellent way to design effective discussion activities.
5. Use the announcements feature in your VLE or community software (Moodle and Blackboard both have this feature, for example), or send an email at an appropriate interval (e.g., I do it once a week in a 9-week course, twice in a 4- or 5-week course) to motivate and encourage users to log on and foster a lively and busy community.

These are just some of the ideas from our E-moderating course. Reach Further’s next eModerating and Online Tutoring course (for academics tutors and teachers) starts 13th October, and covers introductory e-moderating skills for running courses online. Find out more.

Our Season of Inspiration Online writing course is starting on October 6th and there are a few places still left for anyone who’d like to join us. This international course with tutors in England and Australia always has a special buzz. Lots of inspiration for everyone in a supportive online community of writers…

Season of Inspiration is back again with our trademark supportive, friendly, online writing community and all-new inspiration!

Yet again we will be dipping into a variety of sources of inspiration, from nature to music to landscape. From mesostic poems to mystery stories, there’ll be formats and genres to experiment with. We aim to provide inspiration for writing that’ll see you through the rest of 2008. We offer support, exercises and creative bolstering.

Come whether you’re bursting with ideas to try out or whether you want to rediscover your creativity. Designed so that you can work at your own level (whether you’re starting out as a writer or seeking inspiration for your next publication) with the support and encouragement of a writing community and two tutors. This is the online equivalent of a writers’ workshop, not a lonely self-study course. Students are welcome from anywhere in the world (the course is run in English).

More information here

Just putting the final touches to our next blogging course - How to Blog. We call it “an online course with everything you need to know to start blogging - in just 2 hours a week (for 9 weeks).”

There are places on the next course still available and participants can start any time in the week 11-17 August.

If you might be interested, here are the details: Learn how to take control of your web strategy, drive traffic to your website, establish your expertise, take control of your online presence, and create conversations with clients. Alongside other course delegates you will spend around two hours a week online, at whatever time suits you, creating your blog, learning where to find and how to write topical posts, experimenting with marketing and monetising tactics, and learning from the others on your course as we build your own online blogging community and resources.

Previous students are now established and successful bloggers and we had a blast last time around with the varied topics, styles and types of posts favoured by different participants.

(Added) Special for readers of this blog:  £495 (+ VAT) (quote RF blog when booking).

More information

Is the motivation of online learners changing as the web itself - and the techniques and technologies available to educators – evolves?

I was writing about motivation of online learners for the eModerating and Online Tutoring course I’m tutoring next week. I’ve been teaching this unit for a few years now and I update the material every time, as one can with an online course.  This time I happened upon the BBC’s report  about web usability guru Jakob Nielsen’s annual report.

Apparently Web users are getting more ruthless and selfish when they go online - people are just  much less patient than they used to be. Users - and no doubt learners too - want simply to reach a site quickly, complete a task and leave. Users are beginning to ignore efforts to make them linger and have little patience. So it’s become even more necessary to be explicit about the kind of interactions that we want our students to take part in. Good and engaging design of online activities - or e-tivities as Gilly Salmon calls them – is more important than ever before. And dare I say it, courses like ours – giving teachers and lecturers the skills to facilitate interactivity, discussions and learning online – are more essential than ever before?

Tutors and teachers can learn to create online activities and teach courses online during a 5-week online course in Moodle starting 4th June 2008.

Helen Whitehead of Reach Further is tutoring an eModerating and Online Tutoring course in partnership with Park Lane College in Leeds. This is an introductory course for those starting to or planning to teach online in HE, FE, schools or work-based learning environments. The format - 5 weeks online in Moodle - is based on successful courses run in the past with local, national and international participants and builds on Helen’s work with Professor Gilly Salmon at Leicester University.

We are delighted to be able to offer the course to teachers and tutors inside and outside the College. A mix of participants from different institutions will, as in our previous courses, form a lively and mutually supportive community.

Although it’s in Moodle, the skills taught are generic and not VLE-specific, so the course is suitable for those in institutions with different VLEs or which have not yet chosen their learning platform. Moodle is very easy to use.

More information at eModerating and Online Tutoring Course details

Contact helen@reachfurther.com for more information or to sign up.

Comments from previous students:

• “One of the features of this course was the excellent modelling of emoderating practice.” Lecturer, King’s College London

• “The course has constantly challenged me and pushed me to reflect in diverse and unexpected ways. Exciting, intense and highly productive discussions.” English language lecturer, University of Chile

Blogging is a great way to establish your identity as an expert in your field and a potent addition to your online marketing activity. If you’re a beginner or need new ideas for your business or personal blog, join our blogging course.

This is a practical 9-week online course introducing you to blogging and providing you with all the content-generating ideas you could ever need, as well as how to write great blog titles, use a blog for search engine optimisation, and more.
Participants can start the course any time in the week commencing Monday 12th May.

Learn how to use a blog to sell your expertise, build relationships with customers, find new audiences and boost your search engine rankings.

• What a blog can do for your business
• Tips and tricks on generating content painlessly
• Getting the search engines on your side
• How to make money from your blog

On this course you will do as you learn, joining a community of bloggers and supporting each other, hand-held by experts, as you launch yourself online.

Here is more information

Register by contacting blogging @ reachfurther . com
or leave a comment.

I can’t believe it’s that time already! The next Season of Inspiration online writing course is taking registrations now :) This entirely online creative writing course starts on 18th February 2008 for 9 weeks.

Yet again we will be dipping into a variety of sources of inspiration, from nature to music to landscape. From mesostic poems to mystery stories, there’ll be formats and genres to experiment with. We aim to provide inspiration for writing that’ll see you through the rest of 2008. We offer support, exercises and creative bolstering. Come whether you’re bursting with ideas to try out or whether you want to rediscover your creativity. Designed so that you can work at your own level (whether you’re starting out as a writer or seeking inspiration for your next publication) with the support and encouragement of a writing community and two tutors. This is the online equivalent of a writers’ workshop, not a lonely self-study course. Students are welcome from anywhere in the world (the course is run in English). Co-tutors: Helen Whitehead (Nottingham, UK) and Sharon Rundle (Hunter Valley, Australia).

We’ve kept the price at £150 - no increase!
(USD 300; AusD 335; Euros 200)

Contact us at info@newmediawriting.com for more information or to register (we will send you a Paypal invoice or information on where to send a cheque). You can find more information about the course at:

http://www.newmediawriting.com

Please feel free to pass this information on to anyone else who might be interested.

(P.S. If you can’t make this one, why not make a note in your diary for the next one which will start 6th October 2008?)

We are running a new series of Work the Web workshops.

Morning: Web 2.0 for business
How you can work the web and make the web work for you. In clear non-technical language, using real examples, we show how tools such as blogs, wikis, podcasts and social networking can imropove your customer referrals and retention and icnrease your visibility on the web. All the tools we show are free so you can start straight away.

Afternoon: Blogging for business
Using examples from both small and large businesses we show you how other companies are using blogs to icnrease customer loyalty and get their products and services talked about. We show you how to do it yourself, with tools you can use right now at no cost. We look at how to create content and how to plan your blog marketing strategy, with valuable tips to give you minimal workload for maximum impact.

Cost: £85 for each half-day workshop: book both and get a free lunch!

Venue: Host Media Centre, Leeds

Available dates

Thursday 22nd November 2007
Friday 7th December 2007
Tuesday 15th January 2008
Thursday 24th January 2008

At time of writing there are places left on all the workshops, so book soon!
Contact liz@reachfurther.com

There are still some spaces left on our latest online writing course: Season of Inspiration

It’s a 9-week entirely online writing course. Starts 8th October 2007 for 9 weeks (about 3-5 hours per week or more depending on how much you’re inspired to write!).

Join us in making the most of seasonal colours and scents, metaphors of the season, place and time to provide inspiration for writing that’ll see you through the rest of the year. We offer support, exercises and creative bolstering. You’ll experiment with and collaborate in haiku walks, visual writing, meaningful journalling and capturing the sights and sounds of the season. Dip in and rediscover your creativity. Previous students will find all-new materials, and new students are very welcome.

The tutors are Helen Whitehead of Reach Further and Sharon Rundle based in the Hunter Valley Australia.

For more info email
info@newmediawriting.com
or see our website
http://www.newmediawriting.com

Spaces are still available on Reach Further’s Saturday morning workshop

An introduction to social software, with an emphasis on blogging:

Saturday 7th July
10am-1.00pm
Park Lane College , Leeds

Cost: £45
Tea, coffee and nibbles provided

For more information or to book a place, contact liz@reachfurther.com

Labels: blogging, events, seminars, social software, workshop