Week 1 tasks
This week we'd like you to introduce yourself in some different ways and reflect on how these tasks help to establish your online identities. As with all the activities, we'll take some time at the end of the week to make explicit the learning processes we've been through.
By now you should be a little more familiar with the Brookes Virtual environment and have announced your arrival in the Arrivals Lounge - a Week 0 discussion forum - the beginnings of the social aspects of the online course.
Task A: Who am I?
You should show information that you wish to present about yourself on your profile page in Brookes Virtual; your work or interests or your motivation or expectations related to this course. Click on 'My profile settings' in the course menu on the left, and then 'Edit profile'. Add information about yourself into the editing window that opens up. Make sure you 'Update profile' at the end! For more detailed instructions read the guide to Creating your Moodle profile.
We find that it's really useful to have visual as well as textual representations, so we also ask you to present yourself in the form of photo or other image attached to your profile. You need not choose a photograph of yourself unless you want to.
Task B: Welcome webinar
On Monday 1 July at midday, we're running a short welcome webinar, which will introduce you to the synchronous classroom environment which we'll be using in week 2 to kick off some group work. This is also a chance to 'meet' the tutors and the other participants in real time, and put faces and voices to names. Enter the classroom using this link, which is also available from the course home page, along with instructions for 'phoning in' if you're having problems accessing the classroom through your computer.
Try to arrive ten minutes early, to give yourself time to run the setup assistant to check your computer can access the classroom, and use headphones if you possibly can, to reduce echo. If you're a Mac-user, you'll need to enter the classroom using Firefox.
Task C: Discussion topic
As well as presenting your chosen online persona visually and in text via the profile, we also ask you to introduce yourself by sharing your attitudes and opinions. For this purpose we have created a tutor-facilitated discussion which will run in week 1 and where you can share your perspectives and respond to and build on the ideas of others.
You can find this thread in the Week 1 discussions forum, entitled Benefits of e-learning. What are your hopes for e-learning, and what advantages does it offer you and your students? How have your readings and experiences so far in this course, and your previous experiences of e-learning fed into this? Please contribute to this discussion which will run for Week 1.
Task D: Getting learners off to a good start
Private and public spaces
Online or virtual environments that require registration in order to be a participant are often referred to as 'walled gardens', a metaphorical term adopted from the media information field. This course in Brookes Virtual may be likened to a private walled garden open only to those few of us with the appropriate login and password. In the learning and teaching field there is growing interest in moving outside this walled garden to the more open social networking sites, and to spaces like MOOCs (massive open online courses), which might be more similar to public community gardens.
Though these more open spaces may also require logins and passwords for contributors, many of them are publicly available for anyone to view, so we need to be aware that the online profiles we present there potentially expose aspects of our identities, interests and activities to anyone with internet access.
The next task takes us outside the Brookes Virtual VLE space, and into Google Docs. However, before you proceed with it, read the information on related privacy issues so that you exercise the appropriate level of caution. While the VLE is a walled garden, Google Docs has the capacity for multiple levels of privacy, ranging from 'very private' (only I can see this page) to 'the whole world' can see/edit this page (like Wikipedia). Our Google Doc is open to the world for ease of access, however it is unlikely anyone will stumble upon it by accident during the week.
Icebreakers
Read through the examples of icebreakers and the twenty-first century icebreakers and select one that you could use or, preferably, design one of your own.
Write a short proposal (no more than 500 words) for using this in your context, explaining how it is suitable to your student group, your subject, and/or any software that is provided by your institution.
Prepare your proposal and create a slide for it in our Icebreakers Google presentation. Remember, the earlier you post the more feedback you are likely to receive.
Read the other proposals as they come in and leave comments on the examples being provided to, following our course approach, offer feedback to each other (there is an 'insert comment' button, which looks like a speech bubble, on the Google Docs toolbar).
First contact
As well as designing suitable introductory tasks there is the issue of how we 'meet and greet' our students when they first arrive. This is a very important stage in their experience of online learning and so we need to carefully consider how we present ourselves in our opening messages and our early replies to their messages. We have given you some additional resources on this: Sample welcome emails from tutors, Sample student introductions and Tutor responses to student introductions. It isn't mandatory, but if you want to read and think about these and share your thoughts on how these different forms of first contact work - what went well, what went badly, and any similar experiences you have had, both as a learner and as a teacher, you can do so in the discussion thread on 'First contact'.
Task E: Reflections on week 1
By the end of the first week you should have introduced yourself on your profile page and through the more dynamic sharing of experiences of e-learning. Through these activities you should have found out something about the other group members and now feel more at ease communicating directly with them. You should have also designed and had feedback on your first learning activity and read and reviewed many other examples.
As you come to the end of this week, think about what you've learnt so far, and make some notes for yourself (we'll prompt you to do this at the end of every week). For example, what have you found out about using a virtual learning environment (VLE)? Have you had any thoughts about privacy and sharing in relation to the more public online spaces? What are your early thoughts about using the shared Google Presentation? What do you like and dislike about it? What do you think it might be good at or less good at? Try to tease out your impressions from both a tutor's and a learner's perspective. What have you seen so far that you'd like to use in your own teaching and what have you seen that you'd never like to repeat?
In the 'Week 1: Reflections' discussion space, draw on the personal notes you've made to share with us the discoveries that you've made so far.
