Week 4 tasks: Good practice in online learning

This week there will be a plenary activity, an individual task, but no parallel small group activity.

The week 2 activity was introduced based on the following inventory of practice:

Your plenary task this week is to prepare your own inventory and to reflect on those that others produce.

Task 4A (plenary): Your own inventory of good practice

Early in the week each person should compile their own brief inventory of good practice in online tutoring drawing on the four inventories that have been presented here (listed below) and drawing on your own practice, research and experience. Post this inventory to the inventories thread in the week 4 discussion forum.

In the forum explain your rationale for your inventory. What features of online tutoring does it emphasise? What features does it play down? How might your inventory be specific to your present professional role? How might it be generalisable across roles and disciplines?

We suggest that you follow two guidelines:

  1. Be brave: Post your ideas as early as possible, preferably by Tuesday of Week 4.
  2. Be brief: Try for no more than 30 lines. Don't try to be too polished; just a few bullet points for the rest of us to think about. There'll be time to question/discuss/clarify.

Then, in the forum, respond to at least one other person's inventory as a "critical friend": as you have evaluated the strengths and omissions of your own inventory, consider the inventories of other people; what do you consider to be the particular strengths of their inventories?

Note: the six inventories referred to in the previous paragraph consist of:

In the introduction to Week 4 we also suggested that it would be possible to create bullet lists of key principles (or inventories of good practice) from each of the Salmon and Macdonald models of online learning we have engaged with in this course. We leave that for you to do if you wish.

Task 4B (individual): Dealing with difficult situations in online groups

In the week 4 discussion forum there is a discussion thread for each of two different scenarios which illustrate some of the difficulties that commonly occur in online working. Your task is to read each scenario and plan how you would respond if you were the online tutor responsible for the group. Draw on the key readings for this week (in the introduction and readings page) on online tutoring skills to inform your plan.

Then post a critique to each scenario, in the appropriate thread, which includes both sample messages to the students concerned as well as an explanation of why you would respond in the way you have (rather like the 'Lisa' and 'Giovanni' examples from week 1).

Aim to post your responses by Wednesday of Week 4 at the latest.

Please note: this is intended as an individual (albeit public) activity. You may also want to respond to the posts of others on the course.

The scenarios:

Task 4C: Reflections on week 4

Using your own inventory of good practice, make notes for yourself evaluating your experience of this course. How does this course stand up to your own evaluation criteria?

In the Week 4 Reflections discussion space, think about the personal notes you've made, and share with the course participants the discoveries that you've made so far.

Course feedback

This week, in addition to your reflections on the week 4 work, there is a course feedback discussion topic which prompts you to reflect on the aims of the course and your experiences of it. This allows you to offer us more detailed feedback to help us improve the course and to illustrate it for future participants. We will only use this feedback in an anonymised form; please read the information in that thread for more information before posting comments.

There is also a short online feedback survey available. Submissions to this feedback are anonymous.