When I started reading the article Facilitating Asynchronous Discussion by A. Bedard-Voorthees (Encyclopedia of Distance Learning, vol 2, 2005, pp. 912-917). I thought that as I’m not an online instructor, but an online learner, the article won’t be of too much help. But as I kept reading I realized that the article is quite useful for online learners too. On top of that, it’s also good to know what the instructor’s work frame is and the basic techniques they use to generate good asynchronous interaction.
The article ends with the mention of MERLOT Virtual Speaker Bureau, a program I’ve never heard of. A quick search on yahoo directed me here , where I found out that MRLOT “allows you to enhance the educational experiences of your students by bringing them together with guest speakers who are experts in their fields. Guest Experts are available on a wide range of topics relevant to technology, teaching, and learning…” Bottom line, it’s just another tool useful in distance education.
Going over the list of references, I found an article published in the Journal of Asynchronous Learning Networks. The journal publishes interesting articles, but the only problem is that the full text of the article is subscription based, only abstract being available for free.
After reading this article I remembered that about one year ago I registered to an online forum about Thailand: ThailandQA. With all the information that I’ve been accumulating in the last week in my mind, and waiting to be put to good use, I came up with a project / paper idea. In the meantime, I started reading some of the post on the forum and tried to identify elements specific to asynchronous interaction.
Sunday, 27 April 2008
Reflections on Facilitating Asynchronous Discussion
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3 comments:
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Thanks for listening.
Steve Foreman
steve@myicourse.com
greetings from Hong Kong! I am applying for USQ's PGCE program and did a quick search for relevant material: I found your blog! Thank you for the nice entries. I look forward to reading more about your progress within the PGCE course, as well as other entries related to teaching.
best regards- BK
Greeting from Bangkok!
At the moment I'm busy finishing off the last project for the Multi-Modal and New Literacies course.
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