Learning & Interaction

Learning requires interaction. Students interact with students, with course materials, with the teacher. When we plan courses in face-to-face environments, we often plan fairly complicated sets of interactions for a single class meeting. But when we teach in online or hybrid course formats, changing the interaction may mean changing tools, spaces, or times when certain activities may take place.

It all requires a bit more advanced planning too.

The diagram below shows different types of interaction styles that might be in play in a given class session or activity regardless of the learning environment. These can be used to plan sessions or to cue students about what to expect for a given session. When students are coming (at least partially) from corporate settings for instance - where each corporation has specific technology platforms that they use within the workforce, they might select different tools to manage each of these interaction styles. The teacher can specify some, but leave others up to students. The classroom’s demands can change with the session/semester.

graphic created in Powerpoint using drawing shapes (circle + half-circle for people; block arrows)

These symbols/labels (or better ones!) can even be used in a course schedule or syllabus to cue students about the types of interaction planned for each activity.

What are your favorite tools for facilitating?

Presentation	Discussion (lg group)	Studio (sm group)	Consultation
Powerpoint w/ audio & animation (anyone using prezi?)	Second Life? brightmoo there must be some free alternatives to second life by now?	Conference call w/ Skype (& Doodle poll to coordinate times)	Skype
YouTube + Clipnabber	Campfire - rooms, hosted, + nice archiving	PBwiki for group authoring	Instant Messaging Google Chat
Camtasia - Jing both by TechSmith or Camstudio (free) Microsoft Expression Encoder (Windows only)	Discussion forums in your local LMS	Dropbox for file sharing...nice because it has 1) public URLs 2) synching across devices (e.g. home & lab/school machines)
Audacity for Podcasting podbean.com (free podcasting hosting) HD-Ogg for podcasting http://www.fridgesoft.de/harddiskogg.php (record in one click)		Simple real-time co-writing: http://etherpad.org/ http://typewith.me/
Semi-Auto Feedback TextExpander http://smilesoftware.com/TextExpander/ Texter http://lifehacker.com/238306/lifehacker-code-texter-windows SemiAuto Grader http://sio.midco.net/jblessinger/index.htm Autohotkey (very versatile): http://www.autohotkey.com/