eLearning - This page is copied from our Study Centre
Characteristics of an effective
unit e-guide for the VLE
Comments by the Sempringham e-resources team.
Our team are learning with our learning enablers.
Version 2.1 May 2007
Engagement
The greatest overall aim should be
to engage the student.
How is this to be achieved?
Style of delivery and language
Delivery should be ‘light’ and language carefully pitched.
Language should be pitched between formal textbook-style
writing and a colloquial presentation.
It is a big mistake to sound patronising when avoiding
an excessively formal or stuffy tone.
Lightness of touch and fun elements
The lightness can be aided by gentle humour:
it will be noted that some of the most creative brains
who work in the advertising business recognise the
place of humour to increase the success of advertisements.
The lightness is helped by the addition of fun elements.
Mankind has learned by play for millennia.
Presentation
The presentation needs to be attractive to the sight
and thus some colours and formats are more helpful than others.
If the e-guide is interesting by presentation and content
it is more likely to achieve the engagement that is sought.
Structural clarity
To maintain the engagement, the e-guide should be
carefully and clearly ordered, incremental in form
and easy to follow. This can be furthered by a site map.
Easily recognised navigation will further ease of use.
Integration
Better eLearning guides integrate the germane aspects
of study on any relevant page of the study guide.
This is enabled by the link facility.
Comprehensiveness
A good guide should be comprehensive so that
students, encouraged to take ownership of the study unit,
recognise that the e-guide is the full guide for the unit.
This comprehensiveness will embody the full
study task for the unit and the whole range of study advice;
reading, noting, analysis, writing answers and so on.
Our site offers immediate free access to two acclaimed
study guides written specially for AS/A2 students.
Comprehensiveness also implies immediate access
to primary and secondary sources
(including images), as appropriate.
Incremental structure
While a good guide should be comprehensive,
it should be broken into small-step study parts so that
no one part readily overwhelms a student and
undermines morale and a sense of steady progress.
Interactivity
Interactive elements can encourage student involvement
while guidance on self assessment can help toward students’
‘ownership’ of the study unit.
In the eLearning environment, e-guide encouragement of students’
interaction or e-interaction with fellow students (easily set up
in some eLearning platforms) by the exchange of ideas and/or
their communication of progress, is a strong need if eLearning is to be successful.
Teacher/tutor contact
This interaction, either face to face or e-interaction,
should extend to their teacher/tutor, by the appropriate exchange
of ideas and/or their communication of progress through study tasks.
The teacher/tutor will need a schedule to monitor students’ progress.
Ownership, autonomy and self-direction
The provision of e-guides, such as those offered as examples
in our Study Centre challenge, and should challenge,
students to have control of their study task
with the teacher/tutor in the role of supporter
and adviser and, even, ‘study companion’.
eLearning through VLEs with e-guides
cannot escape the ‘terrible truth’
The important gloss to the last two statements is that,
like it or loathe it, unless all the students are ‘Newtons’,
and there never was such a group, the plodding work of reading,
note making and student answer generation must be registered
by the teacher/tutor.
Flexibility
Against this last comment, because the focus of e-guides
is individual students and their study enterprise,
the e-guide can allow more variation, and flexibility
in student approach, to unit study delivery of a course unit.
Tick list of good-learner characteristics that promote
effective learning that e-guide creators will have in mind
during e-guide construction.
Curiousness/answer seeking qualities
Thoughtfulness and reflectiveness
Engagement with study tasks
Capacity to self-timetable and prioritise
Active, not passive approach to study opportunities
Question creation capacities
Connection awareness and creation
Creativeness
Developing capacity for independent study
and capacity to share ideas and insightsIdentification of appropriate study skills and how to develop them
Person awareness in History and well as event awareness
Developing determination and task completion capacities
The general view of the Sempringham e-resources team
is that The Conservatives, 1846-80 unit e-guide by Ellen Parcell
and Tom Wells (a Sempringham team member) in this Study Centre,
embodies a fair number of helpful characteristics.
We plan to make more e-guides available to Study Centre users.
Sempringham e-resources
(history-ontheweb.co.uk, modernhistory.org.uk, ehistory.org.uk etc)
This page is copied from our Study Centre
eLearning - introduction | Study Centre - start page
RETURN TO HOME/Index PAGE - www.history-ontheweb.co.uk AND www.ehistory.org.uk
www.history-ontheweb.co.uk - Index I The Study Centre I e-new perspective I Students' study guide
Exam and study advice for AS/A Modern History I Topic guides I Core concepts I The world of sources
Guide to History degree course selection I History and theory I New texts from publishers I GCSE Resource bank
ehistory.org.uk - the Sempringham eLearning resources portal: access to online lectures, Study Centre, eLearning guides …