How to Create a Great E-Learning Environment

After having taken a nice long vacation from email, the Internet, Twitter, and my blog, I am feeling recharged and ready to start 2013!  It is clear for me that 2013 will be a year of growth in e-learning and managing training virtually.  So I thought I would start by recording what I have learned so far.

For those who do not know, I never finished my university diploma.  I dropped out of college due to financial constraints and "other pursuits" in 2001 and it has haunted me ever since.  So in 2010 I restarted my journey toward societal acceptance by enrolling in online study from the University of Maryland to obtain my BS in Marketing.  Over the past two years I have seen all sorts of teaching, moderation, tasks, and so on from the professors of the university.  Combined with my limited experience in conducting training online, I'd like to share...

Best Practice in Online Learning or How to manage an asynchronous online conversation...

1.  Start off with a general introduction

One of the over-arching themes of adult online learning is that the participants place their daily lives on hold during the course.  They are extremely interested in really getting to know the other people in class and friendships come naturally.  Therefore, it is best to leave the personal introduction task as general as possible.  In fact, the wording, "Post an introduction of yourself," is typically sufficient to build a proper collaborative network.  This type of task will truly encourage the learners to read and remember the posts of their peers.

2.  Reduce teacher talking time

Teachers should moderate the discussion as little as possible.  Remember, the key aspect of online learning is that the learners "find their own path".  Any guidance, correction, or feedback will only disrupt that process.  Besides, feedback is generally best when withheld until grading an assignment.

Additionally, because the participants are reading all of the other posts there is no need to refer to the opinions of other class members.  Saying things like, "Interesting point of view, but I think Jenny might disagree," is simply a waste of time.  The learners will have already read the post and in fact are probably already preparing a response.  The same is true for links to additional material.  One characteristic of adult learners is that they are only interested in learning the material provided in the course.  Optional links and 'for more information' resources are seen as disruptive.

3.  Set rules about how often and when posts must be written

The real value of an online forum is the number of posts the class can write.  This shows real collaboration.  The quality of the ideas is only secondary.  Therefore, your learners will truly benefit from rules like, "Post your response by Tuesday, one reply to another classmate by Friday, and two more replies by Sunday."  These rules ensure that ideas are spread and that everyone is getting the most from the discussion.  Furthermore, it will help the learners manage their lives better and assist them in prioritizing their tasks.

4.  Focus on the theory

Adult learners are fascinated by theoretical learning.  In surveys, most respondents say what they enjoy most is reflecting on theoretical tasks and coming up with ways to apply them to their real world situations.  By providing practical tips and applications, the teacher is only robbing the learners of this opportunity.

5.  Rewards and praise often fall flat in adult courses

It is a universally accepted truth that only children respond well to praise and reward for positive effort and results.  For adult learners the reward is the course itself (and naturally any certification).  Therefore, providing positive comments to good ideas or dedication to the group should be minimized.  The learners will undoubtedly find it condescending and resent the trainer.  Along with this, competitions and games should be removed completely from the adult online training environment because it will only cause further demotivation.

6. Keep tasks open ended

When giving instructions, remember to keep them as general as possible.  Use vague verbs like discuss, reply, and consider because these will yield the best results for online discussion.  Also, because adult learners are continually focused on achieving the learning objectives, there is no need to inform them of the purpose behind the individual tasks.  The extensive introduction document you send at the beginning of the course will be read with vigour and the learners will clearly see how everything fits together.  Giving a purpose is simply redundant.

7.  Summarize activities are the best

Perhaps the best online discussion activity is to ask the learners to summarize a document, chapter, website, etc.  The most effective way to generate differences of opinion is to have 30 responses which all say the same thing.  The students will discuss continuously about why and how one summary is different than others.

So those are my lessons learned for effective e-learning.  Happy moderation and I hope you have a great new year!

Book Review - Webinars: A Cookbook for Educators by Nicky Hockly

The Barcelona edtech community of The Round and close allies The Consultants E published their second ebook this week, Webinars:  A Cookbook for Educators by Nicky Hockly.  The author sets out to give the reader the recipe for great webinars and for the most part delivers on her promise.

The goal of The Round is to fill the gap between blogging and publishing, and here they have done just that.  By working with Ms. Hockly, perhaps the world's foremost expert on webinar language training, they have successfully given readers an affordable and convienent guide to running webinars without the hassle of chasing down her archive of blogs, interviews, and discussions.  The author draws nicely on her 20 years of experience as the ebook is laced with links to examples and activities, many from Ms. Hockly herself.

In fact, these are perhaps the most valueable parts of the book.  The videos clearly show the ingredients for making your online session a success.  Unfortunately, I read mine on a traditional B&W Kindle and had to transfer the links to my laptop.  IPad users will be able to benefit from the interactivity of the book.  It is nice to see the tech experts utilize the possibility of enhanced ebooks, something they largly neglected with their first title, 52.

Ms. Hockly begins her instructional guide by showing us around the technology.  She takes us back in time a bit and demonstrates how useful some of the older technology can be, like text chat and audio only.  For trainers who have never attended a webinar or run online training, this step-by-step approach is certainly worthwhile.  The end of each chapter includes 5, 10, and 30 minute activities to apply the lessons to real life.  When the book reaches video conferencing, she does a great job of evaluating the pros and cons of each platform.  Yet for business English trainers, especially those in-company, the absence of Cisco WebEx and Microsoft Live Meeting will be noticeable.  It is also clear from the author that she prefers Adobe Connect above the others.

The second half of the book builds on this platform knowledge and deals with organizing and running a webinar.  Of valuable note here is that the book does not appear to be directed at training language learners, rather to teacher trainers using webinars for professional development.  While her activities and structures can be used in the online classroom, her examples and descriptions are all from CPD situations.  Nonetheless, Ms. Hockly gives the reader a useful list of basic opening and closing activities to bookend a successful webinar.  For those who have never organized a webinar, her list of tasks for moderators and presenters is required reading.  She closes by giving us a nice range of one-liners from other experienced webinar warriors and you will no doubt recognize most of the names.  This certainly added the cherry on top of dessert.

In short, Cookbook is written for inexperienced trainers in online training.  It provides the reader with an excellently organized and easily affordable (€5.15) handbook for setting up and running professional webinars.  Old hands in the virtual environment can also benefit by benchmarking their current webinars against her nearly flawless examples.  However, for trainers who are currently struggling to adapt their face-to-face language training to the online environment, the real recipes are in her earlier work Teaching Online from Delta Publishing.

The Trainer's Learner Autonomy Scorecard; Assessing our Ability to Foster Transformative Learning

As an addition to my post on the BESIG World Blog, I would like to share some more ideas on fostering learner autonomy in the Business English classroom.  The purpose of this post is give trainers a self-assessment tool for how well they are encouraging learner self-reliance.


At the core of this issue is the question whether it is our duty to develop our participants into autonomous learners.  On one hand, participants can certainly reach their training needs and remain 100% percent dependant on the trainer.  However, I would argue that by helping develop learner autonomy we can achieve greater results in a shorter period of time.  I would also argue that it increases the value of our training because the participant is better able to adapt to new needs after the training is completed.  Personally, watching a class grow into inquisitive, independent learners is the most rewarding part of my job.


This process, however, is not easy.  It takes a considerable amount of time, energy, and patience on the part of both learner and trainer.  Either party may not be willing to accept this responsibility.  We must consider this fact in terms of what our clients want and expect as well as what kind of commitment we are willing to make i.e. time and fees.


My research into learner autonomy has led me to the characteristics of adult learners and the concept of transformative learning.  For a short introduction transformative learning, I recommend this site from the University of Geogria.  My research also led me to a research article by Kathleen Cercone for the State of Connecticut titled Characteristics of Adult Learners with Implications for Online Learning Design.  What makes this article special is how clearly it outlines the various characteristics of adult learners.  These include:

• Have responsibilities which hinder the learning process.
• Want to be actively-involved in the learning process
• Have a pre-existing learning history and will experience a paradigm shift
• Have prior experience and need to connect new with old
• Adults are problem-centric
• Want to know what they are going to learn, how it will be conducted, and why it is important
• Need to 'test' their learning
• Require dialog, interaction, and self-reflection

Based on these characteristics, Cercone outlines a long list of objectives for trainers to encourage learner autonomy and enable transformation.  The primary focus of her article was the online learning environment.  But I found her concise tips equally suited to face-to-face language teaching.


Therefore, I have adpated her ideas and incorporated comments on my own to develop an Adult Learner Autonomy Report Card.  The purpose of the report card is to self-assess where you are in your teaching and give tips for improving the self-reliance of your learners.  A short word of warning, it may take about an hour to complete the evaluation.  Several concepts or repeated in the assessment (e.g. needs analysis, self-reflection, building a supportive group, etc.), but I have left them to highlight their importance at various levels.  I hope you find the report card helpful and worth the effort.  Simply the act of writing it has helped me guide my training in the future.

IATEFL Glasgow Conference Notebook - Day 1 (Part 1)

The day started out extremely well.  I aslept in, had breakfast in the hotel, then went back to sleep for a bit while watching BBC 4.  I am quite sure that the BBC channel I chose to watch says something about my character, but I don't know what.  I am also sure that my falling back to sleep also says something.

In any case, I missed Adrian Underhill's plenary session.  However, judging by the reaction on Twitter and the audience size, summaries of his talk are probably fairly easy to track down.

So after relaxing I hit the conference in full force, attending each session.  I will not be able to deal with all of the talks I attended today, but I hope to get to them all soon.

1.  Global Business Etiquette 101 by Nikolina Korecic

Ms. Korecic, a business English trainer in Croatia, advocated cultural training as part of the BE classroom and suggested several methods to do so.  Perhaps her most effective method was a discussion activity in which the participants give their culture a color and then explain why.  It was clear during the practical activity that this would certainly generate cultural self-reflection and aid communication.  Other metaphors for culture included fruit, football teams, and the standard iceberg, tree, and onion.  She also references the importance of cultural awareness in the context of ELF, continuing the discussion from Monday's BESIG PCE.

I think she is correct that BE involves cross-cultural communication at some level.  The questions remain open, however:

• How much does culture affect our clients ability to communicate?  When have we reached the right balance of cultural awareness?
• How can we train our participants to recognize when culture is interfering with communication or goal achievement?   Then how can they acknowledge it, repair it, and continue?
• If ELF is emerging as a common communication medium, is there a standard global business etiquette that is also emerging?  I would argue that there is.  Yes, it may be an adapation of Anglo-Saxon or Western communication methods and behaviors, but it is being standardized.  Participants are putting on this international culture just as they put on different clothes.  For example, I have trained leaners on working with the Middle East, and they come back and say it was wasted because everything was just like Europe.
• How do we handle cultural issues where they are really causing hovac, in virtual teams?  The classic business etiquette training such as hand guestures, eye contact, behavior, etc. doesn't apply here.  But communication styles and cultural expectations are destroying web meetings, emails, presentations and the like.

I would love to see more from Ms. Korecic on these issues.

2.  Training Virtual Communication Skills by Jackie Black and Jon Dyson (York Associates)

Ms. Black and Mr. Dyson gave a great introduction to web meetings, the technology businesses are using, and exercises to practice these skills in companies.  However, judging by the audience response, this area of BE is still quite new.  This is something we need to get on board with quickly.  In fact, in many cases we can take those old business travel sections out of our syllabi and replace them with web meetings, online collaboration, and messaging.  Companies are cutting travel budgets and using web meetings to replace them.  As communication experts we need to understand how our clients are talking to each other and master that format.

The presenters from York Associates are clearly ahead of the game (as I would expect from their company) and are basically using standard teaching activities such as role-plays, decision-making execizes, etc. and adapting them to the web meeting context.  For me, as a trainer who uses web meetings quite often, I found their idea of assigning roles to keep the participants engaged to be quite useful.  These roles include note-taker, time-keeper, challenger, etc.  Another great idea was the one slide business card of the participant, which they can prepare as they like at home and then present in the web meeting.

They also identified a series of language focus areas for learners to perform well in this context, such as numbers, checking and clarifying, and turntaking.  I would say the only thing they missed was words to talk about technology and software such as margin, spreadsheet, column, font, header, etc.  But overall a great presentation and BE trainers should sit up and assess their online collaboration competence.

So, those were the first two from today, and I hope to get to the rest in due course.