1. Construction and Collaboration
building a community for online students
David White, Co-manager, Technology-Assisted Lifelong Learning, Department for Continuing Education, University of Oxford

2. Continuing Education at Oxford
Started in 19th century
Opened opportunity to groups who could not come to Oxford –women, working class men
In late 1990’s offered some of the earliest fully online programmes in the UK
Undergraduate Diploma in Computing
Undergraduate Advanced Diploma in Local History
Immunology (Professional Development)

3. TALL Technology-Assisted Lifelong Learning Founded 1996
10 full time specialists
Focussed on online learning for lifelong learners at HE level
Attempt to replicate the best of the Oxford experience online
Undertake elearning related research

4. Community centred elearning
Initial development focussed on content development
Gave students a place to talk almost as an after thought
Worked for local history
Not for computing
Learning through experimentation (and some failure)

5. Current subject areas
Mixture of traditional academic subjects and continuing professional development programmes
Archaeology
Art history
Bioremediation
Biosciences
Computing
Electronics
Economics
English literature
Ethics
Local history
Health sciences
Law
Nanotechnology
Philosophy
Statistics
Study skills

7. Why is feeling part of a community important for online distance students?
‘Negotiation of Meaning’ Wenger
Students value interaction with a tutor - but also with each other
Students more likely to complete the course and go on to further study if they feel real people are invested in their success
‘Cultural Capital’ is generated and communicated

8. What can you use to build a learning community?
Your learning environment
Expectation setting
Your learning design
Your tutors

9. The learning environment
Must be student centred
You want students to learn your subject not the environment
Key tools
Profile (who am I, who is everyone else)
Forums
Personal space (journal/blog)
Useful tools
Chat IM
Who is online
Tracking
Wiki

12. Expectation setting
Don’t miss sell your courses (not everyone wants to participate)
What do you expect students to do each day/week
What can (and can’t) students expect from their tutor
How does the course assessment work?
Introductions up front, the tutor sets the tone

14. Tutoring Most visible component of a course
Can make or break the experience – regardless of the quality of the rest of the offering
Must provide training for online tutors
Must provide guidance for tutoring the course

15. Learning design Design activities that students can see the point of
Activity-driven learning processes - encourage active participation with the learning
Include explicit statements of assumed pre-knowledge (if any) for each unit
Design the learning so that students feel that they are part of a community of learners and teachers with all the support that this offers
Consider how your activity fits into the assessment of the course as a whole. Will it contribute to summative or formative assessment, and in either case how will the requirement for feedback be handled?

16. Good activity checklist
Is the activity:
Aligned with the objectives and assessment of the course as a whole?
Complete within itself - does it make sense?
Achievable in the time allotted for it?
At the right level? Who will find it too hard or too easy?
Is the motivation for undertaking the activity integral, and clear to the student?
Where collaboration is part of an activity does it actually require students to work together? If so, how do you expect this to happen?
What tutoring will this activity require to be successful, is it feasible?
How will students get feedback on what they do?

18. Under consideration User-owned technology Persistence Connectivism
Collaborative authoring

25. Online courses: http://onlinecourses.conted.ox.ac.uk/
TALL site:
TALL blog: