At the bookstore, I picked up a copy of Ryan Watkins’ book, 75 e-Learning Activities. At last, I found a book that actually does exactly what I needed–presents me with a list of online learning activities, for a variety of situations. It’s a practitioner’s guide, more of a how-to than anything else. It’s not focused on a particular course management system (e.g. Moodle) and focuses you instantly on your goal of engaging learners online.

The book is divided up into a variety of sections, including the following:

1. Tips for Effective e-Learning Design and Delivery – while I found this section a bit superfluous, some of the tips were valuable, even as reminders. I won’t say I knew all of them but my sense is that if you’ve participated in online courses as a learner and facilitator, you’re aware of these. Still, it’s nice to have them “written down.”
2. Introductions and Icebreakers – This is where the book gets good and I have to admit, I’m going to use some of these for my next few online courses. There are so many possibilities for livening up an online course in the intro section. For now, I have a simple discussion forum going asking people to introduce themselves…but this presents some definitive variations.
3. e-Learning Study Skills – I haven’t spent that much time in this one, but it includes an e-Learning Readiness self-assessment and pre-reading questions that I’ll be studying in more detail.
4. Collaboration and Team-Building – For a long course, this would be well worthwhile, and includes tips like setting discussion ground rules and playing roles in a group.
5. Elaborating on Course Content – This is one of the bigger sections and I about fell out of my chair as I reviewed these. Just lots of stuff here.
6. Increasing Interactivity – Again, more great stuff like structured controversies, town hall meetings, guest speaker press conference and online jigsaw learning.

I sincerely wish I’d had this book earlier!! It would have made designing previous courses much easier since it takes the hard work out of designing something. Definitely a must-have addition to my online learning course design (a.k.a. instructional design) library!

var addthis_pub=”mguhlin”;

Subscribe to Around the Corner-MGuhlin.org

Be sure to visit the ShareMore! Wiki.

Everything posted on Miguel Guhlin’s blogs/wikis are his personal opinion and do not necessarily represent the views of his employer(s) or its clients. Read Full Disclosure