Blending Learning Techniques

When my students returned from lunch, I instituted the resolution to the system training problem. As a department, we use WebEx as our platform for all online classes created by the Claims Training Department. The company uses SkillSoft, but we have found that their on line learning platform for live classes, Dialogue Design, was not as user friendly or robust as WebEx.
I have designed a course called Learning to Learn On Line that provides our students with an introduction to the WebEx classroom as well as learning how to communicate in the on line classroom. The course is a pre-requisite for all on line learning. The course is a lot of fun for the students as they learn to use the emoticons to show how they feel, happy, confused, tired, etc. We also use the Q & A portion of the WebEx classroom as well as the Polling option. The students in my Video Conferencing Class had already taken the course, so it was just a matter of my setting up a class in WebEx and the students signing on.
One important aspect of the Learning to Learn on Line class, which we abbreviate LOL ;o), is to show the students how they can share their desktop with the instructor and the rest of the class. So, in instances where the student is stuck, it enables the instructor to be able to see their computer and diagnose the problem.
So, I told the students the plan, and everyone signed on to the WebEx class. Not only were we able to use the functionality when the student was having an issue in the system, but I used it in other ways as well. Let me provide some examples.
In one of the workshops the students complete, they are asked to find certain claim and policy information in the system. I had the students work independently to find the answers, and then when we were debriefing the workshop, I would call on a student, ask them to share their desktop with the rest of the class, and show us how they found the answer. It was a great learning process.
In another workshop, the students enter a new claim from an electronic document that I sent them in an e-mail. Later in the day, while the students are doing another workshop, I work with each student individually and go over in detail the new claim that they entered. Instead of just showing them on the overhead what they did right and what they did wrong, I shared my desktop with the student and was able to point to the exact part of the system we were discussing. It was a great opportunity to provide one on one mentoring in the classroom.
Our final activity is class is a Jeopardy game that I developed for this class. It is in Power Point, so I was able to show it on the Video Conference television and have the students “buzz in” to answer. It’s always a lot of fun and it is great to see the students so competitive in a positive way.
I’ll be teaching this class again in October, and I look forward to using some of the techniques I learned by teaching the first video conferencing class.