Recently, Twining [1] prophesied that, “Both the spatial and temporal environments that are considered relevant to the education system will expand. In particular, there will be greater emphasis placed on the home, working across physical settings and virtual settings, and extending ‘the school day’” [p. 500]. These developments are captured by the phrase ‘anywhere/anytime learning’ [1, p. 500].
Based on the preceding quotation, one might argue that the key elements of ‘anywhere/anytime learning’ include the use of virtual environments to transcend spatial and temporal constraints and, thus, promote the flexible delivery of teaching content. Elluminate Live! (eLive!) is a teaching technology that enables users to facilitate ‘anywhere/anytime learning’. More specifically, eLive! is Deakin University’s synchronous communications tool , which “allows participants to talk over the Internet, chat online, share video, whiteboards, multimedia files and applications—all in one intuitive, graphical interface” [2].
In 2008, the first-year psychology teaching team at Deakin University was the first to design and deliver a structured eLive! tutorial series whereby all 11 on-campus Introduction to Psychology A tutorials were replicated in the eLive! environment. The teaching team used PowerPoint slides, break-out rooms, video clips, etc., to deliver structured online tutorials. In 2009, we extended our initiative by replicating all of the on-campus tutorials for Introduction to Psychology A and B within the eLive! environment. Thus, our demographic was off-campus first-year psychology students. This initiative was driven by three aims:
1. To empower off-campus students by reducing the chasm between the on-campus and off-campus learning experience;
2. To more fully utilize the potential of the eLive! environment, i.e., in the past eLive! had been used for mere question and answer sessions rather than the delivery of structured tutorial activities;
3. To enhance the flexibility of content delivery.
The following representative student feedback supports the efficacy of our eLive! initiative and its potential to empower students:
“Hi, I am an off campus student and would just like to say how much I enjoy the elive tutorials, they are very informative and interactive and allow the off campus students to feel a sense of connectiviness [sic].. I think Adams uniqueness also adds to the quality of these sessions! So thanks and I hope they continue as they are very valuable.” (Introduction to Psychology B student)
“Having tutorials available through eLive is great. It is encouraging, motivating, challenging and a great help to my learning and study. Thank you for making this available to off-campus students. I find myself raving to random people in the street about eLive. It is fantastic!” (Introduction to Psychology A student)
“… made the elive sessions for off campus students a productive, informative and interactive environment. Off campus students were made to feel part of a cohort and that out [sic] learning was just as import [sic] as those who are on campus students. This [sic] are valuable sessions for off campus students and I hope that they continue into the future.” (Introduction to Psychology B student)
These verbatim comments suggest that the eLive! initiative was successful because it provided equity and access for a student cohort who felt neglected relative to their on-campus counterparts. Thus, eLive! allowed off-campus students to feel that the teaching team valued their learning experience just as much as the on-campus students’ learning experience.
Based on the experiential knowledge that we obtained delivering the eLive! structured tutorial series we identified various challenges for the virtual teacher:
- The virtual teacher is unable to observe students’ non-verbal cues in order to gauge learning;
- The anonymity of the eLive! environment can facilitate student passivity and bystander intervention;
- We noted significant fluctuations in attendance that were perhaps due, at least in part, to the fact that the eLive! tutorials were recorded and uploaded onto the first-year psychology website; and
- The virtual teacher may initially find the eLive! environment rather rigid; however, rigidity typically dissipates as one cultivates a mastery of the eLive! tools and functions.
Our experiential knowledge allowed us to formulate various ‘tips’ for teaching in cyberspace in general and the eLive! environment in particular:
- A musical preclude in the form of YouTube music clips can create a fun and engaging atmosphere as students log-in;
- eLive! moderators should work in pairs. One moderator delivers the tutorial while the support moderator responds to text questions from students and functions as an exemplar student when required;
- Virtual teachers should use affirmations to validate – and thus empower – students, e.g., call students by their names while they are typing;
- Virtual teachers should cultivate an interactive learning space by, e.g., using the Socratic method rather than didactic ‘teaching’;
- The virtual teacher should adopt a fluid approach to problems that may arise in the eLive! environment, e.g., if too many students log-in, ask students to type their questions/answers and raise their hands before clicking “send”;
- Emoticons should be used to routinely check students’ understanding of material ; and
- The virtual teacher should aim to cultivate the sense of a community, e.g., if a student provides a great answer, then invite their peers to give them a round of applause using the eLive! “applause” function.
Take together, the aforementioned ‘tips’ constitute a preliminary cyberspatial pedagogy that may be used by the virtual teacher to further empower the virtual student. Indeed, cyberspace is the place!
References
- Twining, P. (2009) Exploring the educational potential of virtual worlds – Some reflections from the SPP. British Journal of Educational Technology, 40(3), 496-514
- http://www.deakin.edu.au/dso/student/elive/privacy.php
