7/31/2019 Interactivity and Individualization: Tools and Tips

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Interactivity & IndividualizationTools and Tips

Below are a number of suggestions for how to incorporate Interactivity and Individualization intoyour eLearning lessons. Remember, interaction can take on any of three different forms: student-student, student-instructor, student-content. We'll also note which type of interaction you mightcreate with these various tools. We hope that you find them useful!

Learn participants' needs (survey tools)Individualization: to assess the experience of participants of your eLearning sessions and therebytailor your session to be more valuable for each individual, you might consider posing a pre-session survey to your participants. Survey tools can serve to engage the student with thecontent and can provide context for creating a more individualized experience (perhaps astudent-instructor experience) for the learner in subsequent lessons. Check out these surveytools:

www.surveymonkey.comhttp://www.limesurvey.orghttp://www.createsurvey.com

"Real World" Interaction (Blogs)It has been proven that learners gain significant value from the opportunity to apply analyticalskills and exercise problem-solving skills in contextually relevant or "real world" situations. Casestudies are an excellent tool for providing such an opportunity. A very easy to use and highlyaccessible forum for presenting case studies to learners where that they can engage in all threetypes of learning (student-student, student-instructor, student-content) is in a blog. Instructors cancreate the blog, present the case study and allow learners to discuss and pose their solutions orideas about the study. Check out these simple to use tools for blogging:

www.blogger.com/starthttp://wordpress.com/www.livejournal.com

I&I in Live eLearning (synchronous web-meeting tools)Incorporating Interactivity and Individualization in a synchronous (real-time) eLearning sessionrequires skill and planning on the part of the presenter(s). Some tools for engaging yourparticipants to interact during an e-session include Q&A, polls, and white-boarding. Take care topause at regular intervals to interact with your learners. For improved individualization, get toknow your participants with introductions including some pointed questions at the beginning andthen pose relative questions to participants during the session (student-instructor interaction).Check out these options for delivering your own live eLearning session:

www.webex.comwww.livemeeting.comwww.gotomeeting.com

Engage with Social Interaction (discussion tools)Discussions on virtually any topic, whether synchronous or asynchronous, lend themselves to thesocial instructional value which is critical for creating a valuable learning experience for youraudience. If you're interested in creating an engaging student-student interactive experience,check out these discussion tools:

http://gong.ust.hk/http://www.boards2go.com/http://www.quicktopic.com/

http://www.surveymonkey.com/http://www.surveymonkey.com/http://www.limesurvey.org/http://www.limesurvey.org/http://www.createsurvey.com/http://www.createsurvey.com/http://www.blogger.com/starthttp://www.blogger.com/starthttp://wordpress.com/http://wordpress.com/http://www.livejournal.com/http://www.livejournal.com/http://www.webex.com/http://www.webex.com/http://www.livemeeting.com/http://www.livemeeting.com/http://www.gotomeeting.com/http://www.gotomeeting.com/http://gong.ust.hk/http://gong.ust.hk/http://www.boards2go.com/http://www.boards2go.com/http://www.quicktopic.com/http://www.quicktopic.com/http://www.quicktopic.com/http://www.boards2go.com/http://gong.ust.hk/http://www.gotomeeting.com/http://www.livemeeting.com/http://www.webex.com/http://www.livejournal.com/http://wordpress.com/http://www.blogger.com/starthttp://www.createsurvey.com/http://www.limesurvey.org/http://www.surveymonkey.com/

7/31/2019 Interactivity and Individualization: Tools and Tips

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Interactivity & IndividualizationTools and Tips

Provide Support for eLearners (chat tools)Providing your eLearning students adequate support throughout their eLearning experience canbe that key element that keeps their attention and engagement in the lesson and therefore makesthe lesson valuable to them. Consider interacting with your participants (student-instructor) and

offering them an opportunity to "ask the expert", share their experience or receive feedback fromyou and other learners using a discussion or chat tool. There are a number of free chat tools tochoose from. Here are a couple of tools that you might recognize:

http://messenger.yahoo.com/chat.phphttp://get.live.com/messenger/overview

Interacting with Games is Fun! (tools for building games) While incorporating interactivity into your eLearning sessions is critical for your audience, theinteraction does not have to be between the learner and the instructor or other learners--it can bebetween the learner and the content. A fun way to incorporate learner-content interactivity is byincorporating a learning game into your session or eLearning curriculum. Check out these toolsfor the development of eLearning games:

http://www.learningware.com/indexcorp.phpCaptivate:www.adobe.comQuandary:http://www.halfbakedsoftware.com/quandary.phpImpatica:http://www.impatica.com/imp4ppt/index.html

Let Learners Call the Shots (tools for creating canned sessions)Allowing your learners to direct their own learning experience and to participate in sessions andactivities of their choice is an excellent way of incorporating both individualization and interactivityin your lessons. You can create asynchronous learning sessions that are split into varioussections or chapters and invite your participants to explore those sections of greatest interest(student-content interaction). Some tools that you might consider for creating your eLearningsession are:

www.techsmith.com/camtasia.aspwww.adobe.com/products/captivatehttp://www.techsmith.com/screen-capture.asphttp://audacity.sourceforge.net/

http://messenger.yahoo.com/chat.phphttp://messenger.yahoo.com/chat.phphttp://get.live.com/messenger/overviewhttp://get.live.com/messenger/overviewhttp://www.learningware.com/indexcorp.phphttp://www.learningware.com/indexcorp.phphttp://www.adobe.com/http://www.adobe.com/http://www.adobe.com/http://www.halfbakedsoftware.com/quandary.phphttp://www.halfbakedsoftware.com/quandary.phphttp://www.halfbakedsoftware.com/quandary.phphttp://www.impatica.com/imp4ppt/index.htmlhttp://www.impatica.com/imp4ppt/index.htmlhttp://www.techsmith.com/camtasia.asphttp://www.techsmith.com/camtasia.asphttp://www.adobe.com/products/captivatehttp://www.adobe.com/products/captivatehttp://www.techsmith.com/screen-capture.asphttp://www.techsmith.com/screen-capture.asphttp://audacity.sourceforge.net/http://audacity.sourceforge.net/http://audacity.sourceforge.net/http://www.techsmith.com/screen-capture.asphttp://www.adobe.com/products/captivatehttp://www.techsmith.com/camtasia.asphttp://www.impatica.com/imp4ppt/index.htmlhttp://www.halfbakedsoftware.com/quandary.phphttp://www.adobe.com/http://www.learningware.com/indexcorp.phphttp://get.live.com/messenger/overviewhttp://messenger.yahoo.com/chat.php