Elluminating tutorials

Synopsis

Liam, a Lecturer in Psychology, uses Elluminate to create interactive tutorials with his students.

Description

Liam is an enthusiastic user of Elluminate, which allows him to use multi-way voice and video, whiteboard and audio or text chat. All his lectures are streamed live and also recorded for students' later use. He holds an interactive tutorial on Saturday mornings in which students can watch pre-prepared slides and listen to Liam discussing them, whilst asking questions either of Liam or one another. Often these tutorials take the form of an interactive multiple choice session. Students can vote on the answer to questions and can write, draw and highlight on the whiteboard.

Target audience

Liam uses Elluminate for all his lectures on his Foundation Psychology B course (a first year class with about 360 students) and also on his second year Human Information Processing course which has about 210 students. The majority of students on both courses are off campus.

Learning goals and objectives

Liam already had the learning materials, so this project has simply been about delivering them in a new way. He is aiming to give the off-campus students the best possible interactive learning experience, rather than the traditional passive experience of being presented with materials and working through them.   

Who did/does what?

Liam went to a training session for Elluminate and since then has handled things by himself, including technical enquiries from students. 

Results

Elluminate does exactly what Liam expected it would do and it is delivering the experience he thought it would. He has had excellent positive feedback from students.
Liam finds Elluminate most useful for teaching subjects that are visual and interactive, eg statistics and graphing workshops. Using it for lectures can sometimes lead to a lot of student interruptions, but over all, Liam finds it saves him time. At the moment only about 10 students regularly attend the online tutorials, but Elluminate is currently on a trial that limits participation to low numbers anyway.

Problems and advice for others

Liam would like more IT support and to have more lecture theatres properly set up for using this type of technology as he finds that facilities aren't always reliable.

Firewalls and permissions can be an issue on some computers, and the wrong version of Java can cause technical problems. Vista (the new version of Windows) is not supported. 

General recommendations

Liam would like to see the introduction of a DEC-led orientation for external students in which they learn the USQ systems, very basic computer skills, etc, designed to reach those students who are not using their email or other computer resources. He says it's important that we shouldn't assume all students have a level of competence in these technologies.