This is a question we are often asked. Personally I’m still very attracted to Elluminate and using it regularly. In fact I have set myself a personal mission to test it to capitulation. Now I’m just about to go on holiday and don’t have time for a complete and detailed appraisal here and now, but I’ll “cast some bread upon the waters” and see what floats back.
In Elluminate I can create a syndicate exercise in which groups retire to break-out rooms. Once there they work in a whiteboard collaboratively to decorate a template for a blank carton. Some of you may have seen me use this attention-grabber in live classrooms.
I’d regard it as quite a good test of a virtual classroom; I suspect not all of them can make it work, but I’m prepared to be proven wrong!
The instructions to each of the groups is the same – “Suppose blended learning came in a box; how might you decorate it?” The theme is that packaging carries messages, and those messages may have to speak to the client (“Use me”) or to the Customer (“Buy me and implement me”). Through words and images the groups have to convey something of the ingredients, the process and the advantages of blended learning!
The process in a real classroom is to work in groups with fibre tip pens and glue to design and then assemble these boxes from the templates. Then they return for a plenary session and the individual efforts are consolidated into a composite version that contains the best ideas from each.
How can you replicate that in a virtual classroom?
Well in Elluminate users can copy and paste images and text from their own desktop into the whiteboard. Then they have the added advantage that they can reposition or remove them if they so desire. If you can visualise a group of 4 participants working together, discussing their design principles through voice and/or text, creating and installing their media assets and systematically completing the task, then you have a good picture of the first stage in the process. The next stage is to assemble the boxes (this is optional). Each participant may print the finished template with all of its embellishments and, sitting at their own desks, may assemble the cube. Finally comes the reporting back and the construction of a composite of all the best ideas. Where bandwidth is sound and reIiable, a spokesperson for each group may use video to show the end result while another talks about its features and the decisions and compromises they had to make. Where the signal strength is weak it is enough to bring back the flat templates from each breakout room and present them as slides with a narrative. I handle the consolidation by opening a blank PowerPoint slide on my own (Moderator’s) desktop. As we discuss each design I selectively harvest words and images from the individual whiteboards and transfer them (copy and paste) to a fresh blank template of the cube on my PowerPoint file. Finally my assistant and long-suffering wife prints out the finished product, assembles it and I show it the group through my own webcam.
ANALYSIS, SYNTHESIS, EVALUATION – aren’t these Bloom’s higher order cognitive skills?
VISUAL, AUDITORY, KINAESTHETIC – in a virtual classroom? What’s going on here?
Now I’ve used Saba Centra, Cisco Webex, Adobe Connect, Dim Dim as well as Elluminate with reasonable regularity. My challenge to anyone who cares to rise to it is this: can you describe to me how all of the above might be done in each of these systems?
Before I depart, if you have read this far you must have some interest in it and thank you. Perhaps you’ll go to our 2 minute survey of webinar skills at https://www.surveymonkey.com/s.aspx?sm=FyVHIxpXy_2bsUtEiSEHSsEg_3d_3d
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