Designing Elluminate Live

One consideration is the knowing and understanding the technical knowledge and ability of the student/client population that you are going to serve. Besides each person’s knowledge and ability, network connections, for example dial up, and Internet Providers will play a factor on how well each student would be able to connect and participate. Another consideration is the ability and age of each student’s computer, for example the IBM 5150 PC ;>) would be impossible to operate in today’s environment. The individuals’ technical understanding could be resolved by taking some courses to help them better understand and perform computer work online. There are several ways to resolve the hardware, software and connection issues. Certainly purchasing and upgrading would be the first and most convenient. Other ways to resolve the connection and hardware/software issue would be to borrow an up to date computer, go to a friend’s house, use one at school or go to a library that provides computers and computer connections.

Another consideration is each individuals learning style or modality. For instance the interpersonal learner that learns best by sharing, comparing and cooperating also learns from eye contact and body language to open communication channels with others. These learners usually try to see things from another person’s point of view, blending it with theirs, to help them gain more understanding. Often they try to maintain peace and cooperation in a group. They often learn from another person’s perspective. Generally they would be able to share, compare and cooperate on line but would not be able to rely on eye contact, (the evil eye, ;>), or body language. They quite possibly would be more reserved in sharing and restricted in learning by not being able to use their full sensory input. The use of web cameras would quite possibly remove those obstacles for the interpersonal learner, making it feel more like a classroom.

Generally there are positive and negative considerations for each of the learning styles pertaining to on line learning, Elluminate. This rule applies to life. Each learning style should be evaluated with a list of what is supported and what is not for the online classes. Also, it should be remembered that we learn from multiple styles having different allocations of how much we learn from each. It is finally up to us as students to manage how we learn by developing all of our learning modalities.

Thanks,
Ron