If you are committed to stimulating online dialogue, your role as online facilitator will require you to create a welcoming virtual environment that encourages diverse viewpoints. (With 'create' I fortunately do not mean you have to become an instructional designer - your mere online presence and personal approach can be just as effective as a sound technical design!) It is worth noting that online forums can become notoriously ‘empty spaces’, and facilitators often find student engagement to be lacking. Although most adult students are comfortable using web-based forums and chat rooms to engage socially, the tendency to limit their online interactions for academic purposes can be attributed to a number of factors, e.g.: · A lack of confidence when communicating in written format, especially if the course language is not the student’s first language · The knowledge that comments are recorded as visible...
Although verbal representations – such as printed or spoken words – hold a privileged place in education, there is growing consensus among educators the concept of literacy should be broadened to include visual representations such as illustrations, photos, animation, and video. Our student receive content through multiple channels, i.e. media, including audio and visual channels (Paivio, 1969) as well as touch, taste and smell. Multimedia is most commonly defined as the use of at least two of these elements : sound (audio), and text / still graphics / motion graphics (visual) (Tannenbaum, 1998). Schnotz and Lowe (2003) define the term multimedia more specifically as the combination of multiple technical resources for the purpose of presenting information represented in multiple formats via multiple sensory modalities. It therefore logically follows that educators will be interested i...