• E-mail
• Print
• Comment
• Font Size
• Digg
• del.icio.us
• Discuss article

75 E-Learning Activities: Making Online Learning Interactive

Posted on: Sunday, 2 April 2006, 06:00 CDT

By Piskurich, George

Ryan Watkins. 75 e-learning Activities: Making Online Learning Interactive. San Francisco: Pfeiffer, 2005, 333 pages, $75.00 hardcover.

The subtitle to this book says it all. It is a book about online learning. Those of us who were looking for activities related to asynchronous e-learning, which the title might suggest and which is a most difficult thing to find, will be disappointed, though the author makes this clear at the start. Those who are looking for truly synchronous e-learning activities will also find that the book does not really deal with them either.

The author further confuses this title and terminology issue by then labeling the activities in the book as being synchronous or asynchronous. However, he is right in doing so as in the methodology of online learning, activities are often asynchronous; that is, done when the learner is not online with the instructor, such as the use of a discussion board. They can also be synchronous, using technologies such as chatrooms.

So now that I have thoroughly confused the issue as well, let's start again. This book does not provide asynchronous e-learning activities, such as those you need to create a stand-alone e- learning program like those you might find through an e-learning portal or LMS. Nor does it provide synchronous e-learning activities such as those you would use in a two-hour WebEx or Interwise computer-facilitated seminar. What it does, and does extremely well, is to provide a cornucopia of activities for the delivery methodology known as online learning, which is not as many believe, e-learning as practiced in the world of business learning. Online learning is actually not used to any great extent outside the academic world, though it certainly should be as it provides a relatively cheap, quick-to-design, and very effective method for taking advantage of technology-based learning. There is an article in the January 2006 issue of Performance Improvement that tries to explain not only the differences between e-learning and online learning, but also the advantages of using an online approach in various learning situations.

All that being said, if you are interested in designing and/or facilitating online learning, then this is a book to have on your desk, not your shelf, when you create an online program. In fact, it is so good that I used my own funds to purchase a second copy for my wife who engages in online learning at the medical school where she teaches, basically to keep her from stealing mine.

The author begins the book with an excellent introduction that, with the exception of the terminology problems already noted, nicely outlines exactly what the book will do and how. In the introduction he explains the system he will use to describe each of the activities. It is a fine conceptualization, and amazingly enough he actually follows it throughout.

The first section is a selection matrix that enumerates all of the activities and gives some basic information on each. I found this to be the least useful aspect of the book as the data provided was not what I would consider critically important, but it's only 5 pages out of a 333-page book so....

The next section is worthy of its own book, a series of general tips on how to design online learning and then facilitate it. I may not agree with all of them, but everyone does things a bit differently, and the majority are so good that I can't decide which ones to borrow first.

The rest of the book comprises the activities broken into various categories. Some of them are a bit elementary, and others require large amounts of time and effort, but on the whole they are a superior grouping of online activities for the learners, with plenty of good information on how to facilitate them. As noted, they follow the systematic presentation plan the author created to the letter, and as such are easy to understand and use.

If I have a problem with them it is only that they are focused on multiple day, or even multiple week or month classes, as they should be because this is the online learning world and that usually means longer length class. For those of us in the business world, I would have loved to see some of them refocused for a half-day or even a 2- hour online experience. Those readers with a strong instructional design background, particularly with a synchronous e-learning focus, will find it pretty easy to redesign many of the activities for synchronous e-learning. However, if you are new to the synchronous process, or are not an experienced designer, this may be a problem.

I did find the glossary to be a bit thin and the suggested readings list to be rather small, though in all honesty most of what has been published for online is in the academic milieu, and I think the author has given us some good sources from both academia and business.

The accompanying CD-ROM is an excellent source of material and most useful for designers at any level of expertise if they are creating online materials. It will shorten their design time considerably.

In the final analysis, if you are looking fora book of e- learning activities for use in most business learning environments, then this book is not for you. However, if you are doing or considering doing online learning in either a business or academic environment, you've found an excellent reference source for the activities that are so critical to any online program's success-and if you aren't considering using an online methodology, think about it.

Reviewed by George Piskurich, Principal, GMP Associates, Macon, GA.

Copyright Personnel Psychology, Inc. Spring 2006

Source: Personnel Psychology

More News in this Category