Adapted from “The Live e-Learning Cookbook: Recipes for Success,” by Jim Hollahan, Al Gordon, Yatman Lai and Kathleen Barclay, Ph.D. Click here to order

A live virtual classroom instructor creates "eye" contact with students through dialogue and interaction. Effective live e-learning classroom facilitation involves new skills that must be learned, practiced, and built into your class plan. Here are a few techniques used by good online instructors.

• They are clear about their instructional goals and how the learner will benefit from participating.
  
  
• They engage their participants from the beginning of the class using interactive tools.
  
  
• They ask questions and prompt discussions throughout the presentation. They never wait until the end of class to open it up for questions. And they never ask “Are there any questions? They engage participants by calling on individuals by name with open-ended questions that start a dialogue. Once a discussion is started, they invite others by name to comment and participate.
  
  
• They use the hand-raising tool to pull others into the discussion. Good instructors learn to scan the interface and monitor the electronic hand raising. They keep the discussion focused and all participants engaged.

Facilitating participation

In the traditional face-to-face classroom, the instructor often uses lecture as a primary tool for dispensing information. In the virtual classroom, the instructor’s role becomes much more of a learning facilitator. The good instructor has a detailed class plan that includes interactions with the students every five minutes. Students are expected to participate and instructors call on students by name on a random basis. Simple techniques the instructor can use to facilitate participation include:

• Ask learners to respond Yes or No by raising their hand or clicking on the Yes/No button.
  
  
• Pose a question to the group and ask those who wish to respond to raise their hand using the appropriate tool. You might also randomly call on one or two students by name and ask them to type their answer on the whiteboard.
  
  
• Ask learners to brainstorm about a specific question or topic by using the chat feature.
  
  
• Ask learners to vote by placing a star or symbol next to the item of choice on the whiteboard.
  
  
• Create a two column matching exercise. Call on participants to draw lines on the whiteboard matching the items in column A with items in column B.
  
  
• Use the polling tool to give learners multiple-choice questions. Then share and discuss the results with the class.
  
  
• Quiz learners with multiple-choice and fill-in-the-blank questions. Quizzes are an excellent tool for review, as exercises in applying new knowledge, as well as for more formal testing.
  
  
• Finally, you can use pre-work—a reading assignment, case study—as a tool to stimulate discussion at the beginning of a presentation.

Author Jim Hollahan is president of Essential Solutions, Inc., Silver Spring, MD © Copyright 2003 Jim Hollahan.

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