Sue Waters

Yesterday was m-learning, today was Learnscope e-learning Project Planning day.

Thank goodness for the Internet access on my PDA that meant I could multi-task i.e. listen to the presentations and participate in the activities while I researched more about the use of peer coaching (all Becky Saunders fault however that was the desired outcome). I suppose at this point in time it is interesting to reflect that my technology life style has made me very proficient at multitasking.

Carole McCulloch (who is an e-learning coach and mentor) from the other side of Australia, was nice enough to provide her feedback on the use of peer coaching in e-learning professional development. Here is what Coach Carole told me about how they do professional Development in Victoria:

“Victorian teams use a peer coaching/mentoring model. Eleaders are provided with a time allowance to provide support for teachers in their departments in understanding, mastering and implementing elearning strategies. They usually have at least one LearnScope or Elearning project to lead during the year and they provide coaching for their teams as well as project management. The success of this coaching/mentoring framework lies in the close collaboration between coaches and peers and their on-the-ground support on an ongoing basis.

In our VIC model the coaches are knowledgeable in elearning and coach their peers in their own goals – usually prescribed by their project outcomes – ones they’ve written themselves. Coaching may be side-by-side or virtual and would consist of pre-arranged events to enhance the learning of the peer. e.g. a coach may provide guidance and feedback on the learning taking place for a set number of peers and may provide more personal mentoring for a smaller number”.

Carole was also nice enough to give me the link to her Victorian E-Learning leaders wiki which she is currently setting up and her new blog. Thanks Carole I look forward to watching and learning from the techniques you use in your State; and plan to have a closer look at both sites tomorrow.Becky Saunders also repeated her great presentation from yesterday so I grabbed the opportunity to record and podcast it from my podcast site (Sorry have not included the full presentation because it was too long but did include the most important aspects of it). She was also nice enough to add the Rogers’ Innovation Adoption Curve into her presentation. I had read about Rogers Innovativeness Theory in Networks, Connections and Community: Learning with Social Software prepared by Val Evans in collaboration with Larraine J Larri with input from Susan Stolz for the Australian Flexible Learning Framework. Thanks Val, Larraine and Susan for writing such a fantastic document; it contains lots of great information.

The reason why I wanted Becky to add Rogers Innovativeness Theory was because I felt it helped people understand that ” trying to quickly convince the mass of a new controversial idea is useless. It makes more sense to start with convincing innovators and early adopters”.