Learning Technology Mentor program

LearnScope
Discussion message posted during Learnscope Online Week
Mary Aquino - Wed, 13 Aug 2003, 16:09

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Learnscope has been fantastic at my college (Central TAFE in Perth) without it we wouldn't have our current Learning Technology Mentor program - which gives 6 Lecturers a day a week to mentor colleagues (beginners and "guns") in online teaching and learning ..after starting life as a Learnscope project which enabled us to identify and release online teaching champions to develop their skills the program is now funded by the college as a corporate initiative..

we have had several foundation skills projects and some really "out there' edgey projects over the course of Learnscope and without this funding we'd have been almost completely without opportunities to give people time and space to play and learn, find their online "entry point" and develop their engagement and skills

now we have a pretty good range of blended online learning models to demo and spruik across the college so lecturers can see and explore what's possible online and decide if they want to emulate any of the examples or if they want something completely different..this seems to work pretty well as a kick start

..we follow this up with a pretty smushed up/as needed mix of design advice and tech support, structured mentoring and just in time "aaarrgh help me now" kind of back up

IT skills are just the beginning or probably not even the beginning they are pretty much the preparatory gear gathering stage..a bit like pulling on your runners before you get to the starting line..we learned this the hard way by giving a lot of attention to technical skills early on and not enough energy to 'what do you want to do online and have you got a clue about what works on the web?'

we are much better balanced these days :-) and having huge fun pushing the e-velopes with RAMES and role play..and getting people to think and experiment much more widely with some more comlex collaborative , problem based learning strategies as well as using the web for simple and very effective administrative and communication stuff

this is a ridiculously long message *rueful grin*.. the short answer is probably..Learnscope funds fantastic experiential stuff ..time and space to play and think and try things out..the infection /osmosis method seems to be the best way to "catch" the online teaching and learning bug..we tried the " mass innoculation " method here for a while with very limited success