My informL Unworkshop

This could be relevant to our work on “Communities of Practice”.For a variety of reasons I have had my eye off developments in elearning in the last few year and am only now beginning to update myself. It shows, It shows!!

During conversations with various people on the unworkshop I have revealed something of my enthusiasm for the benefits of small group collaborative learning using non real time approaches. (asynchronous, if Jay will allow me that unfavourite word J )

I have suggested to a couple of people that my original interest was stimulated by learning from a fellow that, I and a sizeable number of others, regard as one of Europe’s early pioneers of ‘successful e-learning’. His name is Gerald (Gerry) Prendergast. He is one of Eire’s charming, humorous exports. These days he operates as a small consultancy from his base in the English Cotswolds. A glorious part of the world. Anyone interested can find out a bit more about him from his website at http://www.abacus-uk.com/

For those interested in his approach he is always willing to make available some of his many published papers. If you are wanted to you could probably catch up with him during one of his trips to North America.

With this post Gerry has allowed me to upload a copy of a paper of his “Stimulating Learner ‘ Psychological buy in’ on Online Blended Learning courses”. The paper is to be published in a (Conference Proceedings, or similar I think) book later this year. I’d love to hear what you think of this approach and how it compares with what you think of as “current practice“.

Here is the file STIMULATING BUY IN.pdf