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Educator's Voice

Volume 3, Issue 2
February 13, 2002

Getting the Most from ClassLive^SM

The best use of ClassLive might not always be "live." This is what I thought after my first introduction to it, when I was walking out of a training session, a little dumbstruck, trying to comprehend all of the possible uses of this new feature that so many instructors have requested.

For readers not familiar with ClassLive, it is the new synchronous communication tool in the eCollege AU^SM platform. It includes an enhanced chatroom, combined with an interactive whiteboard. With it, you can draw, easily create mathematical and scientific equations and formulas (something heretofore very difficult to accomplish online), create graphs or diagrams, and upload images. There is a graphing calculator. You can "application share" (show how to do something in Excel or any other program you have on your computer), and much more.

In fact, it can do so much that, unless you are a very facile computer user with excellent keyboarding skills, it will require practice, preparation and nimble fingers to use it effectively in large, e-classroom discussions or demonstrations. Or else, the whole session could fall frustratingly into a sea of chaotic, multi-colored scribbling and doodling (perhaps beautiful in its own way) by students trying out the drawing features, while at the same time you are trying to keep up with students bombarding you with so many questions in the chat area that you can't possibly answer them all, a silent cacophony, as you frantically flip through the manual that you had printed out, just minutes before, "just-in-case."

No doubt, there are practiced users of the eCollege AU platform who will quickly learn how to manage a full class environment with ease. Indeed, as the online teacher has become a facilitator, an actor in videos, a graphic designer, a lucid academic writer, a tech writer, an instructional designer, he or she can now become fight director, or disc jockey, for the discussion.

The class management feature of "hand raising" allows you to completely avoid the chaotic scene described above--if you know what you are doing and have practiced. That is, you may "mark all" of the students and call on only those who you want to make a comment or contribute to the solution of, say a trigonometry problem. But, for those of us who are not that immediately adept, it could be quite a challenging experience.

This challenge is not really a problem for students; they are simply observing and participating (and perhaps sending private messages back and forth). They are not at the helm, leading the session, cutting and pasting, drawing and typing. So, again if you know what you are doing, they will follow along and learn.

Using ClassLive for live one-on-one tutoring sessions--or office hours--is actually the main functionality that many instructors, especially math and science teachers, have long wanted to be able to do. They can now schedule a time with a student having trouble with a concept to go over it. Instructors can now work with a student in real time to show him or her how to work a problem that cannot easily be explained in words. In this case, the live environment will be manageable for most users. In fact, this may be the best way to practice and to get to know the environment in order to prepare for larger class activities. Also, asking a trusted student to join you for practice is a good self-training idea.

However, while the live aspect of this tool may or may not be daunting, depending on your needs and experience, ClassLive can also be seen as a graphical authoring tool, a resident slideshow-maker if you will, that you can save and ask students to view asynchronously. In fact, with the CourseFlex^SM navigation system, you can direct students to the chat with a link, and then students may access ClassLive and its archived sessions.

The archived session allows you to make pages. It does not record movement that you would see in a live session; it simply archives everything you've created on the page, before you move on to a new page. So, while you may need some practice before you "go live" with a lot of students, you can use it as an authoring tool to create steps in solving complex equations that you can't easily do in HTML or even in the eCollege Visual Editor. The sky is the limit when using ClassLive as an asynchronous authoring tool. Teachers from all disciplines can use it for:

• illustrating how tectonic plates move
• explaining cell mitosis
• showing how supply and demand curves move
• demonstrating how to classify galaxies
• editing a poem
• creating flow charts

ClassLive is a robust tool, whether used live or asynchronously. Like all new software, training and hands-on practice will be key to using it successfully. If you begin by creating archived tutorials, "lectures," or demonstrations, taking your time, you will achieve two objectives at the same time: 1) creating useful graphical explanations of difficult topics and 2) familiarizing yourself to use it live. We're sure you will find many uses for this interactive course tool.

       --Stephen Shugart, MFA

 

TIP

Tutoring with ClassLive

As you probably know, our latest AU release offers several new features and tools. And, as described in this month's feature, ClassLive is one of these new tools. While ClassLive has many useful features, the synchronous whiteboard opens a lot of opportunities and adds even more flexibility to the way you can present material and teach online.

One of the ways ClassLive can be of use to online instructors is through one-on-one tutoring. As instructional designers, we encourage the inclusion of some sort of virtual office hours. You can enhance this "office" time by using the whiteboard - along with the chat feature and/or phone conferencing. The whiteboard will be extremely helpful for math, science and business courses (along with many others that use symbols and/or graphs). You can demonstrate hard-to-grasp equations, while the student watches you move through it, for instance. You can also have the students work through problems, as you watch and offer guidance.

The whiteboard could be used in English and/or foreign language classes, too. You can take a sentence or paragraph and edit grammar, etc., right there, with your student(s). Seeing the process, as it's occurring, can be very useful to students...

We're sure you will come up with many other, innovative uses for the whiteboard - and for ClassLive, itself!

       --Errin Klein, MA