Ready to engage with TEL? Answer: NO.

[SueFolley]

Hi Elizabeth – I haven’t done this activity yet but it is interesting seeing your results. I do think there is a barrier for people if they have not used any of the social media tools before, as there is a learning curve with some of them. I think Twitter in particular takes a bit of time to fully get. You have to not only add lots of people but start making useful connections and engaging with them before you really see the benefit, which can take weeks or months. I often liken it to being on Facebook without any (or with very few) friends on there – you just can’t see the point at first. If you have to overcome a lot of these barriers before even starting with grappling with course content, you can see how time-consuming this would be. Having said all that – I usually advise people just to dive in and try and engage. You can learn a lot by observing how others use the tools and interact with one another.

[ElizabethECharl]

Hi Sue,

You are right about the lead up time being required to get familiar with said tools and to use them confidently. The jumping in and engaging is a great approach, however when dealing with some mature learners who are pressed for time they tend to make value judgement as to what is worth spending their time on. It could also be the final deciding factor if a learner has already taken the readiness questionnarie and found that they are not as prepared as they thought they were being faced with not enough time before the course starts. Ideally some time possibly two weeks or more should be given over to self- assessment and then steps to address any gaps. I might even suggest that one way of engaging quickly would be to use gamification – where the skills are acquired whilst the focus is on a more engaging superficial level hmm… I wonder if any existing OER could go some way to addressing this? I don’t have much experience in that area but it would enable the learner to bridge that gap.

[Author]

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