Collaborative Media for e-Learning

Collaboration has changed accordingly to the rapid technological evolution. New ways of collaborating are now experienced with the assistance of computing artefacts, called social software, in a variety of forms, such as e-mail, internet forums, instant messaging, video conferencing and many more. Collaborative software has also made possible the formation of different communities of practice. E-Learning in a variety of contexts, be it long distance, blended or any other form of technology enhanced learning, benefits from social software. Collaboration has never been easier and more fun!

The Open University in the UK has revolutionised ideas about who can learn and how they can learn, making high quality educational content open to anyone in the world having access to a computer and the Internet. The website for the Open Content initiative will give you a flavour of how you can benefit from open learning. You can start learning at the OpenLearn, choosing from a variety of 11 subjects (graduate and postgraduate levels) and you can start collaborating with other learners, using instant messaging and video conferencing tools in LabSpace.

Links to social software

Videoconferencing with FlashMeeting: with just one click and the Adobe Flash plug-in, you can connect with colleagues and friends from different physical locations, organise technical meetings, seminars, lectures, learner meetings without supervision or multi-party project meetings, work in public and re-use existing FlashMeetings to learn. If you don't have an Open University e-mail address, you can always connect to FlashMeeting through Labspace. You can find out more on analysing video meetings by viewing my Februry 2007 webcast.

Ambient video awareness with Hexagon: with just one click and the Adobe Flash plug-in, you can experience the value of being part of a team or community, see whether your colleagues are busy or not, audio and text chat whether you are working at home for the day, or away at a conference for a while.