A glimpse of a future learning technology & how to effectively design of your online seminars

It's alway difficult guessing future learning technologies. However, one which is gathering interest across the sector is augmented reality. As a learning technology it offers significantly more than QR Codes. Its importance is evident as it has quickly entered Gartner's trough of disillusionment (http://www.wired.com/beyond_the_beyond/2012/10/gartner-hype-cycle-2012/), after which technologies will broaden in appeal, mature and embed.

The Elevate Team (with others across the Eastern Region) ran a UK webinar which overviewed the possibilities of Augmented Reality as a Learning Technology. The session recording is available from:

• http://moodle.rsc-eastern.ac.uk/course/view.php?id=212

If you are thinking about running an online (webinar) event, what might you learn from our session?

The feedback from the session was very good. The evaluation identified 70% (n=13) responded the overall event was excellent. While 54% and 46% thought the style of the presentation was excellent or good respectively.

So, given the positive response how did we run the session?

We based the session design of trying to minimise the amount of didactic delivery and encourage people to share. While we gave ownership to the didactic delivery component. For instance;

1. we used a number of short videos to illustrate our discussion as opposed to talking over static slides


2. we included a number of short questions where people responded through the chat box

Both these approaches where designed to make the participant do things, so our session became "information light, action heavy".

The approach is evident from reviewing our session slides

• https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/18Xx8OeeO6jsbfpTsmtcD3wZpmOi0BI_yo_-pYKUcjP4/edit?usp=sharing

The feedback indicated this approach worked, but it does need fine tuning. In particular, ensuring we give time to complete the task and use the ideas being contributed within our discussions. In other words, we need to better facilitate this approach if we want it to maximise the effectiveness and impact.

If you'd like to discuss how you might use these ideas in your online seminars, please contact the Elevate Team (elevate@ucs.ac.uk)