Epic Think Tank
Collaboration and e-learning
Background: Platinum, an online collaborative learning environment
Prior to taking part in this Think Tank, all panellists had received
and read the newly-released Epic white paper, Collaboration
in e-learning, which had already sparked a good deal of online
debate among readers of Epic Thinking, our free
monthly e-newsletter.
As a further stimulus to panel discussion, Epic reported on a
project called Platinum, which involved building an online collaborative
learning environment for a select group of senior public servants.
Read a case study of Platinum
This project was carried out on behalf of the Centre for Management
and Policy Studies (CMPS), a part of the Cabinet Office that provides
training and development, intellectual resources, consultancy and
networking opportunities for public servants. Platinum aims to provide
a secure online environment in which past and present participants
of CMPS's corporate development programmes for senior managers can
network, solve problems, discuss issues and share knowledge.
Our Think Tank panellists were interested in the fact that this
represented, in their view, a very senior level of buy-in for a
collaborative learning project, and speculated that in achieving
such a widespread early success it had perhaps benefited from the
'esprit de corps found in senior echelons of an organisation'. Lower
down the ranks, it was observed, the sort of forums that feature
on Platinum too often degenerate into chit-chat, making for a poor
return on investment.
This raised issues of motivation in collaborative learning,
which turned out to be a key theme as the panel turned to the question
of what works and what doesn't in collaborative learning.
Next>>
Part 1 What works and what doesn't?
Part 2 What best suits collaboration?
Part 3 Collaboration in the blend
Afterword
Related links
The following free white papers from Epic bear directly on issues
discussed here:
Collaboration in e-learning
Motivation in e-learning
Psychology of e-learning
Blended Learning
Back to Features
|
