<p> E-tivities</p><p>Planning your e-tivities</p><p>Firstly, four quick tips to help set the parameters for designing successful e-tivities:</p><p>1. Limit the number of participants to around 8 - 15 for your first attempts. This means that you will have a workable 'quorum' of learners to contribute ideas and maintain energy and momentum without being overwhelmed by the volume of contributions.</p><p>2. Acknowledge that working asynchronously is generally slower than working in 'real time'. Allow at least a week for the entire task and allocate 2-3 days to each section of your e-tivity.</p><p>3. Write careful instructions including telling learners when to respond to others as well as when and where to initiate contributions. Setting some guidelines for volume and frequency of contributions will also help to structure and control the interaction.</p><p>4. Be generous in estimating the time it will take you to facilitate an e-tivity. Be prepared to spend around twice as much time as you originally planned to spend! Your most important work includes encouraging responses, giving feedback, and summarising content. However, you may well spend additional time dealing with technical issues or managing challenging behaviour.</p><p>E-tivities checklist</p><p>The following questions may help you create clear, engaging and dynamic e-tivities for your learners. Click or tick the checkboxes on the right-hand side of the table to make sure you've covered off each point.</p><p>Planning your ‘e-tivities’</p><p>Have you….? Done! begun at the end, by:</p><p> identifying the skills and knowledge learners will develop by doing this task</p><p> defining a viable goal for the task</p><p> deciding if and how you will assess it managed the practicalities, by</p><p> ensuring that all essential resources and materials are readily available to learners</p><p> established a system for recording and archiving the outcomes of the task enticed them in, by:</p><p> selling the e-tivity via an interesting title and an inviting introduction which tells learners exactly ‘what’s in it for them’ </p><p> writing clear, complete, precise instructions covering: o what learners need to do to prepare for and during the e-tivity o how long they have to do each ‘bit’ o what you will be doing as facilitator E-tivities</p><p>Planning your e-tivities</p><p> o how you will evaluate and/or assess the task</p><p> made the task manageable for you, by</p><p> identifying when and where you will intervene and monitor the task</p><p> deciding how to respond to unengaged learners</p><p> estimating the amount of time you will need to allocate to facilitating this e-tivity</p><p> knowing what you will do if the e-tivity does not go to plan</p><p>Acknowledgement: Adapted from material provided by Professor Gilly Salmon. Originally published in 2003 by Deacon University and available at http://www.deakin.edu.au/~ismissen/VisitingSpeakers/E-tivities_handout.pdf and reproduced with permission.</p>