Seán Conlan, Institute of Technology Sligo, Ireland.
Wednesday 27th January, 2010, 1.15pm - 2.00pm (GMT)
Recording now available - see below.
Seán Conlan graduated as an electrical engineer at University College Dublin in 1969. He worked in a variety of engineering, product and project management roles in Africa, Ireland, France & Belgium before returning to Ireland in 1994. As Chief Executive of Excellence Ireland (the national independent quality association) from 1994 to 2003 he led the development of programmes to enable Irish organisations improve their performance. He served as President of EOQ (European Organization for Quality) (1998-2000). Seán now works on various teaching and developmental programmes for the Institute of Technology in Sligo such as transformational change and energy management. He is one of the Institute’s staff to deliver programmes exclusively on-line. He was appointed a Board member of the ESB (Electricity Supply Board) in 2007. He has served on a variety of national boards and has recently been nominated trustee of Feasta – The Foundation for the Economics of Sustainability.
In his online modules Seán use both synchronous and asynchronous discussions as well as asking students to make their own online presentations. Seán will talk about the use of asynchronous and synchronous discussions in teaching online distance learners. Seán normally uses mind-mapping software to present lectures and will be using this thechnique in this presentation.
This was a very lively webinar with over 40 attendees and lots of input from them. You can listen to the
recording here and please feel free to post comments or questions here on the blog.
Great session. I had to leave to get back to work. I was wondering how accepting were your learners to virtual synchronous discussions using microphones and speakers/headphones?
ReplyDeleteThanks for the comment. Speakers and headsets are a must. We have been using microphones for special assignments or in small group situations. As I mentioned in the talk, audio can be a problem. There are two sources (at least!). The first is that participants (learners) either don't set up their microphone properly or worse with it not set properly disrupt the class. In theory this is manageable for a 'class' situation and particularly a small class. For a once-off large group event, it is more risky. A way round it is to control the microphone closely. In ways it is nothing more than an on-line meeting/conference call.
ReplyDeletePerhaps we should try it sometime on a Webinar. It demands particular facilitation skills - combining both technology (a little) and the normal skills.
Hope this helps.
Seán
Very interesting session Sean. I use mindmaps for pretty much everything I do and was really interested to see how it could be used in place of a powerpoint. I thought it was a little more elegant as you could see the 'whole' topic and then follow the component parts.
ReplyDeleteThe whole use of microphone and group online discussion is full of challenges.
It reminded me of when I used to work in the outback of Australia and we had to do conference calls to organise training or organisational development workshops.
We developed a protocol regarding how we would engage the conversation without descending into chaos. It worked pretty well.
I will me in contact Sean about SKIL2 and look forward to chatting with you.
Thanks again for a very very useful session.
I'm enjoying this webinar series.
Best
Liz
Hi Brian and Sean,
ReplyDeleteI missed the live lecture but have just watched the recording...
Loved the use of MindMaps- I only use Freemind and use them wherever possible in courses- fantastic way to represent a lot of information in a succinct format.
Loved the parallels between QA, Kaizen and production theory vs. educational design, the polls... the use of various tech (engineer here btw (-:) wikis, blogs, motivation.... [insert index of lecture here]
Anyone reading this and using Google Wave- feel free to include me on any Waves you have going...
The ONLY thing I didn't like about the session is that I missed the live show!
Looking forward to the next session!
Great work all!
Here are a few references that I referred to in the Webinar...questions or comments please let me know...
ReplyDeleteSeán
1. The Fifth Discipline: The Art and Practice of the Learning Organization Peter M.Senge Currency Doubleday 0-385-26094-6
2. Presence: An Exploration of Profound Change in People, Organizations, and Society Peter Senge Currency Doubleday
3. Complexity and Management Ralph D. Stacey, , Routledge
4. Insights from Complexity Science for health care leaders, Brenda Zimmerman Ph.D., Curt Lindberg and Paul Plsek Edgeware
5. Experiential Learning Kolb, D. A. (1984) Englewood Cliffs, NJ.: Prentice Hall.
Other sources:
6. Otto Scharmer
C. Otto Scharmer, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, downloads and Information on current research, programs and publications regarding Theory U and ...
Publications - Bio - Tools - Programs
www.ottoscharmer.com
7. W. Edwards Deming:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W._Edwards_Deming
Mindmap for the session...
ReplyDeleteIf you are interested in a copy of the Mindmap file used during the session please email me.
Please indicate whether you wish a MindManager file or a html version (the latter can be read by a browser, whereas the former needs MindManager software).