Case Studies: E-learning tools in the community

The following case studies show how community groups are using e-learning tools in a variety of settings and at a range of levels from simple to complex. Click the short-cut links (below) to take you to the stories.

Walcha Community College - NSW Adult and Community Education (ACE)

Walcha is a small rural town in the New England Region of Northern NSW with a population close to 3000 which is outnumbered by sheep. The main primary industry is wool followed closely by timber and cattle. Walcha Community College is run by a local committee and members pay $2 per year. It was established by a group of community minded people who wanted to be able to undertake training courses in Walcha instead of travelling to centres over 75km away.

They have set themselves up in Moodle and are offering online enrolment and courses such as Genealogy on the World Wide Web, Composting, Turn your Microwave into a Talking Mailbox 101 and Discovering Democracy!! Click to view their website. You can log in as username: visitor password: welcome

Dorothy Waterhouse - Using GeoCities, Hot Potatoes and Survey Monkey for Language and Literacy

Dorothy Waterhouse, has been creating websites in GeoCities using a combination of free and open source tools. She works for the NSW Adult Migrant English Services, teaching adult migrants English and uses online activities to support and extend her face to face teaching.

One example of this is a simple yet very effective site about Magpies. There's a quiz (Hot Potatoes), survey and online worksheet (Survey Monkey), an interactive Power Point presentation, and a mini webquest.

Have a look at her Magpie site at and try for yourself!

Leongatha Education Precinct - Information Gathering using SurveyMonkey

The Leongatha Education Precinct (LEP) is a partnership between key educational providers within South Gippsland Victoria, Australia. The partnership formed during 2004 and formalised the partnership by way of a Statement of Intent, in early 2005. The partners include:

· Leongatha Secondary College,
· University of Melbourne – McMillan campus
· Central Gippsland Institute of Technical and Further Education (TAFE)
· South Gippsland Specialist School
· Education Centre Gippsland (Adult and Community Education Registered Training Organisation)
· South Gippsland Bass Coast Local Learning and Employment Network (LLEN)
· Shire of South Gippsland
· Gippsland Adult Community and Further Education (ACFE) Regional Council and
· Victorian Department of Education and Training.

The purpose of the LEP is for all 9 partners to collaboratively develop increased learning opportunities for the wider South Gippsland community. The LEP Steering Committee sees flexible and e-learning as key contributors to achieving this goal.

SurveyMonkey is an online survey which the LEP project is using in a variety of ways. From a project management perspective, SurveyMonkey is being used to evaluate five initial professional development sessions for 15 teachers from the GEP educational partners. SurveyMonkey was also used at the end of the project to survey teachers about how successful they felt their e-learning activities were and about their future plans.

Twelve of the 15 teachers also used SurveyMonkey to get their learners to evaluate the learning activities that have been developed. Many, but not all, teachers are using a learning management system (in the TAFE Virtual Campus) to interact with their learners. Within her TAFE institute Glenda McPherson uses SurveyMonkey to gather ‘good news stories’ about e-learning and has purchased the full package to complete an institute-wide survey on how ‘flexible’ the institute really is. Glenda has set up a ‘dummy survey’ and explained a little about the way the tool works. It will give you a good idea of the look and feel of the survey. Click to visit the site.

Real Time Group Facilitation Using Skype

Frankie Forsyth of Pelion Consulting was facilitating a group from a Hobart Registered Training Organisation (RTO) called GlobalNet ICT. The group comprised school students, teachers, industry representatives and staff. Their brief was to design and develop an online learning resource to cover the competencies of the unit Writing for the World Wide Web. Frankie's brief was to facilitate this development. However Frankie had limited dates available to meet with them and unfortunately was to be in New Zealand at the time of the group's first meeting.

Before the first session both the GlobalNet ICT staff and Frankie downloaded Skype and tested it individually. Once in New Zealand, Frankie organised a broadband link with the technical staff and coordinators of the conference that she was attending. (She didnt have a wireless card in her laptop at this stage or this step wouldnt have been necessary.) She used Skype with her headphones and microphone to call Ian at GlobalNET ICT, to test the setup, about one hour before she was to run her activity with the group. They'd agreed to use the Janison text chat (as a backup) and to show the participants a range of online tools in action. This was prearranged with Janison staff and used the test area on their website.

To Frankie's delight when she called Ian the speakers were on broadcast and the group microphone was operating well so she could hear everyone clearly. They agreed to move from the test, in advance, into the actual session they'd planned. Everything was operational and the fascinating outcome was that they used Skype to explain the Janison text chat and its avatar features. Also, intuitively, Ian and Frankie started to capture the voice comments and learning on the Janison text chat, taking it in turns to do so while the other was facilitating. The only thing that would have enhanced the session even more was if Frankie had supplied the group with a photo of herself before the session. In the end she emailed one through shortly after their discussion ended.

Who says you can't facilitate from the other side of an ocean!!
For more information click to view the project site.

Australian Blog Web - Consultation through Concept Mapping with Cmap Tools

Cmaps Tools can be used for mind, concept, or ideas mapping. For example if you need to capture participants' brainstorming information, you can type the information into the Cmaps boxes on your computer and project it onto a screen, rather than putting it on a whiteboard and having to type it up later. It's a great time saver. Marty Cielens did this at an EdNA information workshop session. It's so easy anyone can do it. You could use this for any kind of face to face brainstorming session.

The nice thing about Cmaps is that if you want to share the Cmaps and have people work on them remotely you can do so by saving/uploading them into the Shared Places in Cmaps, or just save them as graphics and email them to your colleagues or participants.

Check out this Australian Flexible Learning Blog and Site Web started by Jo Murray of Pelion Consulting. It contains clear instructions to follow. Have a go.

If you have remote participants you can use Cmaps in combination with a voice tool like Skype or Yahoo! As ideas are contributed through the voice interaction, using microphones and speakers at each location, participants can view the contributions as the facilitator captures the ideas in the Cmap Tools software and uploads the changed cmap to the Shared Place. You can also facilitate participants to collaborate and type in their own contributions to the Shared Place Cmap. You might need to make sure people take turns, so one person's contributions aren't overwritten by another's. Cmap Tools Online Help is fantastic!

Teachers: Using video, audio and digital stories

Carole McCulloch, of Macro Dimensions, was a Flexible Learning Leader in 2004. She has been using voice recording (audio) in Microsoft PowerPoint (PPT) with people at a local Neighbourhood House. She has been introducing the concept of 'digital voice' and 'digital stories', where digital voice recording and digital images are a put together as an easy way for community learners to express themselves. She has been exploring the ways that community members can build their own PowerPoint slides and add voice/audio to them, for specific learning or local history purposes.

Michael Gwyther of Yum Productions, who was also a Flexible Learning Leader in 2004, takes the process further by using audio recording, Macromedia Flash and some video to make digital stories. The multimedia development skills required here are more sophisticated, but community projects can be developed, say, in collaboration with local community members' engaged in VTE or school based multimedia training, or local digital artists. Click to view the Norlane story, among other fantastic examples from a multimedia training project with community members from Norlane Neighbourhoood House in Victoria.

View this live online recorded archive of Michael and Robyn Jay (a Flexible Learning Leader from 2003) discussing how to mix sounds to enhance ditigal storytelling with Audacity (a free sound recording software). You will need to create an account and login to access the LearningTimes Australia space where these resources are housed and download Elluminate Live! to listen to the recording. You will be automatically prompted to do this once you follow the link.

Michael Chalk (a Flexible Learning Leader in 2003) based in Preston Reservoir Adult and Community Education (PRACE) in Victoria, encourages English language teachers to use audio tools with learners, for improved word recognition and pronunciation through presenting sound and text together.

Click to view more activity based case studies in Communicating, and Sharing.