Dear Colleagues,

I would like to invite you to join an online community focusing on the
topic: 
"Interactive online learning in higher education - show me the evidence!" 

*Please forward to interested colleagues*

It is targeted at academics, educators, practitioners and teaching &
learning support in the Higher Education sector.

We aim to build a body of knowledge for educators on 'interactive online
learning'.

This community exists to discuss and share resources relating to human to
human communication/interaction in online educational settings which could
include best practices, case studies, experiences, rubrics for assessment,
peer review processes, facilitation skills, technologies and policy. This
can cover both peer to peer and student to teacher levels of interaction.
Possible outcomes of our activities could include a collection of best
practice case studies, FAQ's for online educators, bibliographies, joint
papers or links to other web resources.

The community is based at the Centre for Learning and Professional
Development at University of Adelaide, Australia.

Moderation is carried out by participants in the Graduate Certificate in
Online Learning (Higher Education) at the University of Adelaide, Australia
as part of their course requirements. 
We aim to use this as a catalyst for a continued presence and discussion.


Your contribution:
You contribution is entirely voluntary and at your discretion! It is not
intended to be onerous and you can contribute as much or as little and at
the time and of a duration that is suitable to yourself in terms of glancing
over other's contributions, responding or asking questions or providing
resources that you may have on hand.


To obtain access to the online community forums (requires a free account):

Step 1. Go to: http://transformingassessment.com/community/

Step 2. Click the 'Register' link.

Step 3. Fill in the form.
Note: we ask that you provide your real name (first name and surname),
organisational affiliation and for your real e-mail address in the relevant
boxes so we can filter out 'spammers'. It also helps to know to whom we are
communicating!
After you submit the form you will receive an automated acknowledgment email
with the subject 'Welcome to Interactive Online Learning in Higher
Education' from the user 'tac'. However, the site administrator will still
need to manually approve your account. This may be quick or it may take a
day or two to occur.
Once the account has been approved you will receive a second email to notify
you of this fact with the subject 'Account activated'. You can then log in
to read and contribute.

Step 4: Log in to your account. 
Upon receipt of 'Account activated' email you can log on to the system. Go
to the link in Step 1 and use the 'login' link.

Your account will have permissions of a normal forum contributor which means
you will be able to read and respond to posts within the various community
topics. Please feel free to start your own topics as well, to ask questions
and to post resources.

Step 5: Please go to your 'user control panel' and fill out your profile
information to give others an idea of who you are and your background.


Keeping Track of Posts:
To stay up-to-date easily, use the 'subscribe forum' link at the bottom of
the topic listing page.
This will send a notice directly to your email when someone posts to the
forum, that way you don't need to remember to log in inorder to check for
new posts or replies.
(Please note; the 'subscribe topic' link inside each thread only subscribes
to the current topic page, not the whole forum).

User Guide:
You may wish to view the Contributors user guide for further
information/instructions for the use of the phpBB system software which is
used to run the technical parts of our online community. See Chapter 5:
http://www.phpbb.com/support/documentation/3.0/userguide/index.php

Please note: "Transforming Assessment" and the website site at
http://transformingassessment.com/ is separate from our online community but
may also be useful!


Further Inquires:
If you have any question or concerns regarding this request or about the
community please contact the course conveners (online learning communities):
[log in to unmask] and [log in to unmask]


regards,
Dr Mathew Hillier
Centre for Learning and Professional Development, 
The University of Adelaide, Australia, 5005
Schulz, 12.10
ph +61 8 8313 0223
http://www.adelaide.edu.au/directory/mathew.hillier
CRICOS Provider Number 00123M
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Transforming Assessment: http://transformingassessment.com/
Second Life: Mathew Hilliard
Skype: mathewhillier
Linkedin: http://au.linkedin.com/in/mathewhillier
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