The first contact a student has with eLearning materials should be initiated by the facilitator. In the present case study, the facilitator contacted the students well before the class was scheduled to begin. This gives the students plenty of time to visit the learning platform and have an explore before the class formally begins so there is less time wasted on orientation. This contact was in the form of a forum message which generated an RSS feed to the students' email accounts. This pushing allowed the students to be notified in a medium they are often using; students would not miss a vital message.
The facilitator also helped keep the learner on-track. Since eLearning allows a facilitator to easily see when a student has not been on-line (even if they lurk in fora), an eFacilitator can very easily monitor the students' activity. If a student has not been active for a while then the facilitator can send a quick email or phone-call to the student. This not only keeps the student motivated but also allows them to feel like the facilitator actually cares about their progress in the course. This sense of care is much more important in an on-line medium since there is no face-to-face interaction to keep students motivated.
Throughout the learning experience, the facilitator should guide the students learning rather than dictate its direction. This is best done by asking pertinent questions of the students to focus their thinking on issues the facilitator feels are important. However, the facilitator should let the discussion develop naturally before attempting to guide it in this fashion otherwise students may feel stifiled and that they are not having enough input into their learning. This differs remarkably to the technique used in classroom teaching where the facilitator often has to re-invigorate the conversation to keep the learning going.
A good eFacilitator will also balance the need for individual feedback with time constraints. Often, it is not possible for a facilitator to provide individual feedback to all students - particularly on group tasks - but some feedback about the task puts it into some form of context for the students. Whereas a class-based facilitator can provide quick, individualised feedback, the process takes much longer for an eFaciliatator. Providing combined feedback for the group activity is a happy compromise between individual feedback and no feedback at all.
The successful eLearner is, above all, self-motivated. They seek to find out new things about their world and delight in finding out new things. They also see learning as providing its own benefits. Since there is often less direct, physical contact involved in eLearning, much of the benefit a student receives will be intrinsic to that student. Although there is still a high level of social interaction involved in eLearning, what the student gets out of eLearning depends a lot more on what they put into it than does class-based learning.
The successful eLearner will also go out of their way to find extra reading. If the learner is having trouble understanding a particular topic or unit, they will use all the resources available to them in order to find the resources they require to understand the material. This means that they are open to learning from their classmates - whether it be following up on suggested readings or sharing knowledge. The successful eLearner, then, is also willing to help others learn; they realise that by helping someone else create knowledge, their knowledge also improves. This also hints at another aspect of successful eLearners: they devote enough time to the course. Without devoting adequate time, the learner will neither be able to process the comments of class-mates nor digest the required readings. However, by devoting adequate time to the on-line course, the learner is able to take full advantage of the learning opportunities.
