MCO 11th Annual Conference on eLearning

A live (synchronous) virtual session is a great opportunity to bridge the gap between a face-to-face classroom experience and an asynchronous online course, particularly if you miss the fluid dynamic of a live interaction. In a synchronous virtual environment, you can lecture to learners, facilitate discussions or interviews, and break out into small groups. But how do you know if your learners are really engaged? Are they pretending to be while browsing other sites? If you can’t  see the whites of your learners’ eyes, you face specific challenges for classroom management. In this session, we will discuss concrete methods to proverbially make eye contact when you can’t see your learners’ eyes. We will also present a case study on how one course used Blackboard Collaborate to manage the process of mock interviews between learners in a virtual space. This session will not teach how to use Blackboard Collaborate; we will focus on the principles and good practices for managing a synchronous virtual environment.