Overwhelming response

The first batch of e-learning sessions has been returned by our keen authors and I am pleased to report that things are looking great! Some of the sessions are more or less ready to run. Most need a tiny bit of tweaking. Others need a little more work, mostly in terms of style and structure rather than content. One or two authors have been so keen that they have gone beyond their allocated learning objectives and overlapped with other sessions. Not a problem. I have had to be hard-hearted about using the delete button on one or two but some authors have made such a good start on other sessions that...guess what?...I have allocated them that session too!

Steve, our Instructional Designer, is a real whizz at taking the content, playing with it and turning it into a really sophisticated e-learning session. He sees  where the order is not quite perfect, moves things around, makes the content build logically from start to conclusion and adds one or two interactional exercises. Hey presto! As if by magic the whole things looks ready to go. My job now is to check the content (where I feel confident to do so) or send it out to peer reviewers (where it is outside my subject area).

So thanks to everyone who has started writing for us. If you are still lurking in the margins please get in touch to see how you could get involved too. Steve and I both have educational qualifications and we are happy to lead you through the early stages and teach you how to work with the material. Most authors have found a Skype conversation in the first few weeks to be really helpful with keeping the session on track.

I look forward to the next batch arriving soon!

SESSION WRITING WELL UNDER WAY

Thank you to all of the authors who have been sending me their completed sessions. A lot of hard work has gone into creating them and I am very grateful. We have found that it is often helpful to have a Skype conversation quite early on in the process so that we can support you with the level and style of content. Those authors who have communicated with me in this way have been able to complete their work much faster.

I am also delighted to inform you that Changing Faces have agreed to write two of our sessions (Dealing with Disfigurement and The Role of Patient Support Groups). 


Steve Gibbons, our Instructional Designer, is now on board. As he is working full-time on the project you will find that a lot of the communications in the future come from him. Once he has settled in I shall be needing as many sessions as possible written and returned so that I can keep him busy!

The third batch of sessions has been sent out this week. Please let me know if you would like to write any of these.  Once I have all the responses I will send you out a Powerpoint template onto which you will write your material. There have been some problems with the version of template that I have been using due to incompatibility between Open Office and Powerpoint 2010. I have given in and reloaded Powerpoint 2003 onto my PC, which does not seem to have the same problem as Open Office, so hopefully this has been resolved.

Best wishes

elpras.project@googlemail.com