New Resources for Online Collaboration

To support the delivery of the course and the course's aim, to enable people to develop their online collaboration, new resources will be developed.

Course Outline

Online Collaboration

Practical ways of doing your work online - real work with your colleagues supported by technology.

This is a collection of course materials and notes to allow a tutor/trainer/facilitator to deliver the course. The course is available under a creative commons license for re-use and modification with attribution.

Aims and Objectives

This course is aimed at people who want to understand the benefits of online collaboration and experience using tools that are available.

The objective is to enable the individual to start implementing online collaboration in their own organisations.

The course covers the benefits of using technology for online collaboration and particularly based on three areas:

• Working - (project workspaces for working at different times)
• Being – (presence tools - Instant Messaging (IM)
• Meeting - (web conferencing, editing documents, brain storming etc online)

In practice the use of online collaboration tools is not widespread despite the technology being established and offering significant benefits. This course is aimed at improving adoption by allowing individuals to “have a go” and experiment to find out what might work for them and their colleagues. The course will use tools that are free (to an extent) and available as “Software as a service”. The course could easily be adapted to use an organisation’s internal collaboration tools.

The course is designed to enable the delegates to work together as part of online teams and throughout the day a plan is developed for future collaboration using technology.

Previous Experience

This course is aimed at an audience of proficient IT users although they do not require technical IT knowledge

Delegate's Questions, Suggestions and Feedback

Anyone who has attended this course and has something to share please add a coment

Trainer's Questions, Suggestions and Feedback welcome

Anyone who trains using this course and has something to share please add a coment

Trainer Support

The tutor guide is available in the files at the bottom of the blog.

In addition a sample of the exercise results has been created -

http://onlinecollaborationcoursegroup1.blogspot.com/

This has similar results to what might be expected on the course however the course would produce lots more blog entries from multiple delegates.

Course Development

All files can be accessed in the box.net widget at the bottom of the page.

Prior to Course

• A course outline has been created
• A tutor guide (including setup) has been created for any one wishing to facilitate this course
• A blog import file is provided below for people to import to group blogs

Course Presentation

• Presentations have been created for classroom use. Please use the full presentation to view the complete course
  
• Notes have been added to the bottom of each slide to assist facilitation of the course
  

Support Materials

• A delegate pack has been added into the box.net store
• The Online Collaboration Consultant blog is recording experiences of online collaboration
  http://onlinecollaborationconsultant.blogspot.com/
  

• For each course group a public blog will be constructed Online Collaboration Course Group it will contain the reflections of group during the course. Also at the end of course support links will be added
  
• Each group will have access to a mind map they have created about the benefits and risks of online collaboration
• Each delegate will have created their own plan/strategy for collaboration during the course
• This blog contains all the files and materials for the course and also links to articles and other sites that contain further valuable content.

Course development has been commisoned as part of Digital 2020 in the Yorkshire and Humber region.

http://www.digital2020.org.uk/skills

Online Collaboration Consultant blog of experiences in Online Collaboration

Follow the link:

http://onlinecollaborationconsultant.blogspot.com/

The online collaboration consultant blog is an ongoing series of collaborations categorised by what area they fit in the model: