On Friday afternoon, lots of people from various faculties turned up for the Anglia Ruskin eLearning Seminar with high interest in discovering what people have been doing with WebCT, which was the seminar theme. People came up to talk to me, though it was a little confusing as I don't know many faces - I'm just beginning to meet more colleagues from around the university who I know only by name and reputation. Its a funny situation being one of the remote team, based far away from the campus.

I had the first presentation slot and had decided to focus on one major aspect of the Ultraversity project: the development of learning communities in a fully online honours degree, and how this had been evidenced through WebCT. Being the first meant that I was uncertain how to pitch the presentation. I'd made some decisions through the choice of focus, and had decided to lighten the start by defining community with a parody

(apologies to TS Eliot)

A problem which I've encountered in the past has been the dismissal of evidence from fully online projects because they do not include any face-to-face elements. Although its true that there are differences from the blend of face-to-face and distance learning often practised, a great deal can be achieved through building an online learning community which might contribute to a better understanding of eLearning. Speakers described the use of WebCT in a range of settings, from blended to regular campus courses. There were imaginative uses of online tools in all settings so I made some notes on things to try:

Web templates (agreeing fonts, layout, icons)

Mid module review using survey tool

Module evaluation

Visual research methods - collecting and making images

Research workbooks

WebCT as a resource sharing tool rather than on online environment