With this post I want to say a few words about the social learning features of the online school.

As I mentioned in the other post, the online courses are designed to be a study tool for students who don't want to simply study using the textbook alone but are, for whatever reason, unable to attend a fulltime course.

In a full-time in-house course students have the opportunity to chat about the course and mix with other students as well as with their instructor. This gives them an opportunity to meet new friends and make valuable contacts with the people they study with which is very important. The aviation industry is a surprisingly small one as you will soon discover!

Since this contact is not "physically" possible online, we'll make it as "virtually" possible as we can.
When you start your enrolment, you'll be diving into an environment populated with students from pretty much anywhere and at different stages of their study. Suddenly you are not sitting at home "alone" with your textbook but are now linked in with people in the same boat as you: you're all studying CPL Performance.

Some students will be nearly finished and have experience and new-found expertise to share and others will be wide-eyed newbies. This is a brilliant mix.

So, to give people the chance to take advantage of this there'll be:

• General Forums for course-wide discussion on whatever takes your fancy
• Assessed forums for extra credit
• Private forums for discussions between students and the instructor/moderator if a student (for whatever reason) does not wish to post a question publicly
• Perpetual wiki where students can make contributions that not only help them to remember tips and advice but also to offer those snippets of information to others
• A personal blog for each student where they can document their progress and make notes as they work through the course
• An online instructor/mentor hovering to help pick up any questions that arise and promote discussions

What an individual student does with these possibilities is up to them. Some will possibly prefer to silently make their way through the material and that's OK if that's what they want.

However, all students will be actively encouraged to become involved in coaching other students via the forums. Input will be peer-reviewed and can be awarded a rating. At the end of a student's enrolment, the average rating of all their contributions will be used to calculate extra credits towards their final score.

So, if you make the effort and become actively involved with the course you get a three-way benefit:

• by actively contributing and helping other students with any questions, you're making concepts clear in your own mind. You are "learning by teaching" which is proven to be THE most effective way of not only learning but also retaining learned material.
• you're getting a chance to make contacts with other students who are studying the same subject at the same time. You have confirmation that you're not studying in isolation. There are actually other people out there.
• students who make high-quality contributions benefit from extra marks towards their final course score. Remember, a successful pass entitles you to credits for Bob's Cyber Exams and we will probably look at other rewards for contributions as the courses develop.

The success of any environment is very much dependent on the people in it. All we can do is provide the means for students to help themselves and to be helped by others. That's why Bob and I will be in there helping to keep the ball rolling and also thinking up new ways to get students involved and keep 'em motivated.