Guide for Best Practices of the Courses

The participation at the chat sessions was relatively low. It ranked from only 1 student (7% of students in case of TZU) to a maximum of 15 in one of the sessions in Portugal (60% of students). The average % of students participating in the chat sessions was 20%.

Note that due to limitations in Moodle platform, it is not possible to have more than about 10 participants simultaneously in the chat sessions. To prevent this problem, in Portugal it was necessary to divide the chat sessions in two groups, which allowed to have a total of up to 15 participants. In one of the sessions, one of the students had a total of 71 interventions.

It would be important to increase the participation of the students in the chat sessions, very important means of communication in an e-learning course.

The training activities were organized as blended courses, carried on in two successive stages:

• 1 week of face-to-face courses,

• 7 weeks of online courses on the developed e-learning platform, one learning module on each week.

In the case of the University of Minho, a different methodology has been used:

• 1 week for each module, starting with a face-to face session, followed two days after by a chat session.

This methodology has lead to a much higher participation of the students in the chat sessions and can be considered as the best practice.