First Steps is an electronic infrastructure that does for the literacy community what the railway did for this nation. It links scattered communities and maximizes opportunities to share resources and ideas. A partnership between Centre AlphaPlus Centre, eLit.ca, The Hub, National Adult Literacy Database (NALD) and NWT Literacy Council/North of 60, First Steps is undertaking a process of research, consultation with the field and strategic planning towards the creation of a national literacy electronic conferencing system.

The initial phase of the First Steps research is complete. A preliminary analysis of the findings indicates that a national electronic conferencing system would prove useful and enriching for the literacy community and make a significant contribution to the field.

The Research Process
The First Steps research is designed to help us understand the potential for creating a national electronic conferencing system that would meet the literacy community’s needs for communication and collaboration. The research took place in April and early May 2003 and was conducted by Prospect Point Consulting Inc., a Vancouver-based company, on behalf of First Steps. Information was gathered in three ways: individual interviews, focus groups of three to four people, and an on-line survey.

Fifty-two people across the country took part in interviews or focus groups via teleconference. Participants were identified by the First Steps Steering Committee in order to achieve a cross-section of users across the country. They included instructors, administrators, learners, and provincial/territorial and national government representatives. One focus group was conducted in French among members of the francophone literacy community.

A Glimpse of the Findings
Almost all respondents expressed their belief in the potential of on-line conferencing to help them be better informed and more efficient in their work. They identified features they want a national conferencing system to have, including:

• Accessible via the web, so that it can be accessed from anywhere.
• Easy to use, with an extremely userfriendly interface that is also attractive and appealing but not too «fancy.»
• Fast connection speeds.
• Well facilitated, moderated, and filtered.
• Well organized and classified so that information and services can be accessed quickly and easily.
• These features were seen as important because the research identified «lack of time» as the biggest current barrier to participation in electronic communication and collaboration.

Stay Tuned ...
Further research and consultation are still taking place. A full report of the research findings is expected to be ready in the fall. For more information about First Steps, contact any member of the Steering Committee:

Linda Mitchell, The Hub
lmitchell@literacy.bc.ca

Chantal Samuel, AlphaPlus
csamuel@alphaplus.ca

Charles Ramsey, NALD
ramseyc@nald.ca

Marnie Schaetti, eLit.ca
marnie_schaetti@eLit.ca

Questioning techniques

It is well-known that questioning helps students learn. However, we don’t always ask questions which are helpful. Here are some ideas from Northwest Regional Educational Laboratory (http://www.nwrel.org/).

• Ask a combination of lower-cognitive (fact and recall) and higher-cognitive (open-ended and interpretive) questions to check students’ understanding and stimulate their thinking during classroom recitations.
• Allow generous amounts of “wait-time ” when questioning students, at least three seconds for lower-cognitive questions and more for higher-cognitive ones.
• Continue to interact with students whose initial responses are inaccurate or incomplete, probing their understanding and helping them to produce better answers.
• Explain the relationship of a current lesson to previous study, calling attention to key concepts or skills previously covered.
• Arouse students’ interest and curiosity about the lesson content by relating it to things of personal relevance to them.

[This article was taken from LiteracyNOW!, November 2002, a newsletter produced and published by the Centre for Education and Work (http://www.cewca.org/) in Winnipeg, Manitoba.]