When I developed this course I planned that some time should be spent during our face to face sessions familiarising the group with the ICT tools we would be using throughout the course. These are the LMS (Moodle), oral communication tools (Wimba) and elgg.
Since the group all come from the same company I go to their premises for the face to face sessions. The only problem is that their computer equipped classroom is out of commission due to building work. So what I have been doing is demonstrating the various tools on my laptop and then hoping that they will be able to follow suit either at their work stations later or at home. So far 7 out of 8 have accessed the Moodle, 6 out of 8 have registered with elgg and 1 has tried out the Wimba tools.
For me this is far from ideal since one of the main aims of the distance element of the course was to generate records of interactions which could be referred to later both for language work and to provide material for a language learning portfolio. So a major task for me is how to ensure that everyone is familiar and at ease with these tools before my third and final meeting with them next week.
This is a common problem that technical worries get in the way of the real business at hand.