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The Hellenic Open University launched synchronous online group advisory meetings for the academic year 2016-17 through the Skype for Business videoconferencing platform. This chapter focuses on the extent to which interaction, immediacy, and collaborative learning are developed in this particular online learning environment, as well as on the skills required for an efficient adult e-tutor. Research conducted in 2019 has shown that learners scored high in terms of interaction, immediacy, and collaborative learning between each other and their tutor, especially when working in online workgroups, while the learning process was facilitated by immediate e-tutor feedback, which resolved queries, and the effective facilitation of the discussion. In terms of factors hindering the learning process, learners cited the lack of meaningful relationships with their peers as a leading οne, e-tutors pointed to technical problems, while both agreed on the inadequate use of communication and collaborative tools in an online environment.

Integrating the principles of adult education in online environment -an environment which empowers the engagement of learners and their active participation, promotes interaction and immediacy between educator and learners, as well as between learners themselves, and improves learning outcomes- is a very important task. In this task the role of the educator is crucially important and simultaneously very complicated and demanding, as the integration of adult education principles in an online environment is not an easy issue and forms a big challenge for each online educator of adults. This chapter focuses on building interaction in adults' online courses by integrating the principles of adult education in an online environment, and presents one case study on training e-educators of adults. This case study concerns a one-month intensive seminar addressed to e-educators who teach adult courses, demonstrating that online interaction is both possible and effective by integrating the adult education principles in online educational environment.

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Designers, developers, and educators in an online course, where the risk of learners feeling isolated is of greater concern, should consider including learning activities that engage students with content and with each other in order to promote multiple ways of interaction and communication between learners and higher learners' engagement in the course. Interaction could be developed both in synchronous and asynchronous mode, in a direct or/and indirect (vicarious) way within the e-learning process. This chapter focuses on the development of asynchronous interaction between learners in a MOOC on personal development, provided in 2016 via a popular educational platform and how interaction affected the learning outcomes. The ways that learners asynchronously interact with each other through forum and peer review are identified and research proved that learners interact in a direct and indirect way and that the development of interaction returns multiple benefits to the learning process and outcome.