OTEN offers students phone and email support and a support web site called the OLS site but feedback from students is that they still feel alone out there in DE land. 

The goal of the wiki is to provide new trainees with a place to go to where they can find out more about their traineeship, their eduational provider OTEN, their learning materials and other stuff to help them get started.

I am working on interviewing some previous trainees and their host employers and adding audio soudn bites so the new trainee can "hear" from others who have been in their position. Getting this done is proving a bit more difficult due to the machinations within OTEN. Issues such as getting releases from students to participate, getting software access through the firewall, etc. slow the process down but we are getting there... But that's another post for another day.

The other thing we have done is set up a blog. As each new trainee enrols we will create an account for them to go to the site and introduce themselves. Hopefully new trainees will post there to help develop a community. I have settled on Blogger as it was the simplest to set up accounts for many to post to one blog. I like Wordpress better as I could set up pages of info there, perhaps doing away with the wiki, but I had heaps of trouble making the sign up process easy for trainees.

New students commence enrolling in November for 2007 so my group is readying the site to introduce to the new group shortly. Finger crossed we get some positive feedback and community around the blog.