What a roller-coaster this course is proving to be - so many opportunities abound and I find myself being drawn in many exciting directions.Still to do:
Look at Google docs!!!
Hook up to Skype!!!
Find out about discussion boards!!!
Contact Nancy White with a question!!!
I was fortunate enough to have the opportunity to facilitate Friday's Elluminate session with my colleague from Otago Polytechnic-Jane Field. This provided the best learning around being FLEXIBLE and thinking and acting on the spot - the letting go that Nancy White introduced us to last week.
Jane and I realised the day before when we hooked up to practice in Elluminate, that the speaker was 4 hours out with his expected time to arrive in the virtual classroom - he had misread the world clock. At least we had prior warning of a possible no-show!
A panicky email brought the response (on the morning of the scheduled session) that he was double booked and the question - could we reschedule the session? After a bit of back and forwards he managed to free himself at the right time and joined us just as we got underway. Fortunately we had loaded the power-point presentation just in case.
So our back up plan on our back up plan went out the window and we actually went ahead with the original plan! Now I really understand what is meant by 'flexible delivery'!
So some quick responses to Sarah's reflective questions before we move into the second phase of this course:
What is online facilitation?
Facilitating learning in an online environment using different tools and media than in a face to face situation. The tools should be appropriate for the intended outcomes of the learning experience.
What skills do you need as an online facilitator?
Technological competence in the media being used; ability to recognise and respond appropriately to various cues from the learners (eg silence); ability to think on one's feet, ability to be flexible and adaptive as the situation demands.....
How does a facilitator build an online community or network?
By connecting things across people, time and place!!! By asking good questions and by pointing the way.....
What are the key things to remember when facilitating an event, meeting or education course, especially when working with people who are new to online technology?
Relax! Allow for low participation and take-up at first. Persevere to try and help people engage in a way that is meaningful for them. Give clear guidelines in more than one format and repeat these frequently to get people used to the idea/s. Show people what might be the personal benefits to them. Expect technological problems and down-play them. Have a back-up plan and a back-up on the back-up plan!
What is the difference between teaching and facilitation?
Facilitation - the 'making easy' of whatever is the intended outcome.
In my current work as an APL (Assessment of Prior Learning) facilitator, my role is to make it easier (than it would be alone) for the candidate to reflect on their experience, draw out their knowledge and understandings embedded in this experience and construct this into a schema that enables them to present it for assessment against a qualification.
How is this different from teaching a student? Surely a good teacher is responsible for creating learning opportunities for their student/s - which in order to be most useful, also needs to draw upon what the student already knows and help them integrate this with new learning.
Both these roles - teaching and facilitation demand the use of a multitude of different skills and tools depending on what is needed at the time to move the learner towards the expected outcome/s. I am not convinced that the terms cannot be used synonymously.
Facilitator or teacher - the creator and enabler of learning opportunities!
What is netiquette?
Common sense! Although what is 'common' (sense) appears to be an ever- changing feast in our ever-changing technological world. Old norms are moving over for new norms.
There is so much more I could be saying but it is late and I am tired and I would like to have a quick peek at what's ahead for this week. Thanks for any comments on my blogs - I do enjoy getting feedback. I am trying to do the same but have been a bit lax this past two weeks.
Rayna,
ReplyDeleteFor my FO2010 blog post this week I think I'll just put "What Rayna said" and a link here ;-)
Really, you've summed things up so well.
In the last couple of weeks I've been struggling a little with what the difference is between a facilitator and a teacher. Some of the online sessions that I've attended have felt more like discussion groups where the facilitator helps to seed the discussion and act as a guide. Other sessions facilitator is presenting information, as in a lecture style format. Why is that the first example feels like facilitation and the second feels like teaching? How can I take the first approach, but ensure that the learning goals or outcomes I have in mind are met? This is what I'm struggling with.
What Leigh Blackall contends is a big difference is that facilitators make opportunities for the learning...teachers have the power to 'fail' people ie assess them. If you have any queries, drop across to Leigh's blog and ask him what he thinks is the difference: http://leighblackall.blogspot.com/
ReplyDeleteClaire. struggle no more.
ReplyDeletethere are great debates to be had around this distinction between teachers and facilitators, but if you go up one level in the concepts to Educators- hey it all blows away in a puff of smoke. educators are both of these people and more besides.
Willie, you really know how to cut to the chase! Thanks for relieving me of my struggle ;-)
ReplyDelete