Week 3 Back Pocket Strategies (both teams)

Welcome Week 3 Facilitators!

In Week 3 you there are two mini-sessions:

1. Course Review Task Force (Case Study)
2. Choosing Your Tools

In this document you’ll find suggestions for how you might facilitate your mini-session. Remember: "Back Pocket Strategies" are ideas, suggestions, and possibilities -- not requirements. They are intended to help – not limit – the way you facilitate your mini-session.

The process of facilitating mini-sessions is explained in the Workshop Handbook. The Overview, Readings and Resources for this week provides the foundation for the learning activities. Use the intended learning outcomes for this week's mini-session to guide your planning and facilitation.

Caution! With two mini-sessions taking place in one week, you’ll have to be careful to make your directions to participants very, very clear. 

Role of the FLO facilitators:

One of the FLO facilitators will be assigned to support your mini-session. Involve the FLO facilitator in your communications and planning before and during the mini-session to:

• avoid conflicting due dates between the two mini-sessions running this week
• publish your instructions, dates, links and resources in the appropriate areas of the workshop
• consult on the choice of tools to support your activities, and
• refine your ideas and plans to ensure that your mini-session works.

Mini Session: Course Review Task Force

This mini-session uses a prepared case study that highlights challenges related to the discussions and readings of last week - the diverse needs of adult learners online. Once you’ve read the case study documents and contacted your co-facilitator(s) (team members), take a moment and review the suggestions that follow.

Reminder!

Read the Overview, Readings and Resources before you begin planning. Connect with your team early.

Your tasks:

Lead the participants through this process (with clear instructions and timelines). In the time allotted, and on a schedule that you determine, participants need to: 

• read the case study materials
• look around for other information or sources (optional, but worth a google)
• share their thoughts in the collaborative tool you have chosen
• prepare a short summary of the group's conclusions
• give feedback on this mini-session activity

Assessing learning:

Your mini-session's intended learning outcomes list some suggestions for assessment criteria. Although you are not asked to formally assess the participant’s learning, you’ll be asked to complete a final reflective survey (FLIF - Feel, Like Improve, Feedback) and share your thoughts about the learning that occurred.

Ideas for facilitating this activity

You could follow this basic four-step process:

1. Create, and share with participants, a brief overview and orientation to the topic and activities you have planned. Include any information about timeline expectations.
2. Select a method of engaging participants in the activity - will you use a different tool to facilitate group communication or debate? Will you ask the participants to do additional research to add to the case study analysis or encourage them to draw on their own experiences?
3. Present carefully crafted questions and facilitate the discussion, providing clarification, supplementary instruction, guidance, coaching and feedback as required. Write questions that facilitate critical thinking, application, synthesis, close and thoughtful reading.
4. Summarize and conclude your mini-session.

More ideas - be more or less directive - including things like:

• Define (even assign) roles and tasks to individuals (e.g., you could split the group into "course" and "instructor" and have each focus on those 2 aspects of the case)
• Provide interim deadlines (e.g., identify key issues by “X” date, generate draft list of recommendations by “Y” date, etc)
• Decide (or not) what shape the final product (their recommendations) should take. You could suggest they present in any format that makes sense to communicate their ideas (list, table, diagram, collage, video, narrated PowerPoint), or you could assign a format.
• When providing choice, it's a good idea to ask your learners to commit to their choice by a certain date – this keeps you in the loop, and ensures they're on track.

Above all - don't forget that your participants have a limited to time to complete the activity so keep it simple!

Mini session: Choosing Your Tools

The purpose of this mini-session is to explore ways to select the best collaborative tool to support and engage learners online.

Reminder!

Read the Overview, Readings and Resources before you begin planning. Connect with your team early.

Your tasks:

Lead the participants through this process (with clear instructions and timelines). In the time allotted, and on a schedule that you determine, participants need to: 

• follow your instructions as to how you suggest they analyze the pedagogical or other issues that will affect the choice of a tool
• learn how to use the tool to test the options that they would use in a learning activity
• discuss issues surrounding the selection of different tools
• prepare a short summary of the group's conclusions
• give feedback on this mini-session activity

Assessing learning:

Your mini-session's intended learning outcomes list some suggestions for assessment criteria. Although you are not asked to formally assess the participant’s learning, you’ll be asked to complete a final reflective survey (FLIF - Feel, Like Improve, Feedback) and share your thoughts about the learning that occurred.

Ideas for facilitating this activity

One way to approach this tool exploration is to ask participants to approach the same topic, using different tools... then see what happens!

Here's an example:

Design an activity that has 2-3 issues or topics to explore. Try to select tools that might highlight the differences in asynchronous or synchronous use.

For example:

Issue or Topic: List 5 important things for Teams to consider before they begin a team project, then draft a sample team charter (1-2 paragraphs)

Tools: Identify 3-5 different collaboration tools - be sure to have a mix of synchronous and asynchronous tools. Choose tools that are readily available to all students. For instance: discussion forum, wiki, Blackboard Collaborate, Skype, Google Hangout (and other authoring tools).

Issue or Topic: Explore the affordances of a tool. How could the tool be used to make a learning activity more flexible and allow a greater number of students to participate? Can the tool be used synchronously or asynchronously? How will the information be presented.

Tools: Divide the class into 3-5 teams and assign a different tool to each team. Teams should be given clear instructions to to help them use the tool.

Finally, craft a sharing and reflection activity that gets at the intended learning outcomes for this mini-session.

Examples:

• Conduct a Collaborate session where the class shares and discusses the strengths & challenges of various online collaboration tools
• Develop an online survey (Fluid Survey?) to gather the ideas. Share results with the class.
• Use a collaborative document tool like Google Docs or a online whiteboard like Padlet.
• Create a table in a wiki and invite participants to construct a matrix of strengths & challenges of various online collaboration tools or kinds of learning activities best suited for synchronous or asynchronous online engagement.