Week 4 Overview, Reading and Resources

Overview

Collaborative learning, especially in teams, has the potential to greatly enrich the learning experience. Selecting appropriate collaborative tools to support online learning is one part of enriching online learning. This week we’ll explore the critical aspects of working with online teams effectively. The success of collaborative learning often hinges on understanding group dynamics in online learning environments and employing appropriate strategies that acknowledge the stages of group development and respond to potential conflicts.

We’ve looked at online facilitation from a variety of perspectives. This week we’ll focus on important strategies and techniques to manage online activities. Critical analysis and formation of new concepts and knowledge requires appropriate facilitator interventions. Determining appropriate “instructor presence” is an ongoing challenge as the needs of online learners change as they move through the course. They learn and develop confidence in the course environment, understand the nature of participation expected and required, and, hopefully, take leadership roles in discussions or group activities.

Facilitator interventions include monitoring and responding to the direction of online debates and discussion to support cognitive presence and help learners “make meaning” of the topics and issues. Effective questions are essential in this process and can help to guide discussion and scaffold the learning without overwhelming the contributions of learners. Facilitators also need to develop new time and information management strategies to help them filter the increase in communication and activity in an online environment.

In Week 4 you will notice that there are TWO mini-sessions :

• Team in Trouble (Facilitating Online Teams)
• Facilitation Techniques and Strategies

Mini-sessions - Introduction

1. Team in Trouble (Facilitating Online Teams)

Based on real situations that occur in collaborative learning, this week’s case study highlights some of the issues that can arise in online teams. Through analysis of the conflict between team members in this case example (extrapolated from email records), you’ll have an opportunity to identify the group dynamics involved and propose responses.

Goals of this mini-session:

• Analyze a detailed case study and make recommendations to resolve and prevent team conflict going forward.
• Propose different solutions or strategies to work effectively with diverse student groups online.

Tasks for participants

• Review the case study documents.
• Identify the critical issues and concerns (team dynamics and mitigation strategies).
• Discuss options to resolve (improve) the situation (drawing on readings or other relevant resources).
• Provide constructive feedback (in the Feedback forum) when the session is complete.

Tasks for facilitator(s)

• Lead the participants through this process (how / where) within the time allowed (Mon-Fri).
• Remind participants to provide feedback at end of the session
• Complete the FLIF (final reflective survey)

2. Facilitation Techniques & Strategies 

The challenges in this mini-session are to identify appropriate levels of instructor presence and suggest ways to improve online discussion in terms of focus, direction, deeper learning, building student confidence and ability to think critically and engage with the course topics. Participants are asked to draw on their own experiences, and the readings and resources for this week to identify specific strategies.

Goals of this mini-session:

• Identify specific facilitator strategies to deepen learning or engage learners in online discussions.
• Create a list of facilitator strategies and how (where?) they might be used to deepen learning or engage students

Tasks for participants

• Review the readings and resources; reflect on experiences.
• Discuss potential strategies to engage students and/or deepen learning.
• List / map / compile / a list of facilitator strategies for discussions.
• Provide constructive feedback (in the Feedback forum) when the session is complete

Tasks for facilitator(s)

• Lead the participants through this process (how / where) within the time allowed (Mon-Fri).
• Remind participants to provide feedback at end of the session
• Complete the FLIF (final reflective survey)

Facilitating Online Teams

Cooperative, collaborative or team-based learning is widely hailed as an effective learning strategy in both online and face-to-face learning environments. In the following short video, RRU faculty member, Doug Hamilton reflects on what has surprised him about students learning together in teams.

Doug Hamilton (1:01)

Glover’s article (2000) looks closely at the value of group work in online environments and applies Tuckman’s Five Stages of Community Development to online group processes.

In teaching in an online MBA program, Lam et al (2005) share their observations of virtual team dynamics, articulating in particular the patterns of collaborative behaviour that help distinguish between poor and high team performance.

Team learning or online group projects present their own set of challenges. In the online course, group dynamics, communication, and conflict can be difficult to discern. Generally, people are quite polite in online teamwork; however, there can be sub-currents that can impair the group's effectiveness to work cohesively. The two-page pamphlet from Royal Roads University, Team Based Learning provides some tips on how to recognize when a team is in trouble. 

All the same dynamics that are at play in Tuckman's Five Stages of Group Development are still at play, but they are just more challenging to track in the online environment. Tuckman's five stages might not happen in sequence, or in every group situation, but understanding the dynamics involved in these different stages helps online instructors anticipate and plan for issues that might arise when students are engaged in team learning.

What happens when conflict occurs between online participants? How does an instructor diagnose, manage, and help to resolve the situation? The Dool, R. (2007, February) article and the short video clips from RRU faculty provide some solid advice on how to deal with team conflicts that may arise in online environment. 

Facilitation Techniques and Strategies

To facilitate effectively in online environments, instructors will need similar skills to the ones they use in face-to-face classrooms with additional requirements that derive from the affordances of online technologies, the challenges of meeting the needs of an increasingly diverse population of learners, and the different ways that communication and activities take place online.

Students in online courses need clear, concise information about the course requirements, design, expectations, and other organizational details. But the most critical aspect of online learning is to engage learners and support learning (usually guided by intended learning outcomes).

While learners may be asked to engage in individual or group activities that take place asynchronously, and may not even be visible in the course environment, the place where the learning is made visible, ideas are analyzed, debated and synthesized is often in the discussion forums. One of the most important skills a facilitators can develop is the ability to establish and maintain appropriate “presence” while stimulating participation in discussions, guiding and maintaining the flow and focus of discussions, interjecting expertise or explanations, nudging learners to make important conceptual connections or identify potential solutions to problems.

Researchers have found that online interaction is not enough to achieve significant learning outcomes in online courses (Garrison, Cleveland-Innes, 2005). Without the timely and thoughtful leadership of a knowledgeable facilitator or instructor, students are not likely to achieve deeper learning or derive meaning from online courses. There are various guidelines and suggestions of how facilitators can help students achieve the kind of learning that is generally expected of higher education. Much depends on the subject being taught, the level of learning and the anticipated outcomes of the course.

Example: Indicators presented by researchers using a Community of Inquiry framework (Vaughan et al, 2013)

1. Maintain a comfortable climate for learning.
2. Focus the discussion on specific issues.
3. Identify areas of agreement/disagreement.
4. Seek to reach consensus/understanding.
5. Encourage, acknowledge, and reinforce contributions.
6. Draw in participants, prompting discussion.
7. Assess and make explicit the efficacy of the process.
8. Refer to resources, e.g., textbook, articles, Internet, personal experiences.
9. Summarize the discussion T

he challenges for facilitators are to identify the techniques and strategies that match the courses they teach and the kinds of learning they want students to achieve and, how to accomplish these goals without devoting too much time to each course. Effective information and time management strategies are helpful in preventing too many late nights online, responding to student needs or monitoring and directing discussions and activities.

Online Management Strategies

For the new online facilitator, reading and responding to postings, providing high-quality feedback, and answering learner questions responsively can often be overwhelming.

Highly-effective, experienced instructors have developed strategies for managing time and expectations in online courses. It’s a good idea to review your course before you begin teaching to help determine what strategies you’ll employ to manage it effectively. Will you have virtual office hours? Will you have regular and/or consistent times that you’ll be online? Are participants aware of your specific facilitation style?

Wherever possible, these strategies should be transparent to your participants, so they clearly understand your expectations and boundaries.

One of the best ways that faculty members can effectively manage their online course environments is to ask questions of themselves that help to clarify how they should be designing, facilitating, and analyzing learning activities that promote effective student-student interactions. By seeking answers to these questions faculty members stay focused on what’s essential in maintaining and managing an effective learning environment.

Experienced faculty at RRU were asked to share the top three things they'd share with new online instructors. Take a moment and watch the following videos.

Mike Thompson (:47)

Jen Walinga (1:33)

Alicia Wilkes (1:12)

Doug Hamilton (2:41)

Read and View

Readings (Teamwork)

The facilitation team for this week's topic may choose to substitute an alternate reading for this week

• Glover, N. (2003). Group Projects as a Catalyst for Online Learning Communities. California Virtual Campus.
  Note: While it's a little dated, this reading gives a good overview of Tuckman's five stages of group dynamics, and provides some tips about how to facilitate teams as they move through the stages.
  
  
• Lam, W., Chua, A., Williams, J.B., & Lee, C. (2005). Virtual teams: Surviving or thriving? Proceedings of the Australasian Society for Computers in Learning in Tertiary Education Annual Conference, Brisbane, Australia (pp. 357-360).
  Note: This article is written by faculty who have a strong focus on team work that contributes to as much as 50% of student grades. Some good strategy suggestions for helping teams perform well together.
  
  
• RRU - CTET. (2008, Fall). Team Based Learning. Tools for Teaching (T4T) Tipsheet, 1(3), 1-2.
  Note: This tip sheet is a short and sweet strategy document.
  
  
• Dool, R. (2007, February). Best practices: Mitigating Conflict in Online Student Teams. eLearn Magazine, 2007(2), 2.
  Note: This article directly addresses the issue of conflict in teams. It gives effective, solid strategies based on experience.

Readings (Facilitation Techniques & Strategies)

• Review Week 1: Overview, Readings and Resources, pages on Effective Questions Strategies, Presence and Learning (Facilitating Learning Online - April 2015)
  
  
• Vaughan, N.D., Cleveland-Innes, M., & D.R. Garrison, (2013) Chapter 3: Facilitation, Teaching in Blended Learning Environments: Creating and Sustaining Communities of Inquiry, pp45-61, retrieved from http://www.aupress.ca/books/120229/ebook/03_Vaughan_et_al_2013-Teaching_in_Blended_Learning_Environments.pdf (PDF, Chapter 3 only)
  Note: If you don’t have much time, review the ideas for online facilitation in Table 3.2. Facilitating cognitive presence face-to-face and online of the Vaughan, et al chapter.

• Noviki, A. (Dec. 4, 2013 blog post) Using Online Discussions to Encourage Critical Thinking, retrieved from Duke Center for Instructional Technology http://cit.duke.edu/blog/2013/12/using-online-discussions-to-encourage-critical-thinking/  Note:  Novicki blog post contains downloadable documents - tip sheets and rubric
  
  
• University of Waterloo, Centre for Teaching Excellence, Online Discussions: Tips for Instructors (web page), retrieved from https://uwaterloo.ca/centre-for-teaching-excellence/teaching-resources/teaching-tips/developing-assignments/blended-learning/online-discussions-tips-instructors

View  (optional but useful!)

• COFAOnline, Learning to Teach Online, University of New South Wales, College of Fine Arts - retrieved from http://online.cofa.unsw.edu.au/learning-to-teach-online/ltto-episodes
  • Conducting effective online discussions, (2011) video 6:42
  • Managing your time when teaching online, (2010) video 4:57
  • Engaging and motivating students, (2011) video 6:04
  • Online teamwork and collaboration, (2011) video 5:40
• Teachtufts Youtube channel, video 3:06 (posted May 7, 2012)
  :
  Diane McKay Assistant Professor, Tufts Friedman School of Nutrition and Scientist, retrieved from
  
  
  
• TravelinEdMan Youtube channel by Professor Curtis Bonk, Indiana University Bloomington, School of Education, 3. Managing an Online Course: Discussion Forums, video 10:06, retrieved from

Insights from Experienced Faculty: Working With Teams

Doug Hamilton (3:02)

Jen Walinga (:34)

Advice on Working with Teams

Jen Walinga (1:58)

Alicia Wilkes (1:48)

Doug Hamilton (2:05)