Week 5 Back Pocket Strategies

1. Welcome Week 5 Facilitators!

In this final week there are 2 mini-sessions:

1. Assessing Online Participation
2. Looking Back / Looking Forward 

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.

2. Mini Session: Assessing Participation

This mini-session allows participants to share their experiences of self-assessing their own participation throughout the workshop and apply what they have learned to a discussion of the issues surrounding formal assessment of participation in online courses. Is it fair? Is it necessary? Is it meaningful for students?

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). Remember that people will be in "wrap up" mode. So, even though this topic is of practical interest and aims to solve a real world problem most of us have in teaching online, just be aware that there is a lot going on – your instructions and expectations should be very clear, and the design/timeline of this activity should be tight. In the time allotted, and on a schedule that you determine, participants need to: 

• identify the issues surrounding assessment of participation in online courses
• share insights garnered from weekly self-reflection on participation
• 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

Debate Format

The debate format goes something like this:

• Split people into two sides – one side argues for, one against.
• Choose a clear proposition statement (e.g., "it is possible to effectively and fairly assess participation online")
• Create a timeline/expectations for how the debate will play out, e.g.,
• Day 1: connect with team and generate initial response to the proposition
• Day 3 by noon: both sides post initial position statement
• Day 5, by noon: post rebuttals to initial posts
• Day 5, evening, post wrap up, decide (or vote/poll?) "winner"?
• Last day: participants give you feedback on your facilitation

Gather and share perspectives.

Remind everyone to complete the readings, reflect on their use of a rubric to self-assess their participation throughout the course, and do one or more of the following:

• Post their perspective on the problem (their experience may be the same or different as what is described in the readings, or, they may not have a problem at all!)
• Explain their strategy for assessing participation (online, in FLO, or in class if they have never taught online) and any challenges they experience with their strategy
• Talk to (or interview) one or two others about their approach, challenges, and strategies for assessing participation. Share and comment on these.
• Create and share an "ideal", detailed rubric for grading participation in an online course (if they teach online, it should be for a real course). There are TONS of examples in the readings and elsewhere online. In doing this, they should provide enough information that someone could pick it up and use it. And they should indicate why this is their best solution.

A final note: by now, you have seen a number of tools used for a variety of purposes (poll, quiz, survey, forum, Collaborate, wiki, blogs, etc) – would you like to make use of any of those? If so, and you need our help to set it up, just ask!

3. Mini Session: Looking Back / Looking Forward

This final activity is typically facilitated by the FLO facilitators with the assistance of volunteers. However, depending on the number of participants in the workshop, it may be transformed into a full mini-session.