Week 2 Notes - FDO: The Deep Dive

Introduction

Now we have looked at how you will successfully launch FLO (by attending to pre-course preparation and Week 1), it's time to do the "deep dive" into the rest of the course: Weeks 2 - 5.

Each week in FLO is designed to provide resources and activities we consider "essentials" for facilitating online learning effectively.

The units follow a predictable pattern:

• readings/resources
• mini-sessions led by facilitation teams
• reflection and applying learning (journal shares, FLIF)

We recommend FLO Facilitators lead a mini session as a way to model for others how it can be done. In other words, the facilitation team that week is comprised of the FLO Facilitators. Here are some additional ideas to make the facilitation process visible:

• Make your planning forum  visible to all participants.
• Prepare the FLIF in a document instead of using the quiz tool and share it with all participants.

Taking on a mini-session is optional, of course. However, we have found that tasking a participant team with mini-session preparation when the workshop is barely underway creates a great deal of angst. 

Once the mini-sessions begin, they become a focus for the units, and so your work expands to include attending to both the "meta" part of the FLO workshop, as well as the people designing and facilitating mini-sessions. This is why putting the huge effort into Week 1 is important. You'll need to have helped most participants to be on board, able to navigate the site, and have a fairly good sense of the structure and philosophy/approach of FLO so that you can begin putting your energy and attention elsewhere.

FLO Week 2: Diversity

In the FLO Sandbox review these materials to become familiar with the details, learning outcomes, and suggested approaches. This, combined with your own experience, may "twig" other ideas that you could add to the plan and suggest to your participants.

• The Week 2 Overview 
• The Activity Plan in the Facilitation Teams Workspace

In this unit we highlight the "big idea" that people learn in different ways, and so we should aim to include a variety in our activities and content types - a mix of individual and team, text and media, etc.

Technical Details:  you will need to be able to:

• create and populate teams in the LMS (Moodle)
• support the people who are using tools other than the forum. For example, for the wiki you need to know how to create and link new pages, fiddle with tables, write the instructions on the main page and, if the wiki includes several pages, create navigation structures.

FLO Week 3: Responsive Facilitation

• Responsive Facilitation - focus on facilitation issues in supporting online learners, drawing on some of the ideas around teaching presence and exploring specific facilitation responses to support students and to encourage better learning.

In the FLO Sandbox review these materials  to become familiar with the details, learning outcomes, and suggested approaches. This, combined with your own experience, may "twig" other ideas that you could add to the plan and suggest to your participants.

• The Week 3 Overview
• The Activity Plan in the Facilitation Teams Workspace

Tips:

• You should be facile with the recommended tools to support collaborative group work for this mini-session: Google Docs, Wiki.
• You should also be familiar with tools for creating multimedia resources such as screencasts or videos  in case your mini-session facilitators need help or inspiration.
  
• The case study is a good option for somebody who doesn't have a great deal of online course experience because much of the preparation is already done.

FLO Week 4: Collaboration

The mini-session for this week is:

• Case: Team in Trouble - This is a story about, well, a team in trouble! It is based on real experiences of the team coach at RRU, and is intended to reflect some of the common conflicts that can arise in teams who are dealing with the expectation of working together under the pressure of deadlines.
  

In the FLO Sandbox review these materials to become familiar with the details, learning outcomes, and suggested approaches. This, combined with your own experience, may "twig" other ideas that you could add to the plan and suggest to your participants.

• The Week 4 Overview
• The Activity Plan in the Facilitation Teams Workspace

Also in Week 4:

• People are asked to check in on their "self-assessment" of participation. Use the results of this poll to draw attention to how they will be elaborating on the self-assessment process during week 5.

Tip:

This is a good time for mini-session facilitators to think about:

• how much team work is enough or too much in a course?
• how do team, individual and class activites inter-relate?
• should team composition stay constant or change throughout a course?
• how can flow and balance be achieved while ensuring participants are challenged and supported?

FLO Week 5: Looking Back, Looking Forward & Assessing Participation

Week 5 is about bringing the workshop to a close, inviting participants to do a final reflection and make concrete plans for next steps.

The main activities this week are:

• Assessing Participation - the Facilitation Team for this "stream" activity prepares a summary report and plans a sharing event for this final week.
• Looking Back / Looking Forward - this is a summative, reflective learning activity. Participants look back on learning in FLO, and make concrete plans for next steps. It is typically facilitated by FLO facilitators with an open invitation for volunteers to lead or assist.

In the FLO Sandbox review these materials to become familiar with the details, learning outcomes, and suggested approaches. This, combined with your own experience, may "twig" other ideas that you could add to the plan and suggest to your participants.

• The Week 5 Overview
• The Activity Plan for the Self-Assess Participation stream the Facilitation Teams Workspace

 Tips

• One challenge for facilitators during this week is that people are tired. Keep that in mind when considering the volume and complexity of assigned tasks. 
• Assessment is a topic that most people can relate to and are enthusiastic about discussing. A sharing event that draws on personal experience will jump start participation. 
• Be sure to manage time carefully because the course ends on Friday.

FLO Units: Adding your own

As mentioned elsewhere, the FLO has evolved over time, and we hope it continues to do so! 

Technology continues to change, and should be reflected here (will it soon be time for a unit on apps? on mobile learning?). Also, "hot topics" in education, like flipping classrooms and MOOCs (should we have a flipped unit?) can and should be incorporated when they make sense.

One thing we hope is that we (all of us, in this community of FLO facilitators) can continue to share our work. If you invent a great new mini-session, it would be ideal if the rest of us could hear about it. RRU and BCcampus are committed to keeping the OER version of the FLO available.

Maybe we could also agree to contribute new FLO units, mini-sessions, etc to a central place, like BCcampus' Shareable Online Learning Resources, SOLR and/or here in SCoPE?