Facilitating Learning Online - APR2015-OER

This mini-session explores key characteristics of effective facilitation techniques and strategies that can deepen learning and engage learners. Issues of time management and appropriate teacher presence should be addressed.

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: 

• discuss different strategies to engage students and deepen learning in online discussions
• prepare an organized listing or map of strategies with an explanation of the selections and/or ideas of where they could be used in future contexts
• 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

To help participants analyze the materials:

Divide the participants into two groups and ask one group to analyze from the perspective of a student online; the other group will take the facilitator perspective.

You could:

• Use Table 3.1. Facilitating social presence face-to-face and online - page 50 in the Vaughan, N.D. reference found in the Readings (Facilitation Techniques & Strategies)
• Review the strategies for establishing social presence online found in the “Online” column in Table 3.1.
• Ask each group to review and discuss the suggestions, wearing “student” or “facilitator” hats.
• Establish a simple ranking system to identify the strategies each group would find most useful.
• Ask the groups to find a creative way to share their “top 3” strategies.

Another idea:

• Ask participants to review and nominate a reading or video provided in the Read and View page in Week 4: Overview, Readings and Resources that they think contains the most useful (relevant) strategies or tips for deepening learning or managing online discussions effectively. Ask them to discuss what criteria they used to make their recommendations. What did they feel were the strengths and weaknesses or the strategies presented in the resource they chose.
• Follow the discussion closely and post occasional “Socratic questions” to clarify, question assumptions, or encourage participants to think about why the discussion is important. You can find examples of Socratic questions in the blog post from Duke University.

Keep it simple and ask participants to share strategies for summarizing a discussion forum topic. Have them pair up and write a summary of a specific discussion forum in this workshop. Explore the use of the Marginalia annotation tool available in the FLO discussion forums.