Self reflection: Facilitation of week 4 (February 2009)

This is a picture taken two weeks ago in Sydney. These are my 3 children (Josie 8, Catie 6, and Seamus 3) standing in front of a giant prehistoric Australian Wombat. This creature existed with dinasours I believe and is considered 'megafauna'!

Now back to the course.....

During week 4 of the facilitation course, I co-facilitated the week along with my capable colleague Cynthia. The topic for the week was the pedagogy on online teaching and learning. I was reasonably confortable with this topic although made sure that I read the resources that were provided in the lecturette and accompanying documents. I discovered some new material and a different way to view the way that synchronous and asynchronous student-student-teacher interactions can offer different learning opportunities. Still, I didn't realize where I was on the learning curve (at the beginning) until our interaction with students began!

Cynthia and I decided to take a discussion board each and I found that I was completely involved in this discussion and was pretty astounded by the effort that it took to facilitate when you are just learning the material yourself. I was relieved that I only had one board to repond too. I did find it hard to respond to postings in a studetn centered way. I found myself thinking about the postings and the persons experiences. Just now I reviewed soem of those posts and I see that I was really responding like a student rather than a facilitator. In my own online classes, I find it easier to facilitate as I have mastery over the material as I did put it together, and I am the content expert teaching the class. When a student posts I can see where they are going and what else they might need to get there. This was not the case on the discussion board for this class.

Our synchronous class was a Wimba session that lasted an hour. Cynthia and I decided to make our session about pedagogy and cultural influences. The problem was that we did not alert our classmates to this interesting topic that we both felt motivated and somewhat competent to present and facilitate a discussion on. We prepared about 6 slides about ethnicity, cultural influences on pedagogy and deliviery of education; diversity among students and how all of this might be approached in the online environment.

The class started a little off kilter and I thought that this was because people weren't quite on our page yet. I recall the silences and did feel a little panicked, but just allowed some time for people to think. As the presentation continued, people did participate, although I did think that there was a little confusion on some topics and I felt that perhaps I was not as attentive to what people offered as examples. I listened to the archive and realized that I probably didn't do too badly, although I only understood the full conversation about what it meant to have an African American President to African Americans AFTER listening to the archive. I do find it difficult to think, listen and talk at once and this was an intense session. My colleague was disappointed in the session, and said that she thought it did not go well or as planned. I was a little suprised as I thought thta she had done well--certainly better than myself. We de-briefed with each other and the instructor and eventually decided that preparing the students for what was to occur was our major error.

So after these experiences I decided that I should facilitate again and have volunteered to take week 12. I have incorporated Wimba into the onlien class that I teach and therefore don't feel the need to do it again, especially since I will be trying to act the expert when I am really the learner! Hopefully I can do a better job with the discussion boards as I will have more time to think about responses!

That's all for now! Back to my thesis writing (UGH)

End of part two: Facilitation of online courses

This section of the facilitation class was about pedagogy of online courses; building community between students and including the instructor; the managerial role of creating and managing a easily navigated and stimulating course; managing the course as it is occuring and the technical role that we must all keep up with.

The pedagogy of the online learning environment is fairly similar to what I would see as a graduate or post graduate f2f class. Principles of effective teaching has some really important points that must be included for a class to reach the learner and be an enriching experience. Firstly the learner must be understood so that the teacher tailors material and the class to their needs. Further than this though, the learners potential and need for growth must be acknowledged and promoted through a full learning experience. Secondly, learning is a construction of meaning individualized for each learner. This means that the course must facilitate all sorts of new thinking (critical, problem solving, creative) and not just one dimesion that the learner may excell in or be very comfortable to them. Constructivism will say that learners create and define their own meaning about a situation. Thirdly, inline with these principles, the learning environemnt created by the instructor must be challenging and stimulating, always asking that bit more of the person. Finally the online class depends on a learner teacher relationship that is positive, supportive, respectful, engaging and fair (thats my one!). Studnets do need to understand that the instructor has time and resouirce limitations. The online environemnt can be a slippery slope for a teacher when the class is large and the studetns keen. Individualizing relationships with studetns takes time and resources. From the teachers point of view these thin out as the class expands in size. So lets say that 20 is a maximum for one facilitator. The other principle is the wider environmental context that exists for the student. The virtual world must be in sync with the real one or application of learning is limited.

There are many roles that the instructor plays in an onlien class and I think that those were covered in the previous post. However one of the most important is the social role of building community. Personally I look forward to more success with this. My experience with a class that I teach from a distance at present has been somewhat jaded by my inability to build community between the students. My relationship with most of them is good, however, they don't want to gel--there are groups and they have been hard to break down. This week I finally detected plagerism from one student. The student copies other student's posts and modifies them as her own. So another role of the online instructor is detective. If the instructor is not observant about what is going on in the class they will not see the real reasons for the breakdown between students. Of course I could not build community between studetns who were aware that someone was cheating. Web ct 8 will have a plagersim detection function for the discussion boards. Good!

Setting the stage invloves getting all of those features up and ready to direct people around the material and course in a quick and orgaized way. Somes function that need attention are a visually engaging front/cover page; orientation to the course in several formats; topical outline and syllabus with required evaluation tasks set out clearly; a calendar with due dates and cues to where studetns are in the course; ways to contact the instructor; discussion boards for course questions, topical boards, and social interactions between students. I'd like to add course goals to that list as the first course had those linked to each module and it was great to just select the icon and self check if you are keeping up and on target. Probably hard to set up.

Managing the course is a time consuming task that requires perseverance, frequent checking in in check email and discussion boards; prompt responses to students questions; measured and timely responses to content posts; directing studetns to material as per their learning experience and need; and ongoing positive regard and support for students.

Soem difficult scenarios that can arise are prolific posting (encourage more student repsonding to students); studetns who don't know what is going on (refer them to the resources and skill them up in successful online student attributes); and plagerism (turnitin) or google text blocks.

Another role of the online teacher is the technically savvy person. From understanding just basic functions (like using frontpage, or writing html correctly, which I don't find that easy incidently!) to be fluent in using the full capabilities of the programs that are available to many of us (Google functions, Adobe photoshop, captivate potential). We had a great wimba session about current programs and dicsussion boards with some great resources posted. Three of the best that I have bookmarked were

internet4classrooms (Tutorials as application to classroom scenarios as to how to use them)

UCR extension (lots of basic and more complex tutorials)

Online journal of distance learning education

Well I have moved forward with what I have learned. I find this class a very well connected and supportive class. I feel like other students really want to help me solve my class challenges and I am very interested to hear about their classes, successes, ideas and challenges too. Being a student in this sort of class has to be the best way to learn how to teach one successfully. I believe this to be true and self evident!