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)
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