FACILITATING ONLINE LEARNING: REFLECTIONS
The facilitation course was extremely informative and provided an enormous amount of learning and opportunity to build both skills and resources.
Firstly, I will reflect briefly upon the third unit of the course and then provide an overall reflection of the course. The third unit included content of four major areas that are all just essential componets of successful facilitation. I had never really considered the impact that the online environment has on types of assessment that can be used in a course. The typical type of assessment that I loathe, but am quite accustomed too is one hwere the students do a midterm exam/assignment and an end of term assignment. However, the nature of the online course allows a more cumulative type of protocol to be designed. In part 3 of the course, I was introduced to formative, summative and authentic type assessment and thought about how these might fit in a course. Summative might be done in the form of quizes or short exams so that students can check that they are understanding content. Formative might be included as a way for students to keep complete self directed learning and extend their skills (the group project in this class to create an online guide). I find this hard to differentiate from authentic, such as creating a rubric for a real class (one discussion posting). Instructional rubrics are also just a great way to both instruct and inform the student about what sorts of competencies will be required and marked. This was a great week for me!
Ethics and cultural isses where covered within unit 3 also. I am familiar with some strategies to address culture, but the most interesting part of this week was the idea of a global learning environment. My experience of distance learning has been that the teacher is somewhere and the students all located elsewhere together. Hence the instructor is the odd one out and just naturally accomodates. This idea wasn't really discussed in the readings. Ethics issues related to the education of willing learners who are paying for the service were well placed for discussion. A very important topic.
Common problems that occur within online classes was really interesting and followed nicely after we learned about ways to manage the course before and after it started. I facilitated this week and found the topics both challenging and realistic. This brings me to group work and collaborative and co-operative learning. The assignment for the course was to create a breif reference guide for a new online instructor. Our group struggled with co-operative learning, although two of us co-operated and collaborated to create the tool. We ran into a bit of a problem (see group experience)
Overall this course taught me how a student feels in a class that is very busy, demanding and stimulating. I benefited from the weekly synchronous and asynchronous learning tools tremendously. After the previous course, I was not interested in using such synchronous tools as Wimba. However, this time, I have done the complete turn around and have incorportaed it totally into courses that I teach on a weekly basis. Other skills that I have learned include: course set up and maangement techniques; strategies to create different evaluation tasks that are better for students and easier on the instructor; ways to engage students in a social onlien classroom including using ice breakers and engaging facilitation techniques; ways to address conflict and problems, better understanding of the technical role as well as technology (wimba; podcasts; wiki; video material and sites like youtube and google); and overall understanding of how important a well oranized and easily navigated course is to a successful student experience. From this point of view I look forward to the course design subject that is up next!
