Reflections on the Online Facilitation Experience

Assignment Three: Reflections on the Online Facilitation Experience Vanessa Thomas LRNT 505 - Royal Roads University April 15th, 2012

Reflections on the Online Facilitation Experience Reflections on the Online Facilitation Experience Voki introduction

Hello! As you can see, I thought I would start this assignment off by using my very own Voki. After a lot of consideration, I realized that I wanted to present this assignment using a couple of the technologies that I learned about during the course and Vokis are just one of those technologies. You may notice that my assignment is being hosted on the Wordpress site that Abir and I used for our seminar. I am also posting a PDF transcript of this introductory Voki and I am including an APA-formatted, Microsoft Word version of this entire assignment. You can find that below this Voki, just in case you would prefer not to navigate through the Wordpress pages that I have designed for this assignment. Each of these presentation decisions were made carefully; they each, in a way, represent an element of what I learned throughout this course. I will explain that all shortly but, for now, I would just like to welcome you to this site. I hope you enjoy this web-based presentation format and please do not hesitate to contact me if you have any questions or concerns. Thanks! Has my philosophy changed? Yes, my philosophy of online learning has absolutely changed. When I started this course, I was completely new to the world of learning theory. I wrote my original philosophy of online facilitation after reading through a mere eleven or twelve articles about learning theory. Throughout the entire first assignment, I felt woefully underprepared and I struggled to explain my existing ideas about online facilitation within the framework of learning theories. Although I ultimately felt comfortable with what I submitted for the first assignment, I was anxiously looking forward to refining my ideas about facilitation. Thankfully, this course introduced me to a lot of new information through a variety

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of channels. Abir Saadi, my co-facilitation partner, proved to be one of my greatest sources for knowledge. Abir was incredibly patient and helpful in the weeks leading up to our cofacilitated seminar; she shared her resources and knowledge with me freely and was never once condescending about my confusion or my questions. Through Abir, I learned about connectivism, social constructivism and the importance of reflective practice. Of course, the experiential learning component of this class also helped me immensely. During my co-facilitated seminar, I was able to test some of my ideas about online facilitation and, during the seminars hosted by my peers, I was able to observe how others interpreted and presented their philosophies of online facilitation. This was incredibly useful in encouraging me to progress through the six cognitive processes identified by Anderson and Kathwohl (as cited in Heer, 2012, p. 2). For example, when I encountered an activity designed by one of my peers that I struggled to understand, I could deconstruct why the activity was confusing to me whether that was because the activity was too vague or, perhaps, because I misread the requirements and then consider how I would change the activity to solve the confusion. I was also able to create my own activity a role-playing game designed to encourage my peers to think about diversity in the online classroom and the activity allowed my peers to give me feedback on a product that I had designed. Through this feedback, I was able to see how the scope of my activity may have been too broad and overwhelming. A simple adjustment of the information I included in the activity might have made it more accessible to my peers, but I may have never realized that without the ongoing conversations I had throughout this course. Additionally, through these conversations and this experiential learning activity, I was introduced to social learning theory and andragogy.

Reflections on the Online Facilitation Experience How has my philosophy changed? All of the aforementioned theories and experiences have contributed to a massive revamp in the foundation of my philosophy for online facilitation. Admittedly, I have

decided to continue using the succinct phrase pay attention to summarize my philosophy because I believe this phrase appropriately captures the dynamic nature of the online facilitation process. However, the rationale behind why I believe that flexibility [is] incredibly important [to] my role as an online facilitator (Thomas, 2012, p.4) has completely changed. For example, I now know that connectivism, which acknowledges networked information technology as a significant part of learning processes (Dunaway, 2011, p. 676), is fundamental to my philosophy of online facilitation. I completely agree that "students learn and create knowledge by connecting to information networks composed of myriad information resources" (Dunaway, 2011, p. 680) and I believe that encouraging students to share their information resources and collaborate in real-time electronically is a very effective way to stimulate learning. Of course, by encouraging students to share resources electronically, my role as an online facilitator becomes different in every situation. Some students might share an overwhelming amount of resources while others might share insufficient or inappropriate resources. I will have to pay attention and remain flexible enough to appropriately respond to the unique scenario that arises in every group of learners. This might seem trivial to some experienced online facilitators, but it was a dimension of the online facilitation process that I had previously not considered. Social constructivism and social learning theory also presented ideas that I had not considered during my first attempt at writing a philosophy of online facilitation. While I

Reflections on the Online Facilitation Experience

correctly identified constructivism as a component of my philosophy, I neglected to realize that constructivism focuses heavily on individual learning methods. Contrarily, social constructivism and social learning theory claim that genuine learning occurs when students are actively engaged in the process of discussing ideas, interpreting meaning, and constructing knowledge (Gordon, 2008, p. 324) with others. Based on my personal experience in this course alone, I can see how group discussions and knowledge sharing can improve the online learning experience. Since online facilitation can be in a one-to-one or one-to-many format, I believe it is very necessary for my philosophy of online facilitation to adequately reflect both individual and group learning methods. This simply did not factor into my original philosophy of online facilitation. There were other required readings in this course that also presented ideas I had not considered. Although not specifically tied to a single learning theory, I felt that Baltes (2010) provided a lot of useful insights about culturally responsive teaching (p. 294). Baltes (2010) argued that learners should be offered a choice on how to absorb and comprehend [course] content (p. 295) because some students regardless of the culture they come from have a difficult time learning through certain mediums. Baltes (2010) also rightly pointed out that not all students (local or international) have the necessary equipment to produce (or even watch and listen) to such multimedia (p. 295). I believe that both of Baltes points are true and I have already adjusted my online content development to incorporate them. Indeed, those reasons are why I created a PDF transcript of this assignments Voki introduction. Unfortunately, I had not considered either of these points in my original philosophy of online facilitation. Hbler & Bell (2003) also pointed out an aspect of online facilitation that I had not considered: the importance of integrating

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humor in online classrooms (p. 277-278). I now consider humor to be a critical and delicate element of online learning communities and I intend to incorporate it into my future online facilitation experiences. In short, much of the foundation for my philosophy of online facilitation has changed and I believe that I currently have a much more holistic perspective on online facilitation. That being said, I am still sure that this philosophy is a work in progress. Just today, I found conference proceedings about the effect of communities of practice in eLearning (Hamburg, Engert, Petschenka, Marin, 2008). I do not have time to thoroughly read the article, reflect on it and then incorporate it into this philosophy, but it may change my opinions on the role that communities of practice may play in online learning. Tomorrow, I might read an article in the Harvard Business Review that causes me to realize I am not thinking enough about the dimensions of mLearning. It is difficult to know exactly how, if or when my philosophy will change, but I am certain that it will continue to shift as I become further involved with eLearning. How was my philosophy reflected in my co-facilitation? I believe my revised philosophy of online facilitation was reflected during my cofacilitation in at least four ways: 1. We developed the content so that it accommodated a number of learning styles. We included a video section, a readings section, a casual discussion section and daily comics for those who wanted a humorous take on diversity. 2. We encouraged our peers to share their favorite videos, songs, images and web resources in response to each of our activities. The intent of this was to have our learners share some of their favorite networked information, which is an

Reflections on the Online Facilitation Experience important new element of my philosophy.

3. Prior to the start of our seminar, Abir and I had decided to play an active role in the seminar discussions. However, when the role playing game failed to generate much conversation, we did not immediately start contributing our ideas to the discussion. We waited, we checked in with our peers and we offered to help if anyone needed it. Within 24 hours, a significant conversation was underway amongst our learners and we received incredibly positive feedback on the activity. I think this is a great example of paying attention in the online learning environment. 4. Although we included a high-bandwidth synchronous session, we provided a transcript for those who could not attend. Similarly, we provided transcripts for any videos that we designed for the course. I believe this is crucial in the online environment. How did learning theory guide my co-facilitation? To be honest, learning theory guided my co-facilitation in an indirect way. Baltes (2010), which isnt tied directly to any single learning theory, guided much of my cofacilitation primarily because Abir and I decided that we wanted his article to guide our seminar. Many of my other decisions were actually guided by my years of experience as a professional web developer. There is a surprising amount of crossover between some learning theories and the best practices that I learned in the world of web development. Learning theory only truly guided my co-facilitation when I needed to have an academic theory to support some of my decisions. Was building community important? What ways did I facilitate building community? Community building was absolutely important. Despite the fact that many of our

Reflections on the Online Facilitation Experience peers had already formed a community prior to the beginning of our seminar, we still needed to ensure that they felt comfortable in the new electronic setting that our seminar presented. To make our peers comfortable upon their arrival at our site, we provided introductory videos for our site. We also provided a clearly labeled Help! section in the event that one of our peers was feeling overwhelmed. Additionally, we decided to use our first activity to generate a lot of discussion based on personal beliefs. We were concerned that some of our peers might not be comfortable responding to the question, but we were fortunate enough that most people responded openly. I believe that this activity helped to build our peers learning community. The synchronous session was also effective in building community because we used the hour-long discussion to check in with our peers and determine whether or not we needed to provide them with more support. The

conversation resulted in many candid comments and we received a lot of positive feedback after the session. What were my goals? What issues did I confront? I had a slightly different set of personal goals than the goals that Abir and I agreed on. Together, Abir and I wanted to: base our seminar on Baltes (2010) Affirming Diversity in an Online Course, and deliver our content in a form that accommodated a diverse group of learners.

We wanted to design our course so that we were discussing diversity in online facilitation and also demonstrating what an online course that accommodates diversity can look like. Due to our extensive planning, we did not encounter too many issues with achieving our goals. However, we were unable to offer materials in a variety of languages,

Reflections on the Online Facilitation Experience we did not have time to prepare materials for the visually impaired and we inadvertently excluded listing a time zone that one of our learners was living in. We had also agreed to post new information daily and that proved to be a lot more work than we had expected.

Overall, though, I feel like the issues that we confronted were not serious enough to have a hugely negative impact on our seminar. As mentioned, my personal goals were different than our team goals. I had a slightly more basic set of three goals. I wanted to get experience: facilitating an online course, developing materials with a complete stranger, and engaging with and immersing in another cohort.

The last goal was of particular importance to me. LRNT505 is the first course nonInterdisciplinary Studies course in my Master of Arts in Interdisciplinary Studies. The remaining nine courses in my graduate studies degree will require me to arrive to a new cohort and integrate with them. I imagine that my continued success will be highly dependent on my ability to engage with and immerse myself in each new cohort. I certainly confronted a couple of issues while trying to achieve my goals. My co-facilitation partner and I have very different writing styles and, although the web writing professional in me wanted to ensure that we never posted materials in the passive voice and that we never posted pages with content that exceeded 700 words, I simply had to accept that I could not control all aspects of the text we produced. What decisions did I make and why? I made hundreds of decisions in the weeks prior to my co-facilitation experience and hundreds more decisions while the seminar was running. These decisions ranged from

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simple layout decisions to complex decisions about accommodating diversity in the online environment. I could write another 2500 word paper outlining my decisions, so I am unsure of what to include here. Without being specific about the decision, I can guarantee that I made each choice after considering the weight of best practices, my desire to truly share this experience with Abir and not dominate our co-facilitation, my gut instincts and the comments of our peers in the previous sessions. What were the strengths and weaknesses of my facilitation as noted in the peer feedback? We received a surprising amount of positive feedback after our seminar. At least one of my peers claimed that the role-playing activity I designed was probably the best thought-provoking task (Slacoursiere, 2012) that he had been confronted with since his residency last summer. In the private feedback survey, one of our peers stated that he or she appreciated how [Abir and I] both appeared to be there the whole week (anonymous author, online survey, March 18, 2012). I can honestly say that I received no overt criticism of my facilitation. However, I am aware that some of my peers felt overwhelmed by the scope of the role-playing game and, if I were to recreate it, I would absolutely alter the structure of the activity. What is next? This course has been incredibly worthwhile for me. I have learned far more in the past 10 weeks than I initially thought I would. I feel much better equipped for future online and in-person facilitation endeavors. For the sake of keeping this final assignment truly accessible to a variety of learning styles, I would be happy to set up a synchronous session to further discuss these reflections. I hope that I can carry my experiences from this course

Reflections on the Online Facilitation Experience with me for a very long time and use them to inform all of my future facilitation experience, whether they are in-person or online.

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Reflections on the Online Facilitation Experience References Anderson, B. (2004). Dimensions of learning and support in an online community. Open Learning, 19(2), 183-190. Retrieved from https://ezproxy.royalroads.ca/login? url=http://search.ebscohost.com.ezproxy.royalroads.ca/login.aspx? direct=true&db=eric&AN=EJ694825&site=ehost-live Baltes, B. (2010). Affirming diversity in an online course. Campus-Wide Information Systems, 27(5), 293-302. Retrieved from http://dx.doi.org.ezproxy.royalroads.ca/10.1108/10650741011087739

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Charalambos, V., Michalinos, Z., & Chamberlain, R. (2004, January). The design of online learning communities: Critical issues. Educational Media International, 4(2), 135143. Retrieved from https://ezproxy.royalroads.ca/login? url=http://search.ebscohost.com.ezproxy.royalroads.ca/login.aspx? direct=true&db=aph&AN=13911028&site=ehost-live Cobern, W. W. (1993). Constructivism. Journal of Educational & Psychological Consultation, 4(1), 105-112. doi:10.1207/s1532768xjepc0401_8 Dunaway, M.K. (2011). Connectivism: Learning theory and pedagogical practice for networked information landscapes. Reference Services Review, 39(4), 675-685. Retrieved from http://dx.doi.org.ezproxy.royalroads.ca/10.1108/00907321111186686 Gordon, M. (2008). Between Constructivism and Connectedness. Journal of Teacher Education, 59(4), 322-331. doi: 10.1177/0022487108321379 Hamburg, I., Engert, S., Petschenka, A., Marin, M. (March, 2008). Proceedings from the International Association of Science and Technology for Development: The

Reflections on the Online Facilitation Experience Seventh IASTED International Conference on Web-Based Education. Innsbruck, Austria. 200205. Retrieved from http://iatinfo.iatge.de/aktuell/veroeff/2008/hamburg01.pdf Heer, R. (2012). A taxonomy for learning, teaching, and assessing: A revision of bloom's taxonomy of educational objectives. Retrieved from http://www.celt.iastate.edu/pdfs-docs/teaching/RevisedBloomsHandout.pdf Hbler, M. T., Bell & D. C. (2003). Computer-mediated humor and ethos: Exploring threads of constitutive laughter in online communities. Computers and Composition, 20(3), 277-294. Retrieved from

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http://www.sciencedirect.com.ezproxy.royalroads.ca/science/article/pii/S87554615 03000367 Keaton, S.A. & Bodie, G.D. (2011). Explaining social constructivism. Communication Teacher, 25(4). 192-196. Retrieved from http://www.tandfonline.com.ezproxy.royalroads.ca/doi/pdf/10.1080/17404622.2011 .601725 Nussbaum-Beach, S. (2007, August). Building virtual communities. Retrieved from http://www.techlearning.com/article/building-virtual-communities/44504 Perry, B & Edwards, M. (2005, April). Exemplary online educators: Creating a community of inquiry. Turkish Online Journal of Distance Education, (6-2). Retrieved from https://tojde.anadolu.edu.tr/tojde18/articles/article6.htm Saadi, A., & Thomas, V. (2012). About this workshop. Retrieved from http://rrulrnt505.wordpress.com/about/ Slacoursiere. (2012, March 14). Activity one part two. [Web log comment #10].

Reflections on the Online Facilitation Experience Retrieved from http://rrulrnt505.wordpress.com/activities/activity-1-part-2/ Tansey, T. N., Schopieray, S., Boland, E., Lane, F., & Pruett, S. R. (2009). Examining technology-enhanced coursework in rehabilitation counselor education using blooms taxonomy of learning. Rehabilitation Research, Policy, and Education, 23(2), 107-117. Retrieved from https://ezproxy.royalroads.ca/login? url=http://search.proquest.com/docview/854860425?accountid=8056 Thomas, V. (2012). My philosophy of online faciliation. Retrieved from http://learner.royalroads.ca/moodle/file.php?file=%2F3133%2Fmoddata %2Fassignment%2F8223%2F10937%2Fv1thomasassn1.doc Williams-Perez, K., & Keig, L. (2002). Experiential learning: A strategy to teach conflict management. Nurse Educator, 27(4), 165-167. Retrieved from http://ovidsp.tx.ovid.com.ezproxy.royalroads.ca/sp-3.5.1a/ovidweb.cgi?

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&S=OOIKFPJKMCDDLLJENCALIFIBKFFKAA00&Link+Set=S.sh.37%7c1%7c sl_10