Confident Enough to Describe and Provide Assessment to Peers in the Following Areas

Table # 3

01/(25-27)/07

Facilitators Institute

Austin’s Outcomes

Confident enough to describe and provide assessment to peers in the following areas:

Creating a facilitation plan
Giving assessment
Creating motivational outcomes

Ralph’s Outcomes

Improving group work on proposals and projects
Developing, communicating, and implementing a mission statement
Facilitation of distance education

Steve’s Outcomes

Create draft of facilitator’s handbook that is a valuable reference during all phases of a facilitation process to people doing faculty development (quick reference materials, prompts, links to best practices, models to steal from)
Commitment of group (dates, events, funding model) for next cycle of Northwest workshops in 2007
Advance FGB modules by Tris, Barb, Don, and Dan for 4th edition (off-line discussions)

Nan’s Outcomes

Improve my ability to create an environment encouraging self-learners.
Strengthen self-assessment habits. Especially, need to work on Insights portion of SII.
Tools acquisition to strengthen my ability to construct learning activities with adequate scaffolding to begin with, and to understand how much scaffolding to remove and when – to enable students to take on more challenges.

Tiffany’s Outcomes

1. Improve my ability to plan/prepare my lecture so that I feel confidently prepared.

2. I’d like to improve my ability to respond to my students when they answer questions or contribute to the discussion.

3. I would like to enhance my ability to ask questions that my students are motivated to answer. In addition, be able to ask the same question in a different way.

Day #1 (Thursday Jan 25)

Ideas for table 3 outcomes:

Motivating students learn beyond a standard (challenge without confrontation)*
Planning and preparation for facilitation*
Formal vs informal facilitation*
Attaining consensus of a large group
Ask motivating questions
Improve assessment
Getting groups to work effectively together (proposals, projects…)

Techniques learned after first tasks

you don’t do, you help others do
key role of assessment in facilitation
importance of active listening – summarizing, incorporating personal comments

Facilitating change

ID importance of change
Understanding perceptions of stakeholders
Establish consensus about what the gap is
Clarifying goal
Clarify current state
Focus on improving skills-Change will not occur based on will alone
Provide resources
Authorizing management structure – Defining roles – group consensus on structure
Evidence of the benefit – confidence in the leaders of change?
Recognize need for decomposition prior to construction of change
ID and build on strengths
Stress, motivation, rock bottom, wait until its too late

Observations of discussion # 1:

Structured
Start by sharing ideas
Compare and contrast ideas
Explore a detail by asking a key question
Set boundaries of the knowledge, scope (5 characteristics)
Flexible-discussion based on conversations that were overheard
Ask questions, shut down discussion by making comments

Insights about questioning in learning

The right questions can reveal level of knowledge of a subject area*
The right questions can transfer ownership of an insight*
Prompt critical thinking
Questions clarify perceptions
Exploring alternate applications of knowledge
Questions are important to processing steps in a process
Questions can be used to decompose process or problem*
Not all questions have answers
Questions are motivational – people want to know/find answers*
Diverging vs converging questions

Pre-reading questions

What is confusing?
What are things I would like to know that I did not know the first time?
Why do I want to know this?
How do I know the information is correct?

Activity types brainstorm

Role playing
Journaling
Discussing
Peer assessment
Debate
Problem solving
Student teaching
Homework
Labs
Research
Lecture
Brainstorming
Reading

3 techniques learned after second activity

Monitoring group activity - non intrusive - read over shoulder
Public peer assessment-focus on areas the assessee wants feedback
Sharing facilitation plan – students know what to expect
Use of examples – after students have put thought into the subject
Communicating outcomes/expectations prior to facilitation

______

Day # 2 – Friday - Jan 26

SII for giving assessment on self-assessment

S – Commitment to add value

I – Provide more examples – Think about how to connect assessment to personal experience

- Be confident and comfortable giving improvement – focus on added value

I – Helpful to see another person’s interpretation of your thoughts

- picking up patterns

- focus on process and not the content of the assessment

Techniques after “assessing self assessment”

-Focus on language (positive vs negative language) – raise level of awareness

-Focus on process

-Provide evidence/examples – tie to real world experiences

-Focus on added value – “ask would this assessment help me?”

Techniques after “source of resistance” facilitation

-Affect connects with evaluation

-Clear, concise questions

-If the set up for a discussion is over 30% - too complex of a topic, under %5 too simple

-Give examples to clarify expectations

-Include performance criteria with assignments

Presentation structure

- Gap analysis between current and present state

(communicate initial state – They have not read)

Essence of situation

- Sources of Affect

- Clarification of strategies /tools

- Multiple stages?

Conditions of current state

Generalized sense of frustration among stakeholders, due to:

Under representation of student in city council (students are marginalized)

Teacher facilitating connection (between students, city council)

Our perceived goal state: Added value to city council: by representation of students

Students become stakeholders in city council process

Cause

Pre-judging (students don’t care)

Lack of respect for council and students

Lack of clarity of the goal state

Non-flexibility

Stages

#1 - Train students to value stakeholder interest

Tools:

City Council thinking elevated through use of assessment, valuing student participation in City Council.

Stage #1: train students: role of citizen-

Council assesses situation (raise value of students)

Stage # 2: City council member visiting class

Stage # 3: Meeting to schedule meetings

Process of dealing with Affective situations

1. Analyze conditions

2. Inventory causes

3. Tools align with causes – not conditions

Generalized tools for managing affective situations:

Conflict resolution

Facilitation

Assessment

Training

Preparation

Collaboration

Key insight: Shift affect to cognitive

Techniques after “Affect management” facilitation

-Defining learning outcomes

-Coming back to outcomes at the end – closure – go back to original outcomes and summarizing outcomes

-Defining roles improves performance – intervene when not productive

-Transfer one groups high performance to other groups

-Scope activity for audience

-Define meaningful context – examples – connect with real world

-Pre-defined assessment expectations (behaviors and emotions change based on expectations or defined roles)

Statements said about “excellent facilitator”

Invisible

Inspiring/motivating

Fun

Valuable use of time

Challenging

Students feel like they learned/Feel good about performance

Aware

Compassionate

“Made me think/push myself”

“Exploration of new areas outside comfort zone”

Student empowered

Clear expectations

Three parts of facilitation plan:

Prior - preparation

Know objectives

Strategy aligned

Relaxed

Keeps activities focused

Planning for situations that may come up - forecasting

During – data collection

Supporting evidence – are you meeting objectives

Data collection to improve future performance

After - reflection

Strengths – consistent strengths

Improvements – developing facilitator skills, learn lessons about activities

Closing the loop

Form gives process to follow - Structured

Austin’s challenge in facilitation planning:

During-

Multi-tasking/parallel processing: Collect data, getting ready for next part of facilitation, connecting/adapting/reacting real time, time management, learning outcomes

Strategies to help:

* Practice forecasting student responses – developing plans to deal with student reactions – ask question why do people struggle with different outcomes – use experiences

* Have others assess ideas/facilitation plan off of advisors and/or students to avoid conflicts/confusion…

* shift focus on audience, have confidence to let go of script

Questions about facilitation plan form:

Where are the priorities?

Where is this applicable?

What is the use? Prep, real time data tracking, assessment, all? Are there better formats for each specific part of the facilitation plan?

How much information do the participant need to know?

Techniques after “facilitation plan” facilitation

-filter reports through team – don’t give individual reports

-Clear outcomes, with flexibility, allowed teams to be creative in the way they executed

-If your goal is to improve skills, put yourself into situation where the skill will be needed

-Be flexible/prepared enough to adapt to missing skills

Techniques “principles of quality learning environment”

-Importance of peer assessment

-Surprise peer assessment

-Facilitator filtering the information through recording

-Having participants create a work product

Mid Term Assessment

Strengths of institute

-Variety facilitating techniques, activities and styles aligned with needs of group

-People

-Variety of experience levels, more experienced students share with less experienced students

-No right answers, significant portion of the knowledge created real time by the group

-Size – not to big, not to small

-Resources available

Items learned aligned with group outcomes

-Facilitation plan form

-Managing affect in environment – separating conditions and causes – target tools at causes

-Value of insights – added value to everyone

-Focus assessment on skills – makes assessment easier – more added value to assessee

Ways to improve Institute

-Shorter time frame – 3 days overwhelming, exhausting, bites too much into our time – 2 days instead

-More flexibility to meet outcomes of outlying interests (on line education) – Parallel sessions run by mentors; optional sessions

-Build assessment into the schedule – not during lunch and breaks – 5 min of reflection, 10 min of pure break between each activity

Suggestions for what to see tomorrow (sat 01/27/07)

-Open discussion (30 min) – burning questions addressed to everyone

-Next events planning

-Plan closure activities

______

Day # 3 (sat 01/27/07)

Techniques after “challenging learning environment”

-“Fake it until you can make it”

-Use power as facilitator to re-arrange teams

-Use process of creating change to apply to other situations:

ID Conditions
ID Causes
Align tools with causes not conditions

-Visualizing the end

Balance and open and closed ended to align with vision of the end state

Reflectionduring: “formal vs informal facilitation”

-Shared contribution

-Asked for more challenge

-Use of resources

-Share examples to clarify abstract thoughts

-Nobody documenting discussion about critical thinking question

-Define what is meant by the two different categories

-Putting not fully thought through ideas on the table can help or hurt – diverging group thought or sparking a brainstorming session

Techniques after “Informal vs Formal”

-Prepare for bar raising (or lowering) before execution

-Approach captains of teams intervention

-Rotate rolls

-Paint clear picture of outcomes before execution

Techniques after “end of session fishbowl” and “facilitation plan # 2”

-Closure – even if behind don’t loose value

-Breaking things down into smaller steps

-To direct – questions rather than declarative

-Use recorder – to measure performance/gage

-Test forms before use (use small groups in assessment mindset)

-Get permission to put people in uncomfortable situations

-Use examples to establish expectations