Roundtable:

Online Facilitation Strategies

Sessions 1 and 2 Notes

Guest Experts: Karen Hartschuh and Paula Paul

  • Online facilitation is comparable to being a girl scout leader, aunt, etc
  • Not just about content.
  • Biggest thing – nurturing environment (not a huge stretch for elementary teachers – used to this, more difficult for middle and high school teachers)
  • How create nurturing online environment?
  • Send pre-course email with information – ask for confirmation response
  • Be familiar with course material
  • Create announcements ahead of time
  • Few things are worse to a participant than a lack of communication from the facilitator
  • Office hours set up to facilitate communication
  • How to deal with online procrastinators?
  • F2f, elluminate beforehand
  • Hard copies of readings
  • Course reminders
  • Weekly checklist
  • Make sure grades are up-to-date
  • Assign points for pre- and post-surveys
  • Encourage/positively reinforce students who respond/reply quickly on discussion board (personal emails, phone calls)
  • Require elaboration from participants on discussion board (ask “why?” or “why not?”)
  • Very important to model expectations as facilitator
  • Always ask clarifying questions – redirect the discussion
  • Tone is very important online – warm, caring, nonjudgmental
  • Look for people who aren’t bonding/are hesitant to post (lurker) – contact individually (email, etc.)
  • Be aware that life does happen – flexibility
  • Have additional discussion boards (water cooler, help)
  • Take advantage of course statistics to see where participants are spending the majority of their time
  • Give a learning style inventory – many available online
  • Try to meet the needs of the people taking your course
  • How keep participants engaged – reduce attrition?
  • Set high expectations
  • Clear requirements
  • Model expectations for participants
  • Explain due dates, etc. (some students don’t anticipate that assignments aren’t “ongoing” and actually are just like a regular classroom – not just a blowoff class)
  • Make sure that students don’t stray far behind – keep them engaged
  • Find commonalities among students – build the community of learners early
  • Assigning discussion partners – mixed success (i.e., difficult if partner happens to drop out)
  • Detailed, personalized assessment tells the participant that the facilitator is paying attention to their contributions to the course
  • Discussion can spiral out of the control quickly – nip in the bud and provide continuous feedback
  • Get in touch with students quickly and personally – can’t wait
  • Facilitator can ask provocative additional question(s) if discussion board is stagnating
  • Schedule specific time period during day to facilitate
  • Provide consistent, timely feedback – communication and organization are essential for a successful online facilitation experience

Session 3 Notes

Guest Expert: Karen Hartschuh

Introduction: Karen is an instructional technology specialist for a school district—curriculum and integrationof technology in different areas—in addition, she also oversees social studies—Also facilitates online courses for KY EfE—She has also taken several online courses—Course recovery is also big in KY schools

Tips and Strategies shared:

  • For a course to be successful it is almost 100% dependent on the facilitator—if they are strong in content but weak in facilitation, the course will not be as successful.
  • If it the first time someone is going through a course and they don’t feel that support from facilitators, many may drop out
  • How do you do that?

Likens it to being a kindergarten teacher where you are warm and embracing and welcoming to everyone who comes in.—not always the same case in middle/high classrooms—you need to be that way with adults too

-Doesn’t mean you don’t have high expectations or “dumb” anything down

  • As a facilitator you must also be highly organized—prior to opening up a course she has a word document of things she foresees having to communicate to people offline.
  • Has facilitated from other states and other countries too—one place had only one line that was dialup—had to rearrange her schedule and it was very worthwhile to have everything in a word doc.
  • Some facilitators think that checking the board once or twice a week is sufficient- but in the beginning it definitely isn’t—you also have to stagger the times that you are available—occasionally be online and answer emails at night as well as during the day
  • Have a week long orientation—her groups have gone as cohorts through a cluster of 3 courses(though perhaps with different facilitators)—during the first week of the course everyone has to introduce themselves, and tell what they want from e-learning, what is their experience?—she takes little bits of that and pastes that into a spreadsheet she has already set up and puts their goals on it, that way she can relate their postings and her own to their specific goals and career—Shealso asks them to take an online learning inventory to see how they learn best—for many this is the first time they have done this type of activity—youngerteachers may have taken it but older teachers probably haven’t—shethen tries to make sure that she’s meeting everyone’s needs—highlightsspecific text (discussions) for visual learners—also sends out reminders that keep people on track
  • Follow-up—if you see people that aren’t posting (or those posting too much) you might need to give some nudging, ask probing questions!! If they are not active contact the person first through email and then again in email and then make a call—She had an incident with a participant who seemed to drop off—it turned out that her daughter had died suddenly—she was able to connect with her and she was able to make up the work and had one of the best portfolios—had it been a traditional class she would have had to drop out.
  • encourages facilitators to print out all the materials for the course—have the participants do that as well—tells participants to put the current week’s reading on a clipboard so it doesn’t get buried or lost, and then it is there whenever they have free time—she found that not only were they doing the required readings, but also the optional readings—theyalso shared great resources wit their colleagues
  • they do evaluations at the beginning of each course and at the end—one of the evaluations stated that her enthusiasm made e-learning addictive—older teachers find e-learning a motivating factor to stay in the classroom… “a whole new door”

Question: what are the online inventories?

Answer: There are many that can be found online. Teachers are being told to meet the needs of all learners, but when they are put under the pressure with so much new to do, they revert to what they know best. Asking people to look at how they learn best and in different situations (learn math more easily, but prefers books on tape) is important. Do we provide children with auditory versions of the texts (Petey the parrot from Microsoft can be downloaded to read things to you)?

Question: How do you motivate people to facilitate in the way she’s talking about?

Answer: Has number of facilitators and mentors that they pay for the work they’re doing, but it is a year long program and keeping the motivation high is hard—do you have anything set up just for them? The biggest strength of the program is collaboration between colleagues—need more of it in online facilitation!

  • pair people up to audit each other’s courses—learn from each other’s facilitations techniques
  • Karen’s participants had gone through the first course in her cluster together and in the second course they had a very matter-of-fact facilitator who had a very different style which made the cohort rather nervous—offline she let the facilitator know that this group needed certain things—the facilitator needs to get to know the group

Question: Can you talk more about the portfolios?

Answer: for each course there is an end product that they will have to have—they are aware of it from the beginning of the course, each session there is a part of it that they will work on, at the end of the three course cluster they must create a portfolio that is made up of the three products the created, and also a holistic lesson plan that incorporates what they have learned in the three courses—they then go and deliver the lesson and then reflect on it (what went well, what would they change)—they also reflect on each of the courses and then the cluster as a whole

  • does it end up being a word doc? They submit a hard-copy and then the reviewers have a month time to get it back to them and get their credits. This is a big task! Once they are read and graded there is a second read on all of them—some are incomplete and the teacher is told they need more from them—they can then edit/modify/rewrite etc. – the goal is for everyone to learn to nitpick
  • Florida Virtual School has a good pd program that they do over Elluminate and everyone attends, but after they leave they are never sure if they are actually implementing it
  • Karen really wants them to all plan ahead of time so that everyone’s needs are met (UDL)

ETLO/SREB/ISTE Online Learning Institute

July 2007