Facilitating Online –some tips and hints

Purpose, process, payoff

Purpose:

To explore good practice in online facilitation

and share our learning

Process:

Mix of online activities, quests and face to

face discussion individually and in groups.

Payoff:

Lots of ideas to enhance our own practice

and/or get us started facilitating online

Tips and hints - resources

Add your own tips, hints and tools to:

http://tipsandtoolsforfacilitation.wikispaces.com/

1. 701 Tips for e-Learning collated by the Maisie Centre

http://www.masie.com/701tips/

2. Jane Knight's "e-Learning centre

http://www.e-learningcentre.co.uk

3. Nancy White‟s blog and resources, be warned! It‟s chock

full of goodies! http://www.fullcirc.com/

4. Top 100 Tools for e-learning

http://www.c4lpt.co.uk/recommended/index.html

Frankie Forsyth – home office

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Why use a facilitated model of

e-learning?

• Increased completion rates (85% - 90%)

• Suits the majority of VET learners

• Lends itself to best practice in education

What makes a good

online facilitator?

• Many of the same skills used by good f2f facilitators

• Be supportive and responsive to students

• Communicate, Communicate, Communicate

+

Go to http://tipsandtoolsforfacilitation.wikispaces.com/

to view responses generated in the session.

Activity 1

In pairs, discuss what makes a good online

facilitator.

Consider, skills, attributes, knowledge, face to

face experience etc.

We‟ll debrief in the large group.

Models of Online Learning

1) Self paced online model

Students are completely online

The resources do the teaching

Limited, if any role for online facilitation

2) The Blended Model

The most popular model of online learning

Students participate online and face to face

Facilitated discussion adds value to classroom

interaction

Models of Online Learning

3) The collaborative online learning model

– Set start and end dates

– Lock Stepped

– Communication based content

– More emphasis on group work, role plays debates

etc

Online Facilitation is the key to success for this model

The Model

Induction/technical issues addressed

Content driven activities – with no wrong answers

Bridging activities

Content driven activities – heavy facilitation

Content driven activities – less facilitation

Concluding the course

Co

mm

un

ity B

uild

ing

With thanks to Brad Beach (adapted version) and

Gilly Salmon (original concept)

Lev

el o

f fa

cili

tatio

n

Facilitated model

A typical week

Monday Release content (if any) and 1 to 2 discussion topics

Tuesday Release content (if any) and 1 to 2 discussion topics

Wednesday Facilitation of topics

Possible real time activity

Thursday Facilitation of topics

Possible real time activity

Friday Extra Notes and Summary of topics

Pre-course

1. Check the site to see all messages have been posted

to correct areas and each area has been set up

correctly

2. Add welcome message

3. Organise dates for synchronous activities and

responsibilities for db if shared

4. Check/change all dates are correct for course (in

course schedule)

5. Once names are known check they all have access -

tracking

6. Add names to monitoring checklist if needed – excel

or internal

7. Create email list of participants for individual/bulk mail

outs.

Pre-course

8.One week before course send email welcome note saying:

• Who you are

• How to contact you

• Who is facilitating/shadowing (if applic)

• Who is technical/support person

• Role of facilitator

• No of participants registered

• Any holiday issues (ie if Easter, Christmas,

Australia Day intervene!)

• Time to allocate to program

• In mailbox, tidy up any old files into a new folder

(if applic)

1. Welcome every participant by name

2. Summarise arrivals

3. Respond to personal emails (copy to shadow, support

person as needed)

4. Chase anyone not online/posting within 3 days of

start date

5. If expectations – summarise for use later

6. Encourage group forming/task allocating if required

7. Post a list of all participant's names and country (and

group if known) in some way – Announcement, photo

board etc

Arrivals, Induction/technical issues

8. At end of week 1 send out email with copy to

Announcements saying:

– congrats for getting started

– what week 1 was about

– reinforce need to move on and also go back to

encourage latecomers

– reminder re completing tasks and reflections

– explain that not all messages will be answered in

week 2 to give them space to practice responding

Arrivals, Induction/technical issues

1. Encourage discussion; if needed give some personal

information about yourself to encourage others to do the

same.

2. Remember to check early activity and encourage

stragglers.

3. Email any non-participants

4. Summarise common areas of interest/unusual ones

5. Check who has been individually responded to and who

hasn't

Socialisation

1. Encourage everyone to respond to tasks set and to

each other‟s posts

2. Stand back a little (read but don‟t post unless it‟s

needed)

3. Mini summaries and weaving to change direction, pull

together individual threads

4. Allow/encourage more challenging behaviour.

Information exchange and content driven

activities – heavy facilitation

1. Be the guide on the side not the sage on the stage!

2. Nod more, say less, be neutral or neutrally provocative

if a „position‟ is missing.

3. Summarise

4. Backchannel for praise/encouragement

5. Remind people what‟s needed to successfully

complete.

Building knowledge and content driven

activities – less facilitation

1. Post a message in the goodbye section for early

completers.

2. Final reminder of the requirements for successful

completion.

3. Give feedback on and future plans of participants.

Consider: is it SMART, are evaluation measures clear,

will actions improve participant behaviour not just

understanding

4. Summarise anything outstanding.

5. Be active in the ending spaces

6. Check all participants have completed, make any

arrangements re late completers

Final days, endings

1. Tidy up mailbox, create new folder and move all

messages into it.

2. Email administrator names and emails of participants

completing successfully (for certificates, if needed)

3. Invoice if not done at start.

4. Evaluations

5. Relax till the next one

Post Course

General things to remember

Continuous Improvement

1. Keep a journal of ideas for changes/improvements

E-convenor contributions.

1. For all personal notes to participants say that it is

personal and not sent to the conference.

2. Use constructive criticism

3. Aim to be developmental eg relate to content where

possible in addition to counselling support

4. Focus on the impact of their contributions on their

participants.

General things to remember

Measures

1. Aim for 1 e-moderator/facilitator posts to 4 participant

postings in short courses over the length of the

course.

2. Aim for 1 e-moderator/facilitator posts to 8 participant

postings in longer courses over the length of the

course.

3. Aim for 75% contributions with insight - not just 'well

done'... well done because....!

4. Aim for 3 personal feedback messages per participant

5. Aim for 80-95% participant completion.

General things to remember

Intervention criteria

Respond to

1. Direct question to e-convenor

2. Direct question to anyone, after a reasonable time

gap to allow others to answer the question

3. the first message from a participant

Challenge

everything that is less than good practice.

Praise

1. something brilliant (if no one else has)

2. each person if possible (i.e spread praise around

the group)

General things to remember

Intervention criteria

Intervene when

1. nothing is happening

2. discussion rambles

3. confusion is escalating

4. flaming occurs or something is said which you think

might upset a member of the group

Activity 2

You have been asked to facilitate an online

course in your subject area. Yaaay!!!

Prepare a Welcome message to your

learners to greet them when they arrive in

your web-space.

Sample Welcome Page

Sample welcome message (chatty version)Hi everyone,

My name is Frankie and I am co – facilitating this course with x. Hi x, it's great to be

working with you again. :) L am very much looking forward to getting to know

everyone, I meet many people through this course and it's always a pleasure to catch

up with old friends and meet new people.

I work as a private consultant and in Pelion Consulting which is a private RTO I set up

over 13 years ago with Jo Murray. We provide professional development and

consultancy services on all things online to trainers/teachers from many disciplines -

from fire fighters to massage and natural therapists.

I work mainly online (around 95%) plus some face to face. My passion is facilitation

both text based and using voice and I really enjoy making contact with people through

the online world. I've been working online for more years than I care to tell and still

love it!

I live in Hobart in Tassie with my 12yr old daughter, two guinea pigs (for now) and a

huge garden. My home office has a tree just outside the window which is full blossom

despite the winds we‟ve had here and I have a great view to the mountains and river

beyond.

Well, that's enough for now from me. Now it's your turn!

Cheers, Frankie

Sample welcome message (short version)

Hi everyone,

My name is Frankie and I am co – facilitating this course with x.

I am very much looking forward to working with you to achieve

your outcomes.

My background is in providing professional development in e-

learning to industry and registered training organisations. I

have x qualifications and some of my clients include x, y and z.

I work from a home office in Hobart, Tasmania, mainly online

(around 95%) consulting, facilitating and mentoring facilitators

in Australia and overseas.

Further information about me is available at

http://www.pelion.com.au

Well, that's enough for now from me. Now it's your turn!

Cheers, Frankie

What‟s important to learners?

The research shows that the number one reason why

people return to sites like these is to see who has replied

to their posts and to read what has been said.

So from a community building perspective it's important

to ensure participants feel that they have been read,

understood and given a fair response.

Sample generic help message

Hi everyone, I‟d like to expand on the workings of a discussion board for

those who are newish to discussion boards.

Definition

A forum or topic is a whole discussion topic, such as “Open Discussion” or

“Work Task - Sharing Resources”

Replying within a thread

A thread is a separate “conversation” within a topic, e.g. there‟s a “Welcome

to the Open Discussion” thread within this forum. Normally, when you want

to continue a thread, you should reply to a previous message. You can tell

from the indented messages which is the latest one.

If you are continuing the conversation it‟s ok to reply to someone who has

replied to the message before (it‟s helpful if you indicate by name the

person that you are directing your message to or whose message prompted

your posting). If you want to change the direction of the conversation, it is

easily done by replying, but changing the heading in the “Subject” box.

Question to you - how do you ensure that you are equitable in your responses to all participants? Do

you respond to all their comments or those of greater relevance? Do you find at times you

unknowingly respond to some more than others?

Mmm. As Jo says, it's sometimes difficult to do this but I have a number of strategies.

1. I always respond to every participant's initial message to the group and to me and to those etivities which

require it.

2. I try in my summaries to ensure I've captured the views of different people in different etivities.

3. I keep track of who has responded to each etivity in a table format and have a column for those I've

responded to. I sample this column every now and again to check I'm fair.

4. I try to make sure that participants know I won't be responding to every message

5. In the earlier etivities I respond to initial postings to guide future comments - regardless of who posts them

6. In later etivities I hold back from responding to initial postings -other than 'nodding' to encourage discourse

- regardless of who posts them

7. I try to respond to etivities by picking out points that will further the individual's learning and be relevant and

meaningful to all rather than than choose responses in 'turn'. Though if I haven't responded to an

individual in a while I do search for something I can use. (grin - it's a bit of a balancing act)

8. I tend to respond more often to latecomers until they 'belong' to the group.

9. I flag messages I've read but want to come back to later to respond if others haven't done so for me.

10. I actively encourage self-reflection and development of self directed learners

(F's self reflection - Gosh I didn't realise I did all that - thanks for helping me summarise them)

Sample response to FAQ on discussion board

Use the view facility within your LMS/system

I especially like forums that display by date posted, by

author and by threads.

Each view has its own advantages for a facilitator and by

experimenting with views and becoming familiar with

your forum system it becomes easier to work in.

Top tips for online facilitation

http://learnscope.flexiblelearning.net.au/learnscope/golearn.asp?category=12&DocumentId=4729

What motivates you online? The results were:

• A feeling of community, sharing ideas and information. (14 votes) 13%

• Having fun, a sense of humour, enjoying experiences as a group and

stimulating, challenging discussions. (13 votes) 12%

• Finding, exploring and discovering new things. (13 votes) 12%

• A relevant and engaging topic that grabs your interest. (12 votes) 11%

• User friendly software (12 votes) 11%

• Great facilitation and encouragement and motivation through feedback. (11

votes) 10%

• The excitement of finding information on something you‟re passionate

about/interested in. (10 votes) 9%

• Activities that are challenging, timely and supported. (8 votes) 7%

• Building of knowledge and sharing information. (7 votes) 7%

• Making a connection with people, finding similarities. (7 votes) 7%

• The discussion forum resulted in 40 top tips collated from

5 days of discussion

In your online courses are you enabling

participants to…?

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Sharing where you post professionally?

Make use of the time you are online and enjoy

being able to work from anywhere – and...

Photos © Frankie Forsyth, all rights reserved.

Take time out to walk the beach :)

1. Top tools for learning

http://www.c4lpt.co.uk/recommended/index.html

2. Frankie‟s delicious site at http://delicious.com/frankieforsyth

3. Nancy White‟s delicious site at http://delicious.com/choconancy

(Nancy has sorted her 5,064 bookmarks into „bundles‟

4. Collect feeds from Social Bookmarking into one spot at Bloglines

5. Software explanation videos http://www.commoncraft.com/

6. Store photos at flickr at http://www.flickr.com/

7. Edit photos with Picasa (Google) at

http://picasaweb.google.com.au/

8. Store presentations on Slideshare at http://www.slideshare.net/

9. Frankie‟s flickr site at

http://www.flickr.com/photos/88018791@N00/

10.Nancy White‟s flickr site at

http://www.flickr.com/photos/choconancy/ (5,726 items!)

Some websites

Interested in more?

Contact me:

Email: frankie@bigpond.net.au

Skype: frankieforsyth

Twitter: frankief

Facebook: Frankie Forsyth

Delicious links: frankieforsyth http://delicious.com/frankieforsyth

Phone: 613 (03) 6278 9292

A copy of this presentation is available at http://www.slideshare.net/

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Contact me: frankie@bigpond.net.au and on skype: frankieforsythA copy of this presentation is available at http://www.slideshare.net/