Thread:Suggestion for evaluate a facilitation event (2)

Leigh You have some great resources for the participants to explore - it is shaping up to be a really interesting course. Some suggestions - as you have 17 weeks to run this course I would spread it out a bit more and give more time to some of the key topics & some time to explore and reflect on the different kinds of communities. check out the course descriptor sent separately. Also a 10 am first meeting is not likely to get many working participants there - perhaps offer an evening slot as well. 7 or 730 pm was popular in the course I ran this semester - it also allows the people who are working with private organisations to come in from home as many cannot get past the firewalls.


 * give them two weeks for the week three topic (Facilitating, moderating, or teaching 11 - 17 August) as this is a biggee. Perhaps the second half of the topic in week 4 - you could take a look at the skills an online facilitator needs in more depth. (course descriptor - 2. Articulate the skills required for maintaining a successful online community.)
 * after they have had a look at some of the examples of online communities - give them a week (around wk 9 or 10) to reflect on the skills needed to facilitate the different kinds of online communities & take them back to the idea you introduced in week two - how to differentiate between a community and a group etc.
 * somewhere have something about open versus closed communities
 * when are you introducing ways of communicating in a community - synchronous versus asynchronous - perhaps early after introducing the idea of community - Elluminate, Skype, instant messengering etc.
 * week four/five - Discussion forums - use Blackboard as an example of how to use closed discussion forums versus an open forum like Google Groups.
 * perhaps bring in someone from health to facilitate a discussion around confidential discussions - Sarah Stewart and Merrolee as they have different perspectives.
 * The stuff in week 9 about organising a mini conference needs to be on week 6 when they start the wiki page - or else introduce the wiki and then the week after tell them about the type of event they might facilitate. No good leaving it until the actual week - they need the info up front. Give them a couple of weeks to get the handle on wikis.

week 9 - "This week you will focus on your event that you are facilitating as part of the course mini conference. The idea is for you to organise something for the conference, such as a guest speaker or a discussion panel through webconfernece; a discussion forum on a social networking platform; or assisting with the preparation and promotion of the mini conference generally. This will be your chance to facilitate real events and communication online, and explore more dimensions to facilitating online communities."

Some extra points Table 2: Strategies for promoting student involvement in reflective discussion
 * three weeks to organise speakers for a mini conference is not long enough. I would give then 6 weeks to plan - two weeks for the mini conference and two weeks to evaluate one other and do their self-evaluation. There is 17 weeks to play with.
 * Give them a week or a way to do the following either with each topic or later on in the course (course descriptor - 3. Evaluate online communication and collaboration tools in given learning contexts.)
 * what happened to the gaming communities?
 * Make sure you get the assessment criteria up early.
 * Don't forget to put some focus on facilitations skills and ice breakers - to use or not to use?
 * And strategies to motivate people to participate.
 * as you will have newbies to online facilitation - give them more time to investigate and do activities around - Effective Online Facilitation - Australian Flexible Learning Framework guide
 * Some good strategies in this article by Zenios - Table 1: Strategies for building a sense of an online community - includes netiquette which is not covered in the course and needs to be mentioned. Remember, you will have people new to the whole concept of interacting online.
 * Zenios, M. (2006). Teaching through technology-enhanced environments in higher education: Moderating for effective computer conferencing. Proceedings of the 23rd annual ascilite conference: Who's learning? Whose technology? http://www.ascilite.org.au/conferences/sydney06/proceeding/pdf_papers/p199.pdf