I heard Dr Luke Goode from Auckland uni on the radio this morning, discussing his recent contribution to the university's Winter Lecture series. His comments on the pros and cons of 'outsourcing' news to anyone who can connect to social media are really interesting. What caught my attention was his comments on social media heavyweights such as Twitter and Facebook, (and Google) and how our assumption that these apps democratise information is naiive to say the least. He bases this on the fact (one that I have never thought about before) that any online app is governed by the algorithms they run on, and these algorithms are created by people, all of whom have individual biases. Thus, all of these algorithms are designed to sift information in particular ways.
It seems that the sooner we acknowledge that the online environment is not a 'neutral gateway to information', the better we will become at managing it.
Of course, this raises another, (but not new) issue, of where the power will lie in the future: it seems more and more likely that it will be in the hands of the intellectual technocrati who know how to use social media most effectively. Should we be embedding social media skills into school curricula as urgently as the current push to embed literacy and numeracy? What do you think?
The transcript of Dr Goode's lecture is available here.
As part of our 'homework' for the course, we are asked to write a reflection on what we have learned over the last 5 weeks, with the following questions as a guide.
- What is online facilitation?
- What skills do you need as an online facilitator?
- How does a facilitator build an online community or network?
- What are the key things to remember when facilitating an event, meeting or education course, especially when working with people who are new to online technology?
- What is the difference between teaching and facilitation?
Some of these questions appear deceptively simple, but I think answering them is probably not easily done in a single blog post, so please forgive me if my responses seem a little superficial...!
My understanding of online facilitation has definitely evolved over the past weeks. At the start of this course I saw the role of the online facilitator as a simple one of preparing a course with online resources, and being available to students as they work through it. I have come to realise that the role is much more complex. It appears to me that the online facilitator weaves multiple roles, including teacher, technology advisor and community builder, together to create a flexible backdrop against which students can construct their own learning. To do this a facilitator needs to be a skilled juggler, crisis manager, multi-tasker and problem solver, unflappable under pressure, ready to step in at any time but confident enough to take a back seat to allow student-centred learning. As if this wasn't enough, an online facilitator probably needs to be a bit of a techie-junkie too, as clearly remaining up-to-date with the latest technologies will be key to successfully facilitating online.
Things to remember when facilitating? I think it would have to plan, plan, plan... and then have a back-up plan, just in case. I haven't actually facilitated a session yet, but my experiences of the elluminate classroom suggest that the sessions that appear most effortless and flow most smoothly are probably carefully planned and strategised beforehand. Being a newbie to any technology can be really intimidating, and so making sure that things run as smoothly as possible seems essential. Giving students time to practise using the technology in a 'safe' way, as Sarah did at the start of this course, was also really helpful. I also like the way that, throughout the course, facilitators have been comfortable admitting that they don't know it all... I think it's really reassuring to a student to see lecturers solving problems collaboratively and without flapping!
The differences between teaching and facilitation are probably more appropriate to a PhD thesis than a brief paragraph in a blog! In one respect, good teaching is facilitation, but the two are not interchangeable, are they? Facilitating implies that one is allowing students to create their own learning using their own pathways, whereas teaching seems more like the old, traditional chalk-and-talk, but it really is all just a matter of semantics. Or is it? Would an online facilitator always teach, or could they simply facilitate the teaching of others. And if so, does that not make them de facto teachers too? I'm looking forward to reading other posts on this topic.
I've just caught up with Lorraine Mockford's discussion on facilitating asynchronous learning, which is part of the FOC2010 course. It was interesting to hear her describing her approach to discussion boards, and listening to the discussion helped crystalise some ideas that I have had floating around, but hadn't really tried to formalise.
- Lorraine talks about having a Week Zero, before the course actually gets going, in which students engage in a mix of synchronous and asynchronous activities in order to facilitate the development of an online community within the group. During the week she does things like getting students to introduce themselves in a forum post; provide a fact about themselves that she woudl be unlikely to know otherwise; post a favourite link or website, etc. These are all great ideas which would help students overcome their nervousness of posting to a public forum in a pretty non-threatening manner.
- Lorraine talks about the importance of the lecturer holding back. This makes sense - after all, one is trying to enable the students to develop a community amongst themselves, rather than a series of one-to-one relationships with the lecturer. I have to admit that I have a tendency, when students put up a technical query, to jump in with the solution as quickly as I can, but I think I need to step back and allow the students to help one another instead.
- She also sets up discussion boards before the course runs, and allocates a specific board to 'off-thread' discussions. This is a great idea as it provides a place for students to share ideas and ask questions without interrupting the flow of a particular discussion.
- Finally, Lorraine mentioned using rubrics to assess forum posts. This is something we are currently grappling with... assessing forums would make students more likely to post to them (or would it?) but then it does detract from the spontaneity and the community aspects of a discussion forum. I'd be really interested to know what other people think and do regarding this. Does anyone have examples of rubrics that they could share?
