Team 1’s Facilitation Plan

Team Members: Earl Einarson, Susan Nassiripour, Lisa Gates, Tala Mami, Laren Helfer

 

Given the topic ‘Ways in which emerging digital technologies could influence facilitation’, we decided on the following learning outcome:

Identify an emerging technology and critically discuss it’s feasibility for facilitation in your domain. 

This learning outcome was specifically worded to include the learners’ ‘domain’, to be consistent with the instructional principles of activation and integration; that learning is deeper when it is tied to preexisting knowledge and made relevant to one’s own context (Merrill, 2002). To help learners achieve this learning outcome, we designed a 7 day a mini-course that includes the following elements:

Readings:

  1. Bates, T. (2014) A Short History of Educational Technology https://www.tonybates.ca/2014/12/10/a-short-history-of-educational-technology/
  2. 7 Emerging Technologies that will Reshape Education in 2020 https://axiomq.com/blog/7-emerging-technologies-that-will-reshape-education-in-2020/ 
  3. Cukurova, M; Luckin, R; (2018) Measuring the Impact of Emerging Technologies in Education: A Pragmatic Approach https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10068777/  

Learning Activity:

The learning activity we’ve designed will ask learners to work in their existing facilitation teams and consider readings one, two and three. Then they will select a technology, research to find evidence of how this technology has impacted educational experiences and then consider the impact that this technology may have on facilitation in their own domains. Teams will be asked to complete one slide of a class google slides presentation template. On the slide they will post their technology, provide the evidence they found and present their impact assessments relevant to their own (collective) domains. Students will be invited to share and expand on their findings during the synchronous Collaborate session later that week.

Synchronous Session:

Friday, September 25th @ 5:00pm PST: Collaborate Room 1

We will build a lesson plan following the BOPPPS model . The main, participatory component of the session will consist of inviting the teams to present their slides to the class and expand on their groups’ findings and conversations. 

Asynchronous Discussions:

There will be a class discussion forum in Moodle created and made available for when the course opens. Learners will be encouraged to use the forum to ask questions to the instructor relevant to the content or learning activity. This forum will be moderated.

There will also be a class discussion in Mattermost where learners can connect. This forum will be moderated and actively facilitated. Prompts will be posted to encourage thoughtful discourse and debate relevant to the learning outcome. Facilitators will monitor and participate in this forum regularly.

Course Schedule (for Learners):

Monday, Sept 21
  • Orient to course
  • Watch introductory video
  • Review Learning Activity directions 
  • Begin readings
  • Participate in discussions *ongoing activity through the week*
Tuesday, Sept 22
  • Complete Readings  
  • Begin group work
  • Participate in discussions
Wednesday, Sept 23
  • Continue group work
  • Participate in discussions
Thursday, Sept 24
  • Continue group work
  • Participate in discussions
Friday, Sept 25
  • Complete Google Slide by 3:00pm PST
  • Participate in discussions
  • Attend Collaborate synchronous session 5:00pm-6:00pm PST
Saturday, Sept 26
  • Watch recording of synchronous session if missed
  • Review discussion summaries and course wrap-up message
Sunday, Sept 27
  • Complete course feedback

Course Schedule (for Facilitators):

Monday, Sept 21 Welcome Message and Overview posted. Includes the following:

  • Course Schedule (as above)
  • Links to Learning Activity Directions, Readings and Resources, Discussion Forums
  • Video Introduction/walk through of course
Tuesday, Sept 22
  • Initial discussion board prompt posted.
  • Discussion board monitored and moderated.
Wednesday, Sept 23
  • Discussion board monitored and moderated.
  • Check in on Learning Activity progress
Thursday, Sept 24
  • Discussion monitored and moderated
  • Check in on Learning Activity – reach out to learners who have not completed
Friday, Sept 25
  • Discussion closes 3:00pm PST
  • Review slides for completness
  • Facilitate Collaborate session 5:00pm PST
  • Read through disucssion posts and compose summary of asynchonous and synchronous discussion
Saturday, Sept 26
  • Cours Wrap-Up posted to include the following:
    • Summary of Collaborate session
    • Summary of Mattermost discussion
    • Link to session Recording
    • Link to Google Slide collection 
Sunday, Sept 27

Technologies:

We decided to use Moodle Innovate as the primary digital space where our course will live. The reason we chose this is that two of our team members are very familiar with Moodle, and we know that our learners are proficient with it as well. Our synchronous session will take place in Collaborate for these same reasons.

For discussions we will use Moodle to house our ‘Ask the Instructor’ Forum. We chose this so that if important questions are asked or clarifying directions posted, then all learners will be able to view theem in an easy to locate, cetnralized space. We will use Mattermost to facilitate the class discussion where learners can connect, because we believe the platform lends itself well to onging dialogue and due to it existing outside of the LMS, may encourage a more social and authetnic exchange beween learners.

We will use a shared Google slide presentation as the artifact that learners will co-create. We wanted the learners to create a visual presentation that would lend itself well to being used in the synchronous session. Google slides was selected as it allows for collaboration among team members, easy monitoring by facilitators and is a familiar platform to most.

Means of Establishing Community of Inquiry Presences:

Teaching Presence
  • Learners will share the responsibility of teaching and will be asked to contribute ideas and introduce new resources to each other (Vaughan, Cleveland-Innes, & Garrison, 2013).
  • Facilitators will provide prompts in the  discussion and monitor participation.  
  • Facilitators will moderate discussions to direct and provide input where required to steer the conversation if necessary.
  • Clear instructions will be communicated in text and video for learners, so they understand the expectations for the week.
  • Facilitators will be available for questions – schedule will be communicated to learners.
  • Facilitators will prepare summaries of both the asynchronous discussion and the Collaborate session to highlight key concepts and take-aways.
Social Presence

 
  • Learners will be asked to work in small teams where meaningful and authentic discussions can take place.
  • The discussion forum will allow for both content-related discourse and also social connection among the learners and instructors. 
  • Facilitators will model engagement and meaningfully participate in discussions. 
Cognitive Presence
  • Asking learners to consider technologies in their own contexts will cause learners to attach what they find to their existing schema. (Merril, 2002)
  • By researching to identify evidence of the impact of emerging technologies, learners need to scrutinize articles for evidence and will undoubtedly expose the learners to new ideas. Searching and then discussing through this critical lense will foster higher-order thinking.  
  • Learners will contribute to the creation of a shared work. This shared work serves as the project, or problem in a problem-based learning approach (PBL).  To achieve this, learners will need to understand the readings, connect these readings to their own contexts and critically discuss their findings in their smaller teams prior to sharing.
  • Learners will have the opportunity to deepen their learning by considering new readings while they are working in their teams and then sharing their thoughts about that content. 
  • Knowing that work will be shared with a larger audience and that they will be asked to present will motivate learners to dig deeper into content to produce higher quality work

References

Merrill, M. D. (2002). First principles of instruction. Educational Technology Research and Development, 50(3), 43–59. https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02505024

Teaching Support Centre. (n.d.). BOPPPS Model for Lesson Planning [Education]. Queens University: Implementing Active Learning. Retrieved from https://www.queensu.ca/teachingandlearning/modules/active/18_boppps_model_for_lesson_planning.html

Vaughan, N. D., Cleveland-Innes, M., & Garrison, D. R. (2013). Teaching in blended learning environments: Creating and sustaining communities of inquiry. Athabasca University Press.