So, to recap, here were the 3-2-1’s from my initial blog post for this course:
Feelings:
- Facilitation is harder online
- Facilitation needs to be developed more thoughtfully online
- I might not be good online. My in-person presence might not translate.
Questions
- How to find new sources of resources, etc
- How to find friendly critics/beta testers
Metaphor:
- Online collaboration happens differently than in-classroom. Looking back on this, I may not have described it well. What I was trying to say was that collaboration may happen more overtly between online learners outside of the facilitator’s ‘view’ because, unlike the classroom, the facilitator cannot see what is happening if the learners are collaborating on a back channel in which the facilitator is not involved. This is not to say that the collaboration is bad, but rather that maybe it’s better than we thought it would be.
Now that we are at the end of this course, not only have my views changed, but I realize that I asked the wrong questions and had the wrong feelings. Or rather, not wrong, but where I thought I would go through the course is NOT where I went at all. And this is a pleasant surprise. A few things stood out. First was the feedback methodology, next was the realization that online is not better or worse but simply different, and finally that connections have different ‘flavors’.
The ability for learners to give anonymous feedback to someone that does not hold power over their grades was freeing, I think. We received constructive feedback that was honest, and we actually received it. Anecdotally, whenever I have asked for feedback or a survey, I have received feedback from less than 30% of participants. Including this feedback as part of our required work, but anonymously, was a good way of getting to some honest information.
The other thing that I realized is that online facilitation is not necessarily harder, nor does it have to be developed more thoughtfully than in-classroom. It is simply different. The nature of the relationships that we build with learners online is just different than when we see them in-person. I felt better about that by the end.
Finally, keeping connected with my network will be a good way to keep up on the new resources coming out, as well as finding people to beta test my upcoming materials. Seeing how the different groups presented material gives me a bit of insight into how we each facilitate, and from where we all draw inspiration, which can help me decide who may be good contacts for certain types of review.