I was excited about our team topic on the use of camera in a digital learning environment (DLE) because of its relevance and timeliness. Many of the employers I am supporting in human resources are asking for guidance on the use of cameras for their hybrid teams. Therefore, our facilitation week became a personal goal to acquire knowledge and experience of others as a co-learner (Bull, 2013). Reflecting on the course experience and our topic, my three thoughts about digital facilitation cover the different facilitative roles, best practices in online teaching, and virtual collaboration amongst facilitators.
To start, I appreciated Bull’s (2013) various roles of online teaching when collaborating with my team members and recognising these roles in their facilitation approaches. In retrospect, I wished I would have proposed to identify which Bull’s (2013) roles were missing to solidify our facilitation approach for our teaching week. For instance, out of Bull’s (2013) eight roles, Group Mirror was the one we didn’t fully apply to check understanding with learners. Moving forward, my facilitation approach will be more mindful of balancing each of these roles adequately and appropriately especially in an online learning environment. Then, Boettcher’s (n.d.) best practices for online teaching was a great checklist to consider when planning a learning event. The two principles and their related strategies that I resonated the most with are the “concept learning” (Boettcher, n.d., para. 30) and “making students” thinking visible (Boettcher, n.d., para. 30). And lastly, given my interest in collaborative learning in a virtual environment, one of my objectives as part of our team experience in a DLE was to revisit Murphy’s (2004) collaboration model which involves social presence, collaboration, and facilitation (Schaefer et al., 2019). According to Qing-Ke & Gwo-Jen (2018), social presence is developed through shared experiences and stories when individuals are working together to achieve learning objectives. Indeed, our project team developed a social presence within our online interactions that contributed to a successful knowledge construct experience in the completion of our presentation. Experiencing our own social presence as a team supported the design of a social presence in our Community of Inquiry.
Subsequently, my initial inquiries in digital facilitation were to understand two different practices. The first one was the practice of camera on and camera off and understanding the learners’ different perspectives. This inquiry is sustained given this topic is still evolving and requiring more research. The second question revolved around the ultimate audience engagement length in a synchronous session. How long can attention be sustained in a virtual learning event? I took away from the course experience, especially from Boettcher’s (n.d.) best practices and Bull’s (2013) various roles, that sustained attention will have greater chance to occur if the learning objectives meet the needs of the learners through versatile facilitation. However, it is an inquiry that will remain as I continue to develop further my facilitation skills.
And finally, the picture I chose to describe digital facilitation represents a desired realism in a digital learning environment to which authenticity, genuineness, and passion are present to engage an audience.
Reference:
Boettcher, J. V. (n.d.). Ten Best Practices for Teaching Online. Design for
Learning. http://designingforlearning.info/writing/ten-best-practices-for-teaching-online/
Bull, B. (2013). Eight Roles of an Effective Online Teacher. Faculty Focus. https://www.facultyfocus.com/articles/online-education/eight-roles-of-an-effective-online-teacher/
Schaefer, T., Rahn, J., Kopp, T., Fabian, C. M., & Brown, A. (2022). Fostering online learning at the workplace: A scheme to identify and analyse collaboration processes in asynchronous discussions. British Journal of Educational Technology, 50(3). https://www.psycharchives.org/bitstream/20.500.12034/2170/1/Schaefer_et_al-2019-British_Journal_of_Educational_Technology.pdf
Qing-Ke, F., & Gwo-Jen, H. (2018). Trends in mobile technology-supported collaborative learning: A systematic review of journal publications from 2007 to 2016. Computers & Education, 119, 129-143.https://doi.org/10.1016/j.compedu.2018.01.004
October 17, 2022 at 4:55 pm
Thanks Stephanie. This is a great reflection & revisitation of the first activity post-facilitation. I’m curious re) cameras/on/off & learner perceptions. Even though it is still at the surface level, do you have any early inklings as to what those perceptions are and the context of the learners who may have a specific perception?
October 20, 2022 at 6:32 pm
Hi Clint, thank you for your appreciative comment and your inquiry. My early experience with the employers I am supporting is that employees prefer camera off and managers want camera on. I was initially for camera on, but after some of the readings on the topic, especially with challenges such as zoom fatigue, mental health issues, access, and privacy, I am not sure that 100% camera on is a sustained practice. For perceptions and earlier feedback received, employees feel that by asking for camera on, managers are not trusting them and managers feel that employees are disengaged. When facilitating online, learners tend to be on camera initially and then off for the remaining of the session. I believe that the use of camera will come down to individual preference and practicality in the near future from my corporate experience.