I hadn’t heard of a 3-2-1 post before, but what a great way to capture some thoughts and generate ideas. Below is my initial 3-2-1 post on digital facilitation.
3 initial thoughts
- I feel excited to practice digital facilitation, especially in ways or topics I haven’t before
- I want to primarily concentrate on the process, pedagogy and learning, not the technologies
- Specific and measurable learning outcomes will be very helpful in creating digital learn experiences that align well
2 questions
- What Bull roles of teaching can I practice more on in online and in person?
- What are some good strategies in building community, trust, openness in digital learning environments?
1 metaphor
My metaphor image below compares digital facilitation to building a puzzle. There is tons of opportunities to collaborate, find and place pieces (learning theories, technologies, ideas) and requires purposeful practice and strategy to do well.
Hi Zac,
I think it is important what you said about focusing on the learning and not the technology. I think this is easy to do. In my work sometimes I find by default I choose a familiar, available tool and stay in the comfort zone of it and sometimes that means I limit design choices because of it.
I am also interested in finding strategies to create openness and trust in learning communities, especially in a way that is organic and doesn’t feel forced. Have you had any experiences where this has been done very well? Or very poorly?
Melissa
Thanks for your reply Melissa!
I think from one of my most recent learning experiences in a workshop, the building of trust, community, and familiarity came with purposeful pauses/breaks and “non-graded” activities. When we were on lunch break or having small brain storming sessions brought forth the most feeling of community to me.
You are right it’s a challenge to not make these feel forced. As a participant I found some instances were a great opportunity to shift perspective and felt natural and others felt a little more of a chore to do. It’s hard to quantify what little differences there were between those two feelings!
Zac
Thanks for your post Zac. I am interested to hear more about your point “I want to primarily concentrate on the process, pedagogy and learning, not the technologies” in light of the first few weeks of this course. You have now experienced 3 different technologies for asynchronous discussions – a Moodle forum, a Mattermost team, and blog posts & comments. Do you think there are differences between the three platforms that have coloured how you have participated in each discussion? Does the technology choice influence the pedagogy and/or the process in some way?
Hi Clint. While I do believe there only minor differences in our discussions example, there is some importance in choosing the right technology for your learning experience. Functionality, accessibility and privacy are just some of the important aspects to consider, but my hope is to drive with pedagogy first and use the technology’s strengths to align with our underpinning learning theories and outcomes. I think it’s easy to fall into trying a new technology or flashy idea first, then trying to incorporate pedagogy, when I want to purposefully spend more time on our reasoning and rationale and utilize the tool belt of technologies our team is comfortable with.