As a final learning activity and my last MLAT blog post (insert cheering emoji), we are meant to revisit our original blog post from the beginning of the course.
3- Thoughts, Ideas or Feelings
My original thoughts surrounding facilitation have stayed the same in some respects. There is a lot of backend work and thought into creating an online learning environment that has multiple access and learning opportunities. This was reconfirmed in my team’s approach to our facilitation project and the building of all of the additional accessible options we placed in our facilitation week, as well as providing multiple means of expression in each activity. I still feel valve control is an important element in facilitation and feel as though all the teams in the past 4 weeks have done a great job of pacing the activities in their week. I still feel that to cultivate a supportive learning community, facilitators must ensure that learners feel safe to engage. This was evident in our facilitation week because our topic was one that required respect and sensitivity where learners felt safe exploring and expressing their feelings and thoughts. Even as a team of facilitators we were hesitant, but Leah created a safe space for us to explore the topic so that we could create that space for the learners. Based on the meaningful reflections we received I feel as though we were successful in this respect and it confirms that safety is needed for active participation.
2–Questions about Digital Facilitation
I posed two questions:
- What are some best practices/ recommendations for engaging with students to receive mid-term feedback that anyone has used?
- Does anyone have any effective strategies or recommendations for dropping choices when you have prescribed learning outcomes/ content enforced by the administration or standard testing that students must undertake? How do you cover it all when you can’t cover it all?
The second question did not get answered. However, the first one did based on varying methods used in the online sessions. I found the synch sessions were a great space for facilitators to check in with students and see how they were doing with the materials and the mid- point check in was visible. Saying that, if the learning environment does not have the capacity for the synch session like ours did, what would people use? I would still like to see what people might recommend.
1- Simile
Photo source: https://www.teclasap.com.br/wp-content/uploads/2013/07/finger-in-every-pie.jpg
Facilitators do have their hands in many pies- this has not changed. It was evident in all of our weeks of facilitation, from planning and managing the week for our cohorts as a team, to creating the content, to facilitating the week all while handling our work and families and anything else we have going on. It’s ALOT of pies. Also, when we have teams we have support in the process. We have the advantage of splitting the work and responding to every student, but the reality is in a normal setting, we cannot always do this nor is it necessarily needed. By setting the tone as a facilitator in terms of expectations of engagement and timing, learners know what to expect and facilitators can better manage the amount of pies they are dealing with.