3-2-1 Digital Facilitation – Response Post

3 Thoughts

• When I was a resource teacher with the VSB during the pandemic, digital facilitation felt harder than in-person because building/maintaining relationships through a screen was tough.
• I supported teachers in setting up online programs like Knowledgehook, IXL, Prodigy and Raz-Kids. I realized digital facilitation is also about making sure the tools actually work and that teachers feel confident using them.
• The few students I did teach online 1:1, struggled with technology, especially poor internet service.

2 Questions

• How do we keep students genuinely engaged online?
• What’s the best way to balance structure but also allow choice?

1 Metaphor

Digital facilitation feels like teaching through a window… you can see and hear each other, but it’s not the same as being in the same room.

3-2-1 Digital Facilitation – Response Post

October 17, 2025

3 Thoughts

1. Presence is relational, not just structural. Having facilitated in classrooms, online, and hybrid settings for many years, I’ve found that while social, teaching, and cognitive presence offer a helpful framework, they overlook the emotional and motivational elements that truly sustain engagement. Cleveland-Innes and Campbell (2012) reminded me that emotion is not a byproduct of learning but one of its essential conditions.
2. Frameworks can clarify practice, but also oversimplify it. The Community of Inquiry model gave me framework for what I was doing during our facilitation week, but I also noticed how it seems almost too neat and tidy. Critics like Shea and Bidjerano (2010) claim that learner autonomy deserves its own dimension, and I felt that gap whenever participants did (or did not) participate in the asynchronous activities.
3. Good facilitation is iterative design in flux. My earlier post focused on tools and access, but now I think facilitation is about testing and refining the lesson or course as you go. You get to know your learners each time you teach a course and I have noticed that each groups’ dynamics are never the same. It’s more like a cycle of listening, adjusting, and re-designing than a fixed process.

2 Questions

How do we adapt the CoI framework to allow more freedom to students while still preserving that which makes it distinctive and unique?

Is CoI truly the only model to view online learning while newer models could possibly suit today’s learning configurations?

1 Metaphor

So, you know, if digital facilitation was previously thought to be only teaching at a distance, it’s more like caring for a greenhouse nowadays. That glass still keeps us insulated from the rest of the world, but it really makes things grow: it’s warm, light, and tidy, and if we treat that environment well, it really gets to connect with people.