3 thoughts about facilitating in digital environments:
- Digital learning is not going away. Too often my colleagues talk about ‘the good ol’ days’ of in-person corporate training and are holding on to the idea of returning to that model. Financial, geographical, and time savings all point to staying digital indefinitely.
- Facilitators need to understand that virtual facilitation skills – managing chat box, camera usage, annotation tools – are the job. Upskilling is necessary for professional facilitation.
- Corporations need to invest in their facilitators as they would with any other department. Often, money spent on advanced training for facilitators is seen as a ‘nice to have’ vs. ‘need to have’ by the C-Suite (in my experience).
2 questions about digital facilitation:
- What research/data is there about facilitator’s skill transference from in person facilitating to virtual platforms? How much directly translates, and which skills can be used only in one or the other?
- What is the ‘future state’ – what advances are coming?
1 metaphor or simile about digital facilitation:
August 27, 2024 at 11:01 am
Jessica that is the best comic I’ve seen in quite awhile and it is SO true. Your question about skills transference was certainly a huge issue in the early days of the pandemic as we raced to move everything online. What did you see at that time? Did you notice some folks moving over with more ease? And if so, what were the attributes of those folks vs. those who struggled more? My experience tells me a lot of it is attitudinal but of course there are other issues. Great topic for some further research!
September 9, 2024 at 8:23 pm
Hi Mary,
Glad you enjoyed the meme, it spoke to me as well!
My company quickly paid to have an expert provide each facilitator a two day training course on how to facilitate virtually. And once that class was over – they considered us SMEs ourselves and that was all of the support. Needless to say, four years later there is still a significant gap in skills within the group and no one seems to be holding anyone accountable to any particular level of skill. That is what I find the most interesting, is that virtual facilitation skills don’t seem to be a ‘need to have’ in a world where we live online.
October 19, 2024 at 10:31 am
Revisiting my initial 3-2-1 post, I find that I still believe in my three initial thoughts. In fact, much of the work done this course has reinforced my beliefs. Digital learning is the future – there is too much money to be saved, the reach of learning is so much greater (Canadian geography is no joke!), and the research backs up the positive effects and learning outcomes of using a e-platform for learning (see Lin et al’s paper ‘A Study of the Effects of Digital Learning on Learning Motivation and Learning Outcome’). To stay relevant in corporate education requires a need to upskill facilitation in a digital landscape – including the ‘little things’ such as monitoring a chat box and being able to synchronize discussions during a virtual session. And the onus to adapt these skills can’t solely rest with the facilitator – they need to be given the resources and opportunities to learn. For example, my corporation is currently flipping a group of instructors from in-person training to virtual so they offered sessions on zoom facilitation and familiarization within that platform. The company understood that they couldn’t just provide new material and expect the facilitator to be successful; there was Train-the-Trainer requirements that including the technology aspect for facilitation.
This course certainly opened my eyes to my second question regarding the future of facilitation in digital learning. Of course we talk to AI, but I think I’ve been focusing mostly on how it may be used negatively in the classroom or by learners. These last 8 weeks allowed a deep dive into how the facilitator can make use of this tech (admin work, data mining, template responses, etc.) which alleviate the time and effort that can come from tedious but necessary class admin and instead allow that focus and time to be placed om creating course content and engaging with the learners. I did not get an opportunity to dig into my initial question of how much of the facilitation skill is transferable… thought the discussion amongst my peers regarding negative experiences in the virtual world was an informal glimpse perhaps. The stories highlighted what can go wrong in a digital classroom, and showcased that though some styles of facilitation may work in a face-to-face classroom they do not necessarily translate to a virtual one.
Lin, M. H., Chen, H. C., & Liu, K. S. (2017). A study of the effects of digital learning on learning motivation and learning outcome. Eurasia Journal of Mathematics, Science and Technology Education, 13(7), 3553-3564.https://www.ejmste.com/article/a-study-of-the-effects-of-digital-learning-on-learning-motivation-and-learning-outcome-4843