Image attributed to Dall-e AI using the following prompt:”Photo realistic image of a corporate trainer facilitating an online class. They are smiling at the camera on the laptop in front of them, gesturing with their hands showing they are excited about what they are teaching, and holding themselves confidently. They are working from an internet cafe showing the flexibility of online teaching work.“
As I reach the close of LRNT528 and reflect back on what I’ve learned about Digital Facilitation I’m struck by how naive my first post was, and how focused I was on the idea of digital facilitation being synchronous, not considering options for asynchronous, self-directed learning, or learning through mentoring or individual research and experiment. As we’ve spent the last 9 weeks talking almost exclusively about facilitation in the context of an AI-driven future I feel I need to update some of my previous reflections from week 1 of this course.
Digital Facilitation is comfortable and feels like home Digital Facilitation should be like a driving test – keeping you on the edge of your seat so you don’t become complacent.
Looking back on my initial blog post nine weeks later I feel like I was reflecting on the aspects of digital facilitation which are comfortable to me instead of those aspects where I’m less experienced and therefore have more opportunity to grow. Where I have been most comfortable in my career is pivoting my experience with face-to-face synchronous facilitation to virtual synchronous facilitation. Where I feel I need to continue to grow is in virtual facilitation which blends asynchronous activities and learning opportunities with synchronous ones, as my facililitation team chose to do in our facilitation week. I think this is an area where I can continue to grow and develop my skills, keeping me growing so that I do not become complacent in my facilitation practice.
Digital Facilitation as an evolving practice
After my reflection over the past nine weeks, here are the ways I think digital facilitation will continue to grow and evolve and the questions I continue to have regarding each topic:
I’m worried that digital facilitation will go away with a hurried “return to office”
Opportunities in Digital Facilitation could be divided by those unwilling (unable?) to invest in new technologies and those who have the funding to do so
As we explored different Large Language Model applications, Generative-AI empowered tools, and Virtual and Augmented Reality, I found myself returning to the same two questions: a) How much can I do with the trial version, and b) how much does the full solution cost? I was truly impressed by the functionalities of tools like InStage and their AR conversation generator, Magic School‘s development tools, or SchoolAI‘s customizable learning assistant… just enough to get me salivating. But working in corporate learning, in times of economic challenges and shrinking budgets, could I ever expect to really use these tools outside of my experimentation? Many of these tools market themselves as “saving teachers time” or augmenting their practice, but will that be enough for corporate learning teams? Will the only way we can acquire funding for these tools if we demonstrate a reduction of headcount on digital learning and instructional design teams? I’m still not sure what answer I have to these problems.I’m concerned that poor online learning experiences have contributed to a large population of resistorsWhich people and humanistic practices are we leaving behind with the advancement of AI-enabled learning tools?
As you can tell by my earlier post I continue to be cautiously optimistic that AI advancements could help to improve accessibility to digital learning content. For example, I’m excited that individuals with language-processing disabilities could leverage LLMs to help them simplify or shorten online texts to improve their readability. I’m also excited about how LLMs can be leveraged to design lesson outlines with Universal Design for Learning principles built-in, as Ano demonstrated during my week’s virtual facilitation session. At the same time, we know that AI can amplify the biases which exist in their training data – which is now every piece of digital content on the internet as well as entire libraries of written text. What are we potentially gaining from these AI-enabled tools, and it is worth it for the existing societal problems that we are potentially amplifying? I think that’s a question which we as a society will continue to answer, beyond just the application to digital learning purposes.eLearning is not the same as digital facilitation, and we’re not doing enough to socialize the differenceGenerative AI is not about to replace learning professionals, but it could open the door to a lot of unprofessional (ineffective?) content created without a pedagogical framework
One of the things I pondered while exploring a variety of AI-enabled facilitation tools during this course was how they could give a false sense of professionalism to untrained individuals using them. I could see some organizations or insitutions falsely thinking a subscription to MagicSchool where rubrics could be easily be generated being equivalent to an experienced learning professional who can reflect on the right type of prompts to input in order to achieve a result which will measure the actual learning taking place. Similarly, I can see someone inexperienced with digital design using Dall-E to quickly create all the imagery for a course without questionning how accurate the depictions are, without being aware of the possibility for spelling mistakes, or without prompting for the tool to demonstrate diversity in the subjects which is representative of the learners. I think these types of examples will show how learning professionals with a pedagogical mindset and enough curiosity to experiment and learn from evolving AI technologies will continue to demonstrate their value in a market where it’s easier than ever to appear professional in your digital facilitation content.
To answer my titular question, I don’t truly believe that digital facilitation will be automated, at least not to any extent which still allows for meaningful learning to take place. Skillful facilitators, instructors, and learning coaches with a background in pedagogy will still be needed to help learners explore learning material and apply their thinking in meaninful ways. Learning professionals who approach new AI technologies with an attitude of skepticism, curiosity, and exploration will be valuable as the world of Generative AI continues to evolve and expand. In fact it’s that attitude of curiosity which I’m most proud of developing during this course as I’m now more eager than ever to explore the possibilities Generative AI could bring to future facilition practices in the world of digital learning.