Coming into this course, I felt that with the experience I already had in regards to digital facilitation and in-person teaching that I was already coming into it with a strong base of knowledge and experience. Using design principles and frameworks that I already felt comfortable with would allow me to see how with more focused practice I could create something useful and impactful when tasked with facilitating a week of study.
After the experiences of this course along with the 3 facilitation weeks, I am left with so many ideas moving forward and questions about how things can continue to move forward and improve in terms of digital facilitation. The biggest take aways for me from these experiences are:
– The importance of knowing your audience: this allows you to design learning opportunities that they will enjoy and learn from. It also allows you to hopefully limit any harmful or problematic content and know when more teacher support is needed
–The importance of having a plan: this allows you to at least have a blueprint of what is meant to happen and would allow for easy adaptations if needed or even remind you to not go overboard
– With digital facilitation and online learning, there can be too much content: as someone who often goes overboard, remember there are limits to what should be included. The idea is to share resources and teach, not scare people with too much
Moving forward, I do still have some important questions in regard to digital facilitation.
– We were lucky enough to have this course and get to dive into digital facilitation, but this isn’t available to most people. Later this week is the BC Provincial Wide professional development day, where massive conferences are held both in person and online, there are zero sessions on digital facilitation. The most we can learn on this topic is if we participate online and what we live vs. dislike in the digital facilitation of the presenters. How can we ensure that training in digital facilitation is offered? More importantly, how can we ensure it is done right?
Overall, I felt that this course gave me a better understanding of what is important to consider when designing an online course, and how to improve my digital facilitation to make the experience better for myself and my learners. I just hope that others have the same opportunity to build their skills, understanding, and most importantly their confidence when it comes to digital facilitation.
20 October 2025 at 8:22 am
Knowing your audience is so important and when misjudged, can lead to an uncomfortable result. Even when you know your audience, you have little to no control over its participants; all you can do is model good behaviour and hope to earn their respect and cooperation.
I spent a few years with a tech company which was run by an arrogant and callous CEO who knew nothing about tech. He came from an aggressive, competitive sales background and thought that he could harvest an innovate, successful tech company by applying those same aggressive, competitive tactics. Team health was a constant challenge and the turnover rate was the worst I’ve seen.
I recall an all-hands “town hall” meeting that was intended to boost morale. A special guest was invited: a professional soccer player who also knew nothing about tech. This fast-talking, passionate soccer player’s speech was about teamwork—about how you win as a team and lose as a team. In order to do that, he declared, you have to be a team player and follow the simple motto “fit in or f**k off.” As you can imagine, this was met with blank stares and gaping jaws. In the days following, the CEO was over the moon about how motivating the guest speaker was. The staff turnover continued. Nothing changed until the board removed the CEO.
Know your audience. If you misjudge, you adjust your approach instead of purging those who don’t “fit in.”
As someone with first-hand experience, I can say that you would provide valuable, grounded, and well-informed insights about digital facilitation in online learning environments. For the next province-wide professional development day, perhaps you could lead a session. People would benefit from hearing you present about digital facilitation.