Chapter 4: FLO Fundamentals
The FLIF Facilitation Process
The FLIF (Feel, Like, Improve, Feedback) survey is a valuable way to help your participant facilitation teams debrief their facilitation experience. As each team completes their facilitation week, you can strongly encourage them to complete the 6-question FLIF survey (see below). You can assist the team with this reflection by modelling the FLIF process yourself.
The questions posed in the FLIF are:
- How do I feel about the session? Reflect on the strategies you used to facilitate and their impact on participants. Do you feel participants achieved the learning outcomes? How do you know?
- What do I like about what I did?
Think about the aspects of your mini-session that you felt good about. - What do I want to improve or do differently?
Consider what you would like to do better next time you are in a facilitation role like this. - What were the key points about the feedback I received from my participants about my facilitation?
Review the feedback you received from your participants. What conclusions can you synthesize? What are the take-away ideas you’ll want to consider for next time? - How will this facilitation experience impact my teaching?
What will you take away from this experience that you can apply to your own courses? - Are there some additional points I would like feedback on?
Are there any specific aspects of your facilitation experience you’d like your course facilitators to respond to?
The survey can be developed using a semi-structured survey tool (e.g. an LMS quiz), or in a less-structured way (email or private forum).
When team participants have completed the FLIF, be sure to provide them with timely and constructive feedback, and encourage them to respond to their own team feedback in a similar way. Conclude your response with an open invitation for the participant to contact you with any questions about your feedback, or any related topics they wished to discuss with you.
Explanatory notes for participant facilitators
A strong element of the FLO Fundamentals course is critical reflection. Throughout the course, you are asked to pause, take note, examine, look forward. When you complete your mini-session facilitation, we ask that you complete a reflective survey activity referred to as FLIF, in which you structure your reflections around how you Felt, what you Liked, how you might Improve, and how you might incorporate any Feedback you received. Your FLIF responses should be honest and personal; they are shared only with course co-facilitators.
Although FLIF responses are generally private, we offer you two examples below of how others have responded to the FLIF questions:
FLIF: Facilitator 1’s responses
Question 1: How do I feel about the session? Reflect on the strategies you used to facilitate and their impact on participants. Do you feel participants achieved the learning outcomes? How do you know?
I feel good about the activity we developed although we’ve had a few hiccups along the way (not unexpected). We had a dual purpose for this minisession – not only did we want to guide the participants in an exploration of the opportunities and challenges faced by adult learners online, but we also wanted to clearly demonstrate the process of facilitating a mini-session in FLO. I’d say we were successful in the 2nd but not, perhaps, as successful in the 1st. Based on the feedback and the summaries and the one reflective response I’ve seen so far, not everyone has accomplished the trickiest part we were trying to help them achieve.
2. What do I like about what I did? Think about the aspects of your mini-session that you felt good about.
I think we did well in terms of modelling the process, and sharing our planning session debates/ideas, including the difficult task of dividing up the workload. I think the GoogleDocs worked well.
3. What do I want to improve or do differently? Consider what you would like to do better next time you are in a facilitation role like this.
I think I would try to find a different way to encourage more discussion between team members; I feel that the way we structured the group work meant there wasn’t a real crystallization of ideas within each group. It seemed to be more of a sharing of individual responses to the questions. I also think that I wouldn’t double-post the milestone date in the instructions and in the Events Calendar. Made for too much work and difficult to change both places when we had to flex the timeline.
4. What were the key points about the feedback I received from my participants about my facilitation? Review the feedback you received your participants. What conclusions can you synthesize? What are the take- away ideas you’ll want to consider for next time?
Not all the feedback has been posted yet but, from what was there, participants found the instructions clear and the activity worthwhile.
5. How will this facilitation experience impact my teaching? What will you take away from this experience that you can apply to your own courses?
Demonstrating a mini-session was a great way to make me more aware of how/why I do the things I do — that metacognitive perspective is really powerful. Sometimes when I facilitate on my own, I don’t take the time to reflect on the “why” and “what for” questions. I’ll put up “Post-its” on my bulletin board to remind me in the future.
6. Are there some additional points I would like feedback on? Are there any specific aspects of your facilitation experience you’d like your course facilitators to respond to?
Not that I can think of at this time. Thanks!
FLIF: Facilitator 2’s responses
1. How do I feel about the session? Reflect on the strategies you used to facilitate and their impact on participants. Do you feel participants achieved the learning outcomes? How do you know?
I feel that the activity went fairly smoothly and that participants achieved the learning outcomes. I do like to balance things out in an online course so that some weeks aren’t high volume on the forum posts and too chock full of synchronous activities. However, this week felt very quiet. Then late in the week (and weekend) when the summaries were posted I felt very reassured that things were coming together. So I think it was just a little facilitator angst because by all reports people were very engaged — it just wasn’t as visible.
2. What do I like about what I did? Think about the aspects of your mini-session that you felt good about.
I like that the instructions were clear enough that everything managed to just get on with it. I was delighted to see how quickly everyone signed up for their team groups. During our planning, Facilitator 1 and I focused on keeping everything very streamlined without too many layers. Group work is already a huge layer that requires a lot of time for coordination! I think we achieved that. I also like how group summaries, as a way of sharing back, can really highlight important aspects of the reading as well as individual experiences.
3. What do I want to improve or do differently? Consider what you would like to do better next time you are in a facilitation role like this.
I’m always hesitant to mess with the timeline set out at the beginning of an activity. There are so many demands on our time as educators, so it shouldn’t be a surprise when some people can’t quite squeeze in what they need to do by the published date. The important thing is that delays and struggles are communicated to all participants. Having said that, we did make a decision to shift the completion dates and times to accommodate one team group. When I review everything more closely now, I don’t think I would have done the same thing. For one, asking everyone to attend to new admin details adds noise to the workshop right when everyone is focused in on their projects. Also, I remember what it’s like to be on the receiving end of deadline shifting and having mixed feelings about it (Now that I have more time should I spend more time?) Plus as a facilitator, it was a bit of a scramble to adjust dates in the calendar and elsewhere.
4. What were the key points about the feedback I received from my participants about my facilitation? Review the feedback you received your participants. What conclusions can you synthesize? What are the take- away ideas you’ll want to consider for next time?
The feedback is still rolling in. I love that people noticed what didn’t happen (glitches, confusion about what to do, etc.) and that they felt supported. Alignment of the activity with the learning outcomes was also noticed. This is a bonus because that observation is in itself a learning outcome : )
5. How will this facilitation experience impact my teaching? What will you take away from this experience that you can apply to your own courses?
Most of my current work is related to helping others learn how to facilitate. This mini-session had a dual purpose — the topic itself (adult learners online) and modelling a mini-session for the upcoming weeks. One struggle with FLO has been finding the best way to convey the expectations and (flexible) possibilities of facilitating a mini-session. I’m excited about the potential of this format for future FLO workshops.
6. Are there some additional points I would like feedback on? Are there any specific aspects of your facilitation experience you’d like your course facilitators to respond to?
While the feedback so far indicates that participants felt supported, I wonder if more facilitator presence perhaps in the form of check-ins would have been appreciated.