What is Facilitating Learning Online?

Facilitating Learning Online (FLO) is a collection of one- to five-week online courses that help participants develop the skills they need to confidently and effectively facilitate learning online.

The collection includes:

• Two foundation courses: FLO Fundamentals (5 weeks) and FLO Design (4 weeks),
• One in-depth course: FLO Synchronous (3 weeks), plus
• A series of one-week MicroCourses that focus on single topics.

Who is this guide for?

FLO courses are designed to be facilitated by those who are committed to improving the quality of online learning in their institution or organization, including:

• Coordinators or managers of teaching and learning centres
• Personnel who provide professional development services for educators
• Administrators of learning management systems (LMS) or virtual learning environments (VLE)

Secondary audiences for this guide include faculty who:

• Teach fully online or in a blended/hybrid format and are using some aspect of the online environment to facilitate learning
• Are current online faculty, new-to-online, online-savvy but new to teaching/adult education, or new to both online & teaching
• Are creating, converting, or revising a course for online delivery
• May also be instructional/learning designers (professionals or individuals hired to develop a specific course/program for online)
• Want to develop or improve online synchronous aspects of their courses

This guide will also be useful to administrators as a way to understand the complexity and scope of the work of a facilitator. This will assist administrators in program, budget, and resource planning. In many cases, it will be educational technologists, instructional designers, and other staff who will be performing the tasks outlined in this guide.

Individuals who are preparing to develop or facilitate similar courses may also benefit from this guide, and may choose to adapt it for their own courses. However, because the emphasis is on facilitating in a community of learners and supporting collaboration and reflective practices, it may not be as beneficial for those focusing on teacher-created content or transmissive models.

About this guide

The authors of this guide—Gina Bennett, Beth Cougler Blom, Sylvia Currie, and Sylvia Riessner—created it to provide all current and future FLO facilitators with details about our practices to make your job easier and to give you a comprehensive picture of how to facilitate FLO courses. It builds on our experiences developing and facilitating the FLO courses and mentoring others to do the same. We use exemplary contributions to the courses, instructions, ideas, and materials, as well as facilitation strategies that have worked for us.

Ultimately, our intention is to provide support and mentorship for FLO facilitators and to share the vision of what we are trying to accomplish with this family of courses. This guide will help us be more clear with ourselves and others about what that is, and how to keep moving forward with a robust program.

How to use this guide

This guide is not necessarily a linear read. The first three chapters are of value to all facilitators and those curious about FLO courses; however, FLO facilitators and mentors may choose to refer mainly to the course-specific chapters.

The introduction, Chapter 1: What is Facilitation? and Chapter 2: FLO Family of Courses, are applicable to all readers. These chapters will help you understand how we approach facilitation, and the context in which we have developed and refined this collection of courses.

Chapter 3: Facilitating FLO outlines recommended steps for preparing to facilitate FLO, as well as the facilitation and hosting models for those interested in offering the courses in-house. This chapter will be of interest to all future facilitators, but also to administrative and support staff.

Chapter 4: FLO Fundamentals, Chapter 5: FLO Design, Chapter 6: FLO Synchronous and Chapter 7: FLO MicroCourses, provide specific details about planning and facilitating each course. Jump directly to the course you plan to facilitate, or read them all as a way to determine if you want to expand your offerings to include other courses.

Each FLO course chapter (4 – 7) is associated with an open educational resource (OER) for that course. The OER resources have been developed using the Moodle learning management system, and you are free to use them in a variety of ways:

• Browse the courses from BCcampus’s SCoPE website.
• Download each course (as an .MBZ file) using the “Download this Course” link on the homepage of each course.
• Copy the contents of all, or part of, each course into your own learning management system.^[1]