![\"FLO](\"https:\/\/opentextbc.ca\/flofacilitatorguide\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/169\/2020\/04\/image2.png\")
\nWhat is FLO Fundamentals?<\/h1>\nThis is a mostly asynchronous online course, delivered over five sequential weeks. Two or three one-hour synchronous sessions are optional but recommended to facilitate community building and to provide valuable exposure to synchronous facilitation. Your primary role is to build and sustain the online community: pre-planning the course, communicating regularly with participants, providing supplementary materials, organizing and coaching teams, and supporting participants\u2019 experimentation with a variety of online learning tools.\n\nIn a nutshell, the course works like this: in Week 1, you get everyone enrolled in the course, familiar with the layout, and introduced to each other. The FLO facilitators then start the discussion for Week 1\u2019s assigned topic and guide participants to experience what it feels like to help build an active online community. By the end of Week 1, participants are organized into four teams: each team will be responsible for facilitating an assigned topic for one of the following weeks. During each of the following four weeks, you provide participants with readings and a discussion topic related to the readings. The team responsible for that week facilitates the discussion while the course facilitators provide support from the sidelines and are less visible in the discussion.\n\nKeep in mind that in facilitating this first week\u2019s discussion, you are demonstrating good facilitation skills and providing a model for how participant teams might facilitate a weekly activity when it\u2019s their turn. Depending on your participants, you may wish to make this point more or less explicit.\n\nFLO Fundamentals has proven to be an effective\u2014and often transformative\u2014learning experience. Our experience has shown that a class of 14 \u2013 20 educators is a good size for this course and we highly recommend that you enlist a co-facilitator to support this group. You can expect to be involved in the course every day for a total of 15 \u2013 25 hours per week (more if this is your first time) during the preparation and implementation of this course.\nLearning outcomes<\/h1>\nFLO Fundamentals develops key themes for successful online facilitation. At the end of this course, participants should be (better) able to:\nBuild and sustain online community<\/h2>\n\n \t- Reflect on the experience of an online learning community.<\/li>\n \t
- Explore the role of instructor presence in online learning.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
Support diverse learners online<\/h2>\n\n \t- Observe UDL principles and identify ways to help diverse learners online.<\/li>\n \t
- Use facilitation strategies and tools to address the needs of adult learners.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
Facilitate collaborative and individual learning<\/h2>\n\n \t- Facilitate collaborative and individual activities online.<\/li>\n \t
- Explore group dynamics in online collaborative activities.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
Provide constructive feedback and assessment<\/h2>\n\n \t- Model effective feedback and assessment.<\/li>\n \t
- Critically reflect on feedback and experience to self-evaluate work and learning.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
Manage the online course environment<\/h2>\n\n \t- Explore effective strategies to manage the workload.<\/li>\n \t
- Improve the use of tools within an online learning environment.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
Participants<\/h1>\nA wide variety of educators benefit from FLO Fundamentals. Participants are often full- or part-time instructors at post-secondary educational institutions who are new to teaching online or have already been teaching online for some time but would like to develop stronger facilitation skills. Other participants may be familiar with traditional teaching practices but are seeking to develop experience and confidence with more learner-centric educational approaches.\n\nFLO Fundamentals may also be of interest to many other educators, including instructional\/learning designers, educational developers, learning technologists and others who work in teaching and learning centres. It may also be useful for graduate students, consultants from the private sector, trainers employed by for-profit or non-profit organizations, and educational support providers.\nTechnology<\/h1>\nFLO Fundamentals requires no special technology beyond what has been recommended in Chapter 3: Tools to Support FLO. Because FLO Fundamentals is usually the first FLO course participants will encounter (and sometimes their first online course ever), be cautious about using too many external tools or apps until you are better aware of your participants\u2019 comfort levels.\nCourse content and layout<\/h1>\nFLO Fundamentals is a complete five-week workshop-style course with a comprehensive collection of information, activities, directions, assessments, and related resources. Within the Open Education Resources (OER) version of the course, resources are organized into tabs, with one tab for each of the five weeks, plus one Hub tab with introductory and general information, and one tab to organize the work of the teams (see the image below for an example).\n\n[caption id=\"attachment_749\" align=\"aligncenter\" width=\"659\"]![\"A](\"https:\/\/opentextbc.ca\/flofacilitatorguide\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/169\/2020\/04\/image3-3.png\")
Figure 4.1[\/caption]\n\nIn the Hub tab, you will find:\n\n \t- A Course Handbook, describing for participants how the course works, what\u2019s expected of them, learning outcomes, scheduling, etc.<\/li>\n \t
- A sample Schedule to help participants (and facilitators) stay on track.<\/li>\n \t
- Resources to help facilitators organize participant teams.<\/li>\n \t
- Sample forums to facilitate discussion:\n
\n \t- An Open Forum for sharing general information (clarification, announcements, social-type sharing) not necessarily related to the weekly discussion about content. Both facilitators and participants can post and respond.<\/li>\n \t
- A Weekly Journal Share forum, for posting reflections on learning.<\/li>\n \t
- A forum to provide Feedback for participant teams.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n \t
- A feedback form (Feel, Like, Improve, Feedback, or FLIF) to help participant teams reflect and receive personal, private feedback on their facilitation experience. (In the OER course, this feedback is structured using the Learning Management System's quiz tool.)<\/li>\n \t
- Additional resources for facilitators to aid in coordination of the course (generally hidden from participants).<\/li>\n<\/ul>\nTabs corresponding to each week\u2019s activities include:\n
\n \t- An overview of the topic for the week.<\/li>\n \t
- A forum to discuss the week\u2019s topic (e.g. to respond to the questions posted by the facilitation team).<\/li>\n \t
- Other resources and\/or activities specific to that week.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\nThe tab for Facilitation Teams Workspace includes:\n
\n \t- A detailed activity plan for each team.<\/li>\n \t
- A workspace forum (private, if you choose) for each team\u2019s members to plan their facilitation strategies and tasks.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\nThe topics discussed in this course are:\n
\n \t- Week 1: Building Learning Community (facilitated by course facilitators).<\/li>\n \t
- Week 2: Diversity of Learners (facilitated by the orange team).<\/li>\n \t
- Week 3: Responsive Facilitation (facilitated by the blue team).<\/li>\n \t
- Week 4: Collaboration (facilitated by the yellow team).<\/li>\n \t
- Week 5: Reflective Practice (facilitated by the green team).<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
Course assessment strategies<\/h1>\nThis course is designed to be developmental; it is not a graded course in the traditional sense. Unless you decide otherwise, your participants will not be marked or assigned a formal grade on their performance. The course does include a number of activities to encourage self-reflection, as well as a comprehensive self-assessment rubric which could be used to assign a grade, if needed (see FLO Fundamentals Self-Assessment Rubric<\/a>).\n\nParticipants are also encouraged to self-assess their qualification for a Certificate of Completion. As facilitator(s), it is up to you to decide what form this Certificate should take.\nFacilitator task list: What you need to do before, during and after the course<\/h1>\nThe successful hosting of FLO Fundamentals requires good planning, timing, and coordination. Over the years, we\u2019ve developed a detailed, step-by-step Task List for course facilitators:\n\n \t- See FLO Fundamentals Task List<\/a> for a concise, detailed list of facilitator tasks.<\/li>\n \t
- You can also use the following Task List Explanations alongside the Task List for more background information and ideas.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
Task List Explanations<\/h2>\nSeveral weeks (or months) before the course begins\n\n \t- Access the OER course<\/strong>. The OER course Facilitating Learning Online - Fundamentals<\/a> is currently offered as a Moodle course with guest access; you should be able to enter the course and view all content.<\/li>\n \t
- Set up your own learning environment and copy content<\/strong>. Before you can offer FLO Fundamentals, you need a learning environment \u2013 a virtual place to host the course. At the very minimum, you need an online space (private or securable, if you choose) where facilitators and participants can conduct discussions and share facilitation discoveries and the results of experimentation. The course content must be added to the LMS or other learning space you have chosen:[footnote]In your institution, an LMS Administrator, IT support, or Instructional Designer may help with this step.[\/footnote]\n
\n \t- If using Moodle: restore the latest version of this course into your LMS (you can download it using the link in the OER).<\/li>\n \t
- If NOT using Moodle: establish and configure an online learning environment (LMS, CMS, wiki, etc.) into which you can copy all relevant content from FLO Fundamentals.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<\/li>\n \t
- If possible, find a colleague to assist you as a Co-Facilitator<\/strong>. Your ideal co-facilitator will be someone who can work with you to provide guidance and support to your participants, and can dedicate 15 to 25 hours per week to this task. Ideally, your co-facilitator will be familiar with online learning theories and practices, and with personal and technical skills to engage online participants. Not only do co-facilitators lessen the workload and enrich the facilitation process for you, they increase the facilitation expertise within your institution or organization. It would help a great deal if your colleague has already taken FLO Fundamentals.<\/li>\n \t
- Access your FLO Fundamentals learning environment to review content and tools<\/strong>. Prepare the course site or learning environment and (re)acquaint yourself with the facilitation tools you plan to use. Familiarize yourself with the course content, materials, philosophy, scheduling, flow, etc. of the course.<\/li>\n \t
- Set up a web conferencing tool for online synchronous sessions and conversations<\/strong>. There are many web conferencing applications to choose from, depending on your institution's requirements.<\/li>\n \t
- Connect with your co-facilitator for detailed pre-planning<\/strong>. Develop a planning regime that you\u2019re both comfortable with. Work together to develop a detailed list of tasks to be completed before, during, and after the course runs. You have a lot to do before the course begins:\n
\n \t- Ensure an easy-to-access place or process to store planning resources. Agree on planning tools and schedules.<\/li>\n \t
- Customize this Facilitator Task List to fit your needs.<\/li>\n \t
- Review the resources available in the OER and select some activities to try. You could also add your own ideas for icebreakers, discussion topics, resources, images, slides, etc.<\/li>\n \t
- Develop rough agendas for your synchronous sessions.<\/li>\n \t
- Prepare how-to resources for your participants to explain the features of the learning environments and tools.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<\/li>\n \t
- Practice using learning environment tools<\/strong>. If you\u2019re already pretty comfortable with both synchronous and asynchronous online tools, you may wish to try something new; to model for your participants an adventurous open mind when it comes to educational technology. However, be aware of the technical expertise of your potential participants: you don\u2019t want to choose something that most of them will have trouble accessing or learning to use.<\/li>\n \t
- Identify potential participants<\/strong>. Think about where you might find your course participants. Will you enlist from your institution only, or other institutions and organizations? Decide how far ahead you must start the recruitment process.<\/li>\n \t
- Ensure your content is accurate<\/strong>. Once you have a potential learner audience in mind, re-visit the learning environment and carefully review all content (forum post topics, reading lists, directions, etc.). Make sure your content is appropriate for your intended group of participants, and reflects the goals of your institution or program. Remember, the FLO courses have been developed as Open Educational Resources and are licenced under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License<\/a> so you\u2019re free to modify whatever you like! The only requirement is that you provide attribution and don\u2019t imply or suggest endorsement by the licensor.<\/li>\n \t
- Ensure your content is accurate<\/em>.<\/strong> Unfortunately, the web addresses (URLs) of internet resources change often with the result that your linked document may not appear when participants click on the link. Sometimes, through searching, you can locate the new URL for the resource but you may wish to consider finding a more up-to-date resource on the same topic instead.<\/li>\n \t
- (If you haven\u2019t done so already!) Choose a start date and promote<\/strong> your course to your target participants.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n\n\n
Your Technical Skills: The Least You Need to Know<\/h2>\n![\"Light](\"https:\/\/opentextbc.ca\/flofacilitatorguide\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/169\/2020\/04\/BCCampus-FLOGuide-Callout-Colour.png\")
\n\nYour participants may dream up a variety of designs for their mini-session and, ideally, you and your co-facilitator will be comfortable setting up the tools they need. If you are working within an LMS, some commonly-used tools include:\n\n \t- Forums or discussion groups: LMS-based forums usually offer many different settings and you should be familiar with most of them. Learn to set up both open forums and team-based forums (if available) and explore other settings that can create new possibilities for structuring activities.<\/li>\n \t
- Polls or Choices: Many LMSs offer a tool for quickly polling participants -- handy for any time you want people to indicate a preference (e.g. \"what time should we meet for our synchronous session?\"), or to vote on a single question.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
One- to two weeks before the course begins<\/h2>\nOnce your FLO Fundamentals course is underway, you and your participants will be very busy indeed and you\u2019ll want to have as much preparatory work out of the way as possible. How you set up the course site and engage the community will directly impact how the rest of the course flows; keep in mind that you are modelling good facilitation practices (a detailed list of Core FLO Facilitation Skills is included in Chapter 3<\/a> of this Guide).\n\n \t- Complete recruitment and register participants<\/strong>. You may have begun the recruitment of participants weeks or even months ahead. Make sure you have a process in place to register your participants in accordance with your institution\u2019s policies. If you are managing your own site (e.g. a WordPress site), you may be able to organize this on your own. During recruitment, be sure to:\n
\n \t- Communicate expectations around time and teamwork.<\/li>\n \t
- Provide information to your participants about what they\u2019ll need to do and where to find what they\u2019ll need. Your goal is not to overwhelm your participants but to provide enough information so they can jump right in when the course begins.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n\n\n
![\"Facilitator](\"https:\/\/opentextbc.ca\/flofacilitatorguide\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/169\/2020\/04\/FLO-guide-facilitator-touch-150x150.png\")
\n\nWhat\u2019s the right number of participants for this course?\n<\/strong>A small class of 10 or fewer participants will make it difficult to sustain rich online conversations. On the other hand, a large class of more than 25 may be more than 2 facilitators can handle. Our experience has shown that a class of 14 - 20 educators is a good size for this course.\n\n<\/div>\n\n \t- Meet with co-facilitator<\/strong>, finalize the week ahead. Now is the time to check the details and do final revisions of your first week\u2019s activities & resources, including:\n
\n \t- Discussion topics, resources, images, slides, etc.<\/li>\n \t
- Icebreaker activities.<\/li>\n \t
- Your introductory welcome post.<\/li>\n \t
- Agenda for the first synchronous session.<\/li>\n \t
- Resource to explain the basic features of the synchronous environment & tools.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<\/li>\n \t
- Create or update co-facilitators\u2019 profiles<\/strong> and contact information. Tell a little about yourself in a profile or short biography. Establish your contact information and set \u201coffice hours\u201d (if appropriate).<\/li>\n \t
- Decide which aspects of the course will be displayed<\/strong> when the course opens and which aspects will be hidden until needed. Many learning environments will let you hide or show specific activities until you\u2019re ready for your participants to see them.<\/li>\n \t
- Ensure sufficient starting information for participants<\/strong>. Your new participants will need detailed information about how to access the course and get started (e.g. if using Moodle, see the FLO Handbook on the Hub tab, or consider preparing a screencast).<\/li>\n \t
- Finalize enrollment of participants<\/strong>, send out a Welcome email. Provide the participants with access to the course and\/or information about accessing technical support, if necessary.<\/li>\n \t
- Decide on your week\u2019s start day<\/strong> and modify your directions to the participants and the learning environment settings accordingly (if necessary). This course is not self-paced; the work is organized around weeks. Will the first day of your course week begin on a Sunday, Monday, or some other day?<\/li>\n \t
- Set a time for your first<\/strong> (Week 1) synchronous session<\/strong>. Prepare the synchronous environment as much as possible: upload slides, write\/draw\/embed a welcome message, etc.<\/li>\n \t
- Set up a separate online workspace for each team<\/strong>. You will be dividing up your participants into 4 teams; each team will facilitate one of the weekly mini-sessions. A unique team workspace (e.g. a forum or Google doc) with editing functions for team members should be sufficient. You may wish to limit access (e.g. read-only access) to this workspace to non-team participants.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n\n\n
Privacy and Confidentiality<\/h2>\n\n\nIn all FLO courses, our learning relies on the exchange of honest, constructive feedback, and we need to agree on rules that support this foundation of trust. Be aware of your institutional or organizational policies relating to privacy and confidentiality, determine how you will interpret these for your online learning environment, and decide how to communicate these rules to your participants. You can see an example of how privacy and confidentiality concerns are communicated in this page in the FLO Fundamentals Course Handbook<\/a> (in the Moodle OER). Some privacy and confidentiality rules you may wish to adopt:\n\n \t- Always seek permission to share content posted by participants.<\/li>\n \t
- When using social media and other online services to complete activities, ensure you are familiar with the levels of privacy available and how the information will be stored and shared. Communicate this information to the participants.<\/li>\n \t
- If you plan on recording your synchronous sessions, confirm that this is OK with the session participants before<\/em> you hit the record button.<\/li>\n \t
- Let participants know who else has access to this course (e.g. participants, facilitators, assistants, website administrators, etc.).<\/li>\n \t
- You may wish to establish \"Vegas rules<\/a>,\" i.e. what happens in the course, stays in the course.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\nSome other decisions you\u2019ll need to make:\n
\n \t- Decide which teams each co-facilitator will support<\/strong> during the course, and decide between yourselves what kind of support you will provide.<\/li>\n \t
- Confirm technical support<\/strong> is available and adequate, if needed. If you are providing your own tech support, confirm that your site has been backed up and no significant technical issues (e.g. scheduled downtime) exist. If tech support personnel are available, confirm they are standing by and aware of your course start date and enrollments.<\/li>\n \t
- Review the suggested assessment options for this course and select one (or more)<\/strong> to recommend for your participants. A self-assessment rubric can be adapted so the facilitator can assign a grade, if needed (see FLO Fundamentals Self-Assessment Rubric<\/a>).<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n
As time permits<\/h2>\n\n \t- Practice navigating your course site and other tools.<\/strong> If you are using the OER Moodle version of this course, you\u2019ll find it's a complex environment with lots of moving parts. Take the time to familiarize yourself with the course and revise it as you see fit. Move stuff around and explore different tools, modules, and plugins (if available). Consider (judiciously!) trying some new or less-used tools outside of your LMS or main learning environment.<\/li>\n \t
- Streamline or otherwise improve your course\u2019s navigation tools.<\/strong> When you refer to another part of your course or learning environment, provide a direct link whenever possible. Consider including a navigation screencast showing step-by-step how to get around your learning environment or LMS.<\/li>\n \t
- Fine-tune your reading list.<\/strong> In such a fascinating and fast-moving field like online facilitation, it\u2019s easy to get carried away with the list of readings you provide for participants. Consider making all readings optional but don\u2019t be afraid to strongly recommend a resource you know is important. After all, this course is intended to be informed by research and theory.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\nThe readings you\u2019ll see contained in this course have been chosen carefully to be both high quality and of reasonable length. However, as we have already mentioned, links to internet-based resources can break or become \u201cstale.\u201d Encourage your FLO participants to research and recommend better or more up-to-date readings for their own facilitation week.\n
A few days before the course begins<\/h2>\n\n \t- Connect with your participants<\/strong>. Make sure they\u2019re able to access the learning environment, and communicate some basic information about the course, expectations around time, etc.<\/li>\n \t
- Write your introductory welcome post<\/strong> (e.g. in an \u201cIntroductions\u201d forum within the course or as a new thread in the \u201cOpen\u201d forum) in a friendly, informal, and enthusiastic style that welcomes them to the online course environment and sets a tone for your online community. Encourage participants to respond with their own introductions.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n\n\n
Your Welcome post doesn\u2019t have to be just text\u2026<\/h2>\n\n\nAs a facilitator of FLO, you\u2019ll want to set an example from the beginning of what good facilitation looks like. Take the time to craft a friendly, welcoming message to begin the process of online community building.\n\nSome tips:<\/strong>\n\n \t- Your introductory post doesn\u2019t need to be just text; you can be creative and adventurous with technology. Part of your job as facilitator is to model an attitude of fearless experimentation with communication technologies. What about a video introduction against a backdrop of where you live? Or a narrated slideshow? Of course, you don\u2019t want to intimidate your participants if they\u2019re fairly novice technology users, so be sure to offer choices.<\/li>\n \t
- What to include is up to you; this is your first impression. You might like to talk a bit about your teaching and other professional experience. You could share an anecdote or advice from your own online facilitation experience, or use an icebreaker-type format.<\/li>\n \t
- Make sure your post sets a good impression: establishes instructor presence, presents a clear message without being too long or too short.<\/li>\n \t
- Be sure your introductory post ends with an invitation for your participants to share their introductions in a similar way.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
\n \t- Post the week\u2019s overview post<\/strong>, emphasizing for participants:\n
\n \t- Activities, etc. they must complete this week.<\/li>\n \t
- Tips on how to navigate the site.<\/li>\n \t
- The need to plan and schedule time to work on the course. Remind participants that a valuable learning experience cannot be achieved using a side-of-the-desk approach.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n\n\n\n\nShare time management tips<\/strong>\nEven with your explicit messages about the amount of time needed, participants may still expect to be able to slide their FLO work in on the weekends or in little bits and pieces between other daily tasks. This can leave people feeling they are always working on the course, even though their time on task may be quite short.\nRemind your participants to set aside time for the course, and repeat that advice early and often.\nEncourage them to book time to work with their facilitation team partners (and you, if they wish) well in advance.\n\n<\/div>\n
\n \t- Finalize your questions for Week 1\u2019s forum<\/strong> \u201cBuilding Online Community.\u201d The following are SAMPLE QUESTIONS only (you may have other questions to engage participants on this topic):\n
\n \t- What experiences have you had with online learning communities?<\/li>\n \t
- What can an instructor (or facilitator) do to develop and maintain a sense of community in an online learning environment?<\/li>\n \t
- What do you know about the Community of Inquiry model? How does it relate to building a sense of online community?<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<\/li>\n \t
- Organize participants into facilitation teams<\/strong> and post this information for all participants. You may decide to organize teams randomly or according to certain criteria; whether to make team interaction private or to open it up so that other participants can follow their planning process. Decide how and when participants can switch teams (preferably only within a short time period at the start of the course) if they wish.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n
Week 1: Building Online Community<\/h2>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/opentextbc.ca\/flofacilitatorguide\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/169\/2020\/04\/BCCampus-FLOGuide-BuildngCommunity-Colour-300x180.png\")
\n\nThroughout Week 1, your role is to establish a strong facilitator presence and effectively demonstrate what good online facilitation looks like. Aim to do this as transparently as possible; think out loud to your participants to show them how you plan and facilitate the various activities. This may be a good opportunity to incorporate other collaboration tools, such as wikis or other co-authoring platforms, to show how it is possible to communicate outside of a forum (which tends to be the default discussion tool).\n\n\n\n\nHelping participants cope who may feel overwhelmed during the first week.<\/strong>\n\nOffer brief explanations, clarifications and practical tips in an informal and friendly way. If your LMS offers forum \u201csubscriptions\u201d (in which participants automatically receive an email copy of all forum posts) make sure that not all forums are configured this way, and let participants know how to \u201cunsubscribe\u201d from a forum whenever possible.\n\n<\/div>\nWeek 1, Day 1 (the first day of the week):<\/h3>\n\n \t- Morning: Post facilitators\u2019 personal intros<\/strong> to the Introductory Forum.<\/li>\n \t
- Morning: Begin the Building Online Community forum<\/strong> activity. Post your questions to launch and guide the discussion.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n\n\n\n\nFind ways to allow participants to share their prior knowledge and experience. You can use the Building Online Community forum introductory activity to make the positive and negative perceptions of online learning visible by asking each participant to contribute words and an image that reflects their ideas about online community.\n\n<\/div>\n
\n \t- Evening: Finalize details for the first synchronous session<\/strong> in your agenda and\/or slidedeck, including:\n
\n \t- How to use the synchronous environment.<\/li>\n \t
- Icebreaker: quick intros of participants.<\/li>\n \t
- Review of the agenda - invite additional ideas.<\/li>\n \t
- Highlight course structure (and flow): roles, expectations, team facilitation, reflective practice, self-assessment.<\/li>\n \t
- Explain the purpose of the Facilitation Team Workspace with an activity plan and planning forum.<\/li>\n \t
- Highlight the importance of feedback, journaling, reflection, time management tips.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n
Week 1 Day 2<\/h3>\n\n \t- Earlier in day: Remind participants about the synchronous session<\/strong> a few hours before the session begins. (Reiterate that this session is not required although it is highly recommended.) Your reminder may be a forum post, LMS message, email, etc. Re-post session time, access information, and link to technical support, if needed.<\/li>\n \t
- Morning: Introduce the Learning Journal<\/strong> (perhaps as a post to the Open Forum). In your post:\n
\n \t- Explain the concept and the value of maintaining a record of what participants are learning and want to remember.<\/li>\n \t
- Remind them to regularly pause, reflect, assess and synthesize their learning.<\/li>\n \t
- Recommend they document these thoughts in a personal learning journal using paper-based, audio\/video, or electronic means.<\/li>\n \t
- Encourage participants to share nuggets (insights) in a Learning Journal.\nThe Learning Journal is explained in more detail in the Course Handbook<\/a>.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<\/li>\n \t
- Later: Host first synchronous session<\/strong>. Keep in mind this is your opportunity to connect with your participants both aurally and visually, and to demonstrate the value that a synchronous collaboration tool can bring to an online learning experience. If possible:\n
\n \t- Ensure you have technical support people (or your co-facilitator) standing by to assist with access problems.<\/li>\n \t
- Enter the synchronous session at least a half-hour early to greet early arrivals and troubleshoot navigation problems within the synchronous environment.<\/li>\n \t
- Remember to notify participants that the session will be recorded (if this is possible and if all agree) and hit the record button as your session begins.<\/li>\n \t
- Check in with participants about their comfort level navigating the site during the session and address any confusions.<\/li>\n \t
- Evening: Post a brief follow-up report about the synchronous session<\/strong>. Talk up the value of the session and encourage participants to attend the next synchronous session (mention the date and time). If the session was recorded, let participants know when a recording may be available.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n\n\n\n\nBe pro-active in the first week.\n<\/strong>If it doesn\u2019t come up spontaneously in the conversation: mention that the first week of an online course is often overwhelming (for both participants and facilitators), that it will get better, and that you will do what you can to mitigate start-up stresses.\n\n<\/div>\nSometimes the topic of feeling overwhelmed does come up naturally. The following is an example of one participant\u2019s experience (from the participant\u2019s Weekly Journal Share Forum for Week 1):\n\n\n
Time management, reflection and empathy<\/h2>\n![\"Quote](\"https:\/\/opentextbc.ca\/flofacilitatorguide\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/169\/2020\/04\/BCCampus-FLOGuide-ShortExample-Colour.png\")
\n\nOne participant's experience:<\/strong>\n\n\"I have a deep empathy for my students now on the first week experience. I think when we \"know the material\" we forget what it feels like to \"not know.\" As a student in my first online course, I now know how it feels to be in that place and will be more understanding of my students.\"\n\n\"Well, this week was hard. In taking time for reflection I realize that the commitment of this course while I am taking on a new role at work, in conjunction with my current full-time job and a side contract, is a lot. Time management has been a reoccurring issue for me as I never feel like I have enough time.\"\n\n\"I copied this sentence from the week 1 reading materials: 'When a person is feeling anxious, the likelihood that they will interpret things negatively increases.' I need to have this on a sticky note on my computer. I really valued the comments from others in the course about feeling overwhelmed. Online learning requires time to get used to the new ways of doing learning.\"\n\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\nWeek 1 Day 3<\/h3>\n\n \t- Connect with members of the first participant facilitation team<\/strong>. Post a message in the team planning forum for Diversity of Learners to encourage this team to get underway.<\/li>\n \t
- Remind participants to use Schedule and begin Learning Journal<\/strong>. Use a post in the Open Forum to remind participants to begin their Learning Journal and to use the FLO Fundamentals Schedule to keep on track. More information about the Learning Journal<\/a> and FLO Fundamentals Schedule<\/a> is available in the OER course. Make sure you revise the schedule to fit your own situation.<\/li>\n \t
- Post the recording (if available) of the synchronous session<\/strong>. Use a post in the Open Forum to provide a link to the recording and to highlight any key or outstanding topics.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n
Week 1 Day 4<\/h3>\n
Build and sustain online community<\/h2>\n\n \t- Reflect on the experience of an online learning community.<\/li>\n \t
- Explore the role of instructor presence in online learning.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
Support diverse learners online<\/h2>\n\n \t- Observe UDL principles and identify ways to help diverse learners online.<\/li>\n \t
- Use facilitation strategies and tools to address the needs of adult learners.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
Facilitate collaborative and individual learning<\/h2>\n\n \t- Facilitate collaborative and individual activities online.<\/li>\n \t
- Explore group dynamics in online collaborative activities.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
Provide constructive feedback and assessment<\/h2>\n\n \t- Model effective feedback and assessment.<\/li>\n \t
- Critically reflect on feedback and experience to self-evaluate work and learning.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
Manage the online course environment<\/h2>\n\n \t- Explore effective strategies to manage the workload.<\/li>\n \t
- Improve the use of tools within an online learning environment.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
Participants<\/h1>\nA wide variety of educators benefit from FLO Fundamentals. Participants are often full- or part-time instructors at post-secondary educational institutions who are new to teaching online or have already been teaching online for some time but would like to develop stronger facilitation skills. Other participants may be familiar with traditional teaching practices but are seeking to develop experience and confidence with more learner-centric educational approaches.\n\nFLO Fundamentals may also be of interest to many other educators, including instructional\/learning designers, educational developers, learning technologists and others who work in teaching and learning centres. It may also be useful for graduate students, consultants from the private sector, trainers employed by for-profit or non-profit organizations, and educational support providers.\nTechnology<\/h1>\nFLO Fundamentals requires no special technology beyond what has been recommended in Chapter 3: Tools to Support FLO. Because FLO Fundamentals is usually the first FLO course participants will encounter (and sometimes their first online course ever), be cautious about using too many external tools or apps until you are better aware of your participants\u2019 comfort levels.\nCourse content and layout<\/h1>\nFLO Fundamentals is a complete five-week workshop-style course with a comprehensive collection of information, activities, directions, assessments, and related resources. Within the Open Education Resources (OER) version of the course, resources are organized into tabs, with one tab for each of the five weeks, plus one Hub tab with introductory and general information, and one tab to organize the work of the teams (see the image below for an example).\n\n[caption id=\"attachment_749\" align=\"aligncenter\" width=\"659\"] Figure 4.1[\/caption]\n\nIn the Hub tab, you will find:\n\n \t- A Course Handbook, describing for participants how the course works, what\u2019s expected of them, learning outcomes, scheduling, etc.<\/li>\n \t
- A sample Schedule to help participants (and facilitators) stay on track.<\/li>\n \t
- Resources to help facilitators organize participant teams.<\/li>\n \t
- Sample forums to facilitate discussion:\n
\n \t- An Open Forum for sharing general information (clarification, announcements, social-type sharing) not necessarily related to the weekly discussion about content. Both facilitators and participants can post and respond.<\/li>\n \t
- A Weekly Journal Share forum, for posting reflections on learning.<\/li>\n \t
- A forum to provide Feedback for participant teams.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n \t
- A feedback form (Feel, Like, Improve, Feedback, or FLIF) to help participant teams reflect and receive personal, private feedback on their facilitation experience. (In the OER course, this feedback is structured using the Learning Management System's quiz tool.)<\/li>\n \t
- Additional resources for facilitators to aid in coordination of the course (generally hidden from participants).<\/li>\n<\/ul>\nTabs corresponding to each week\u2019s activities include:\n
\n \t- An overview of the topic for the week.<\/li>\n \t
- A forum to discuss the week\u2019s topic (e.g. to respond to the questions posted by the facilitation team).<\/li>\n \t
- Other resources and\/or activities specific to that week.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\nThe tab for Facilitation Teams Workspace includes:\n
\n \t- A detailed activity plan for each team.<\/li>\n \t
- A workspace forum (private, if you choose) for each team\u2019s members to plan their facilitation strategies and tasks.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\nThe topics discussed in this course are:\n
\n \t- Week 1: Building Learning Community (facilitated by course facilitators).<\/li>\n \t
- Week 2: Diversity of Learners (facilitated by the orange team).<\/li>\n \t
- Week 3: Responsive Facilitation (facilitated by the blue team).<\/li>\n \t
- Week 4: Collaboration (facilitated by the yellow team).<\/li>\n \t
- Week 5: Reflective Practice (facilitated by the green team).<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
Course assessment strategies<\/h1>\nThis course is designed to be developmental; it is not a graded course in the traditional sense. Unless you decide otherwise, your participants will not be marked or assigned a formal grade on their performance. The course does include a number of activities to encourage self-reflection, as well as a comprehensive self-assessment rubric which could be used to assign a grade, if needed (see FLO Fundamentals Self-Assessment Rubric<\/a>).\n\nParticipants are also encouraged to self-assess their qualification for a Certificate of Completion. As facilitator(s), it is up to you to decide what form this Certificate should take.\nFacilitator task list: What you need to do before, during and after the course<\/h1>\nThe successful hosting of FLO Fundamentals requires good planning, timing, and coordination. Over the years, we\u2019ve developed a detailed, step-by-step Task List for course facilitators:\n\n \t- See FLO Fundamentals Task List<\/a> for a concise, detailed list of facilitator tasks.<\/li>\n \t
- You can also use the following Task List Explanations alongside the Task List for more background information and ideas.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
Task List Explanations<\/h2>\nSeveral weeks (or months) before the course begins\n\n \t- Access the OER course<\/strong>. The OER course Facilitating Learning Online - Fundamentals<\/a> is currently offered as a Moodle course with guest access; you should be able to enter the course and view all content.<\/li>\n \t
- Set up your own learning environment and copy content<\/strong>. Before you can offer FLO Fundamentals, you need a learning environment \u2013 a virtual place to host the course. At the very minimum, you need an online space (private or securable, if you choose) where facilitators and participants can conduct discussions and share facilitation discoveries and the results of experimentation. The course content must be added to the LMS or other learning space you have chosen:[footnote]In your institution, an LMS Administrator, IT support, or Instructional Designer may help with this step.[\/footnote]\n
\n \t- If using Moodle: restore the latest version of this course into your LMS (you can download it using the link in the OER).<\/li>\n \t
- If NOT using Moodle: establish and configure an online learning environment (LMS, CMS, wiki, etc.) into which you can copy all relevant content from FLO Fundamentals.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<\/li>\n \t
- If possible, find a colleague to assist you as a Co-Facilitator<\/strong>. Your ideal co-facilitator will be someone who can work with you to provide guidance and support to your participants, and can dedicate 15 to 25 hours per week to this task. Ideally, your co-facilitator will be familiar with online learning theories and practices, and with personal and technical skills to engage online participants. Not only do co-facilitators lessen the workload and enrich the facilitation process for you, they increase the facilitation expertise within your institution or organization. It would help a great deal if your colleague has already taken FLO Fundamentals.<\/li>\n \t
- Access your FLO Fundamentals learning environment to review content and tools<\/strong>. Prepare the course site or learning environment and (re)acquaint yourself with the facilitation tools you plan to use. Familiarize yourself with the course content, materials, philosophy, scheduling, flow, etc. of the course.<\/li>\n \t
- Set up a web conferencing tool for online synchronous sessions and conversations<\/strong>. There are many web conferencing applications to choose from, depending on your institution's requirements.<\/li>\n \t
- Connect with your co-facilitator for detailed pre-planning<\/strong>. Develop a planning regime that you\u2019re both comfortable with. Work together to develop a detailed list of tasks to be completed before, during, and after the course runs. You have a lot to do before the course begins:\n
\n \t- Ensure an easy-to-access place or process to store planning resources. Agree on planning tools and schedules.<\/li>\n \t
- Customize this Facilitator Task List to fit your needs.<\/li>\n \t
- Review the resources available in the OER and select some activities to try. You could also add your own ideas for icebreakers, discussion topics, resources, images, slides, etc.<\/li>\n \t
- Develop rough agendas for your synchronous sessions.<\/li>\n \t
- Prepare how-to resources for your participants to explain the features of the learning environments and tools.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<\/li>\n \t
- Practice using learning environment tools<\/strong>. If you\u2019re already pretty comfortable with both synchronous and asynchronous online tools, you may wish to try something new; to model for your participants an adventurous open mind when it comes to educational technology. However, be aware of the technical expertise of your potential participants: you don\u2019t want to choose something that most of them will have trouble accessing or learning to use.<\/li>\n \t
- Identify potential participants<\/strong>. Think about where you might find your course participants. Will you enlist from your institution only, or other institutions and organizations? Decide how far ahead you must start the recruitment process.<\/li>\n \t
- Ensure your content is accurate<\/strong>. Once you have a potential learner audience in mind, re-visit the learning environment and carefully review all content (forum post topics, reading lists, directions, etc.). Make sure your content is appropriate for your intended group of participants, and reflects the goals of your institution or program. Remember, the FLO courses have been developed as Open Educational Resources and are licenced under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License<\/a> so you\u2019re free to modify whatever you like! The only requirement is that you provide attribution and don\u2019t imply or suggest endorsement by the licensor.<\/li>\n \t
- Ensure your content is accurate<\/em>.<\/strong> Unfortunately, the web addresses (URLs) of internet resources change often with the result that your linked document may not appear when participants click on the link. Sometimes, through searching, you can locate the new URL for the resource but you may wish to consider finding a more up-to-date resource on the same topic instead.<\/li>\n \t
- (If you haven\u2019t done so already!) Choose a start date and promote<\/strong> your course to your target participants.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n\n\n
Your Technical Skills: The Least You Need to Know<\/h2>\n\n\nYour participants may dream up a variety of designs for their mini-session and, ideally, you and your co-facilitator will be comfortable setting up the tools they need. If you are working within an LMS, some commonly-used tools include:\n\n \t- Forums or discussion groups: LMS-based forums usually offer many different settings and you should be familiar with most of them. Learn to set up both open forums and team-based forums (if available) and explore other settings that can create new possibilities for structuring activities.<\/li>\n \t
- Polls or Choices: Many LMSs offer a tool for quickly polling participants -- handy for any time you want people to indicate a preference (e.g. \"what time should we meet for our synchronous session?\"), or to vote on a single question.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
One- to two weeks before the course begins<\/h2>\nOnce your FLO Fundamentals course is underway, you and your participants will be very busy indeed and you\u2019ll want to have as much preparatory work out of the way as possible. How you set up the course site and engage the community will directly impact how the rest of the course flows; keep in mind that you are modelling good facilitation practices (a detailed list of Core FLO Facilitation Skills is included in Chapter 3<\/a> of this Guide).\n\n \t- Complete recruitment and register participants<\/strong>. You may have begun the recruitment of participants weeks or even months ahead. Make sure you have a process in place to register your participants in accordance with your institution\u2019s policies. If you are managing your own site (e.g. a WordPress site), you may be able to organize this on your own. During recruitment, be sure to:\n
\n \t- Communicate expectations around time and teamwork.<\/li>\n \t
- Provide information to your participants about what they\u2019ll need to do and where to find what they\u2019ll need. Your goal is not to overwhelm your participants but to provide enough information so they can jump right in when the course begins.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n\n\n\n\nWhat\u2019s the right number of participants for this course?\n<\/strong>A small class of 10 or fewer participants will make it difficult to sustain rich online conversations. On the other hand, a large class of more than 25 may be more than 2 facilitators can handle. Our experience has shown that a class of 14 - 20 educators is a good size for this course.\n\n<\/div>\n
\n \t- Meet with co-facilitator<\/strong>, finalize the week ahead. Now is the time to check the details and do final revisions of your first week\u2019s activities & resources, including:\n
\n \t- Discussion topics, resources, images, slides, etc.<\/li>\n \t
- Icebreaker activities.<\/li>\n \t
- Your introductory welcome post.<\/li>\n \t
- Agenda for the first synchronous session.<\/li>\n \t
- Resource to explain the basic features of the synchronous environment & tools.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<\/li>\n \t
- Create or update co-facilitators\u2019 profiles<\/strong> and contact information. Tell a little about yourself in a profile or short biography. Establish your contact information and set \u201coffice hours\u201d (if appropriate).<\/li>\n \t
- Decide which aspects of the course will be displayed<\/strong> when the course opens and which aspects will be hidden until needed. Many learning environments will let you hide or show specific activities until you\u2019re ready for your participants to see them.<\/li>\n \t
- Ensure sufficient starting information for participants<\/strong>. Your new participants will need detailed information about how to access the course and get started (e.g. if using Moodle, see the FLO Handbook on the Hub tab, or consider preparing a screencast).<\/li>\n \t
- Finalize enrollment of participants<\/strong>, send out a Welcome email. Provide the participants with access to the course and\/or information about accessing technical support, if necessary.<\/li>\n \t
- Decide on your week\u2019s start day<\/strong> and modify your directions to the participants and the learning environment settings accordingly (if necessary). This course is not self-paced; the work is organized around weeks. Will the first day of your course week begin on a Sunday, Monday, or some other day?<\/li>\n \t
- Set a time for your first<\/strong> (Week 1) synchronous session<\/strong>. Prepare the synchronous environment as much as possible: upload slides, write\/draw\/embed a welcome message, etc.<\/li>\n \t
- Set up a separate online workspace for each team<\/strong>. You will be dividing up your participants into 4 teams; each team will facilitate one of the weekly mini-sessions. A unique team workspace (e.g. a forum or Google doc) with editing functions for team members should be sufficient. You may wish to limit access (e.g. read-only access) to this workspace to non-team participants.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n\n\n
Privacy and Confidentiality<\/h2>\n\n\nIn all FLO courses, our learning relies on the exchange of honest, constructive feedback, and we need to agree on rules that support this foundation of trust. Be aware of your institutional or organizational policies relating to privacy and confidentiality, determine how you will interpret these for your online learning environment, and decide how to communicate these rules to your participants. You can see an example of how privacy and confidentiality concerns are communicated in this page in the FLO Fundamentals Course Handbook<\/a> (in the Moodle OER). Some privacy and confidentiality rules you may wish to adopt:\n\n \t- Always seek permission to share content posted by participants.<\/li>\n \t
- When using social media and other online services to complete activities, ensure you are familiar with the levels of privacy available and how the information will be stored and shared. Communicate this information to the participants.<\/li>\n \t
- If you plan on recording your synchronous sessions, confirm that this is OK with the session participants before<\/em> you hit the record button.<\/li>\n \t
- Let participants know who else has access to this course (e.g. participants, facilitators, assistants, website administrators, etc.).<\/li>\n \t
- You may wish to establish \"Vegas rules<\/a>,\" i.e. what happens in the course, stays in the course.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\nSome other decisions you\u2019ll need to make:\n
\n \t- Decide which teams each co-facilitator will support<\/strong> during the course, and decide between yourselves what kind of support you will provide.<\/li>\n \t
- Confirm technical support<\/strong> is available and adequate, if needed. If you are providing your own tech support, confirm that your site has been backed up and no significant technical issues (e.g. scheduled downtime) exist. If tech support personnel are available, confirm they are standing by and aware of your course start date and enrollments.<\/li>\n \t
- Review the suggested assessment options for this course and select one (or more)<\/strong> to recommend for your participants. A self-assessment rubric can be adapted so the facilitator can assign a grade, if needed (see FLO Fundamentals Self-Assessment Rubric<\/a>).<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n
As time permits<\/h2>\n\n \t- Practice navigating your course site and other tools.<\/strong> If you are using the OER Moodle version of this course, you\u2019ll find it's a complex environment with lots of moving parts. Take the time to familiarize yourself with the course and revise it as you see fit. Move stuff around and explore different tools, modules, and plugins (if available). Consider (judiciously!) trying some new or less-used tools outside of your LMS or main learning environment.<\/li>\n \t
- Streamline or otherwise improve your course\u2019s navigation tools.<\/strong> When you refer to another part of your course or learning environment, provide a direct link whenever possible. Consider including a navigation screencast showing step-by-step how to get around your learning environment or LMS.<\/li>\n \t
- Fine-tune your reading list.<\/strong> In such a fascinating and fast-moving field like online facilitation, it\u2019s easy to get carried away with the list of readings you provide for participants. Consider making all readings optional but don\u2019t be afraid to strongly recommend a resource you know is important. After all, this course is intended to be informed by research and theory.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\nThe readings you\u2019ll see contained in this course have been chosen carefully to be both high quality and of reasonable length. However, as we have already mentioned, links to internet-based resources can break or become \u201cstale.\u201d Encourage your FLO participants to research and recommend better or more up-to-date readings for their own facilitation week.\n
A few days before the course begins<\/h2>\n\n \t- Connect with your participants<\/strong>. Make sure they\u2019re able to access the learning environment, and communicate some basic information about the course, expectations around time, etc.<\/li>\n \t
- Write your introductory welcome post<\/strong> (e.g. in an \u201cIntroductions\u201d forum within the course or as a new thread in the \u201cOpen\u201d forum) in a friendly, informal, and enthusiastic style that welcomes them to the online course environment and sets a tone for your online community. Encourage participants to respond with their own introductions.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n\n\n
Your Welcome post doesn\u2019t have to be just text\u2026<\/h2>\n\n\nAs a facilitator of FLO, you\u2019ll want to set an example from the beginning of what good facilitation looks like. Take the time to craft a friendly, welcoming message to begin the process of online community building.\n\nSome tips:<\/strong>\n\n \t- Your introductory post doesn\u2019t need to be just text; you can be creative and adventurous with technology. Part of your job as facilitator is to model an attitude of fearless experimentation with communication technologies. What about a video introduction against a backdrop of where you live? Or a narrated slideshow? Of course, you don\u2019t want to intimidate your participants if they\u2019re fairly novice technology users, so be sure to offer choices.<\/li>\n \t
- What to include is up to you; this is your first impression. You might like to talk a bit about your teaching and other professional experience. You could share an anecdote or advice from your own online facilitation experience, or use an icebreaker-type format.<\/li>\n \t
- Make sure your post sets a good impression: establishes instructor presence, presents a clear message without being too long or too short.<\/li>\n \t
- Be sure your introductory post ends with an invitation for your participants to share their introductions in a similar way.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
\n \t- Post the week\u2019s overview post<\/strong>, emphasizing for participants:\n
\n \t- Activities, etc. they must complete this week.<\/li>\n \t
- Tips on how to navigate the site.<\/li>\n \t
- The need to plan and schedule time to work on the course. Remind participants that a valuable learning experience cannot be achieved using a side-of-the-desk approach.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n\n\n\n\nShare time management tips<\/strong>\nEven with your explicit messages about the amount of time needed, participants may still expect to be able to slide their FLO work in on the weekends or in little bits and pieces between other daily tasks. This can leave people feeling they are always working on the course, even though their time on task may be quite short.\nRemind your participants to set aside time for the course, and repeat that advice early and often.\nEncourage them to book time to work with their facilitation team partners (and you, if they wish) well in advance.\n\n<\/div>\n
\n \t- Finalize your questions for Week 1\u2019s forum<\/strong> \u201cBuilding Online Community.\u201d The following are SAMPLE QUESTIONS only (you may have other questions to engage participants on this topic):\n
\n \t- What experiences have you had with online learning communities?<\/li>\n \t
- What can an instructor (or facilitator) do to develop and maintain a sense of community in an online learning environment?<\/li>\n \t
- What do you know about the Community of Inquiry model? How does it relate to building a sense of online community?<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<\/li>\n \t
- Organize participants into facilitation teams<\/strong> and post this information for all participants. You may decide to organize teams randomly or according to certain criteria; whether to make team interaction private or to open it up so that other participants can follow their planning process. Decide how and when participants can switch teams (preferably only within a short time period at the start of the course) if they wish.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n
Week 1: Building Online Community<\/h2>\n\n\nThroughout Week 1, your role is to establish a strong facilitator presence and effectively demonstrate what good online facilitation looks like. Aim to do this as transparently as possible; think out loud to your participants to show them how you plan and facilitate the various activities. This may be a good opportunity to incorporate other collaboration tools, such as wikis or other co-authoring platforms, to show how it is possible to communicate outside of a forum (which tends to be the default discussion tool).\n\n\n\n\nHelping participants cope who may feel overwhelmed during the first week.<\/strong>\n\nOffer brief explanations, clarifications and practical tips in an informal and friendly way. If your LMS offers forum \u201csubscriptions\u201d (in which participants automatically receive an email copy of all forum posts) make sure that not all forums are configured this way, and let participants know how to \u201cunsubscribe\u201d from a forum whenever possible.\n\n<\/div>\nWeek 1, Day 1 (the first day of the week):<\/h3>\n\n \t- Morning: Post facilitators\u2019 personal intros<\/strong> to the Introductory Forum.<\/li>\n \t
- Morning: Begin the Building Online Community forum<\/strong> activity. Post your questions to launch and guide the discussion.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n\n\n\n\nFind ways to allow participants to share their prior knowledge and experience. You can use the Building Online Community forum introductory activity to make the positive and negative perceptions of online learning visible by asking each participant to contribute words and an image that reflects their ideas about online community.\n\n<\/div>\n
\n \t- Evening: Finalize details for the first synchronous session<\/strong> in your agenda and\/or slidedeck, including:\n
\n \t- How to use the synchronous environment.<\/li>\n \t
- Icebreaker: quick intros of participants.<\/li>\n \t
- Review of the agenda - invite additional ideas.<\/li>\n \t
- Highlight course structure (and flow): roles, expectations, team facilitation, reflective practice, self-assessment.<\/li>\n \t
- Explain the purpose of the Facilitation Team Workspace with an activity plan and planning forum.<\/li>\n \t
- Highlight the importance of feedback, journaling, reflection, time management tips.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n
Week 1 Day 2<\/h3>\n\n \t- Earlier in day: Remind participants about the synchronous session<\/strong> a few hours before the session begins. (Reiterate that this session is not required although it is highly recommended.) Your reminder may be a forum post, LMS message, email, etc. Re-post session time, access information, and link to technical support, if needed.<\/li>\n \t
- Morning: Introduce the Learning Journal<\/strong> (perhaps as a post to the Open Forum). In your post:\n
\n \t- Explain the concept and the value of maintaining a record of what participants are learning and want to remember.<\/li>\n \t
- Remind them to regularly pause, reflect, assess and synthesize their learning.<\/li>\n \t
- Recommend they document these thoughts in a personal learning journal using paper-based, audio\/video, or electronic means.<\/li>\n \t
- Encourage participants to share nuggets (insights) in a Learning Journal.\nThe Learning Journal is explained in more detail in the Course Handbook<\/a>.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<\/li>\n \t
- Later: Host first synchronous session<\/strong>. Keep in mind this is your opportunity to connect with your participants both aurally and visually, and to demonstrate the value that a synchronous collaboration tool can bring to an online learning experience. If possible:\n
\n \t- Ensure you have technical support people (or your co-facilitator) standing by to assist with access problems.<\/li>\n \t
- Enter the synchronous session at least a half-hour early to greet early arrivals and troubleshoot navigation problems within the synchronous environment.<\/li>\n \t
- Remember to notify participants that the session will be recorded (if this is possible and if all agree) and hit the record button as your session begins.<\/li>\n \t
- Check in with participants about their comfort level navigating the site during the session and address any confusions.<\/li>\n \t
- Evening: Post a brief follow-up report about the synchronous session<\/strong>. Talk up the value of the session and encourage participants to attend the next synchronous session (mention the date and time). If the session was recorded, let participants know when a recording may be available.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n\n\n\n\nBe pro-active in the first week.\n<\/strong>If it doesn\u2019t come up spontaneously in the conversation: mention that the first week of an online course is often overwhelming (for both participants and facilitators), that it will get better, and that you will do what you can to mitigate start-up stresses.\n\n<\/div>\nSometimes the topic of feeling overwhelmed does come up naturally. The following is an example of one participant\u2019s experience (from the participant\u2019s Weekly Journal Share Forum for Week 1):\n\n\n
Time management, reflection and empathy<\/h2>\n\n\nOne participant's experience:<\/strong>\n\n\"I have a deep empathy for my students now on the first week experience. I think when we \"know the material\" we forget what it feels like to \"not know.\" As a student in my first online course, I now know how it feels to be in that place and will be more understanding of my students.\"\n\n\"Well, this week was hard. In taking time for reflection I realize that the commitment of this course while I am taking on a new role at work, in conjunction with my current full-time job and a side contract, is a lot. Time management has been a reoccurring issue for me as I never feel like I have enough time.\"\n\n\"I copied this sentence from the week 1 reading materials: 'When a person is feeling anxious, the likelihood that they will interpret things negatively increases.' I need to have this on a sticky note on my computer. I really valued the comments from others in the course about feeling overwhelmed. Online learning requires time to get used to the new ways of doing learning.\"\n\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\nWeek 1 Day 3<\/h3>\n\n \t- Connect with members of the first participant facilitation team<\/strong>. Post a message in the team planning forum for Diversity of Learners to encourage this team to get underway.<\/li>\n \t
- Remind participants to use Schedule and begin Learning Journal<\/strong>. Use a post in the Open Forum to remind participants to begin their Learning Journal and to use the FLO Fundamentals Schedule to keep on track. More information about the Learning Journal<\/a> and FLO Fundamentals Schedule<\/a> is available in the OER course. Make sure you revise the schedule to fit your own situation.<\/li>\n \t
- Post the recording (if available) of the synchronous session<\/strong>. Use a post in the Open Forum to provide a link to the recording and to highlight any key or outstanding topics.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n
Week 1 Day 4<\/h3>\n
Support diverse learners online<\/h2>\n\n \t- Observe UDL principles and identify ways to help diverse learners online.<\/li>\n \t
- Use facilitation strategies and tools to address the needs of adult learners.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
Facilitate collaborative and individual learning<\/h2>\n\n \t- Facilitate collaborative and individual activities online.<\/li>\n \t
- Explore group dynamics in online collaborative activities.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
Provide constructive feedback and assessment<\/h2>\n\n \t- Model effective feedback and assessment.<\/li>\n \t
- Critically reflect on feedback and experience to self-evaluate work and learning.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
Manage the online course environment<\/h2>\n\n \t- Explore effective strategies to manage the workload.<\/li>\n \t
- Improve the use of tools within an online learning environment.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
Participants<\/h1>\nA wide variety of educators benefit from FLO Fundamentals. Participants are often full- or part-time instructors at post-secondary educational institutions who are new to teaching online or have already been teaching online for some time but would like to develop stronger facilitation skills. Other participants may be familiar with traditional teaching practices but are seeking to develop experience and confidence with more learner-centric educational approaches.\n\nFLO Fundamentals may also be of interest to many other educators, including instructional\/learning designers, educational developers, learning technologists and others who work in teaching and learning centres. It may also be useful for graduate students, consultants from the private sector, trainers employed by for-profit or non-profit organizations, and educational support providers.\nTechnology<\/h1>\nFLO Fundamentals requires no special technology beyond what has been recommended in Chapter 3: Tools to Support FLO. Because FLO Fundamentals is usually the first FLO course participants will encounter (and sometimes their first online course ever), be cautious about using too many external tools or apps until you are better aware of your participants\u2019 comfort levels.\nCourse content and layout<\/h1>\nFLO Fundamentals is a complete five-week workshop-style course with a comprehensive collection of information, activities, directions, assessments, and related resources. Within the Open Education Resources (OER) version of the course, resources are organized into tabs, with one tab for each of the five weeks, plus one Hub tab with introductory and general information, and one tab to organize the work of the teams (see the image below for an example).\n\n[caption id=\"attachment_749\" align=\"aligncenter\" width=\"659\"] Figure 4.1[\/caption]\n\nIn the Hub tab, you will find:\n\n \t- A Course Handbook, describing for participants how the course works, what\u2019s expected of them, learning outcomes, scheduling, etc.<\/li>\n \t
- A sample Schedule to help participants (and facilitators) stay on track.<\/li>\n \t
- Resources to help facilitators organize participant teams.<\/li>\n \t
- Sample forums to facilitate discussion:\n
\n \t- An Open Forum for sharing general information (clarification, announcements, social-type sharing) not necessarily related to the weekly discussion about content. Both facilitators and participants can post and respond.<\/li>\n \t
- A Weekly Journal Share forum, for posting reflections on learning.<\/li>\n \t
- A forum to provide Feedback for participant teams.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n \t
- A feedback form (Feel, Like, Improve, Feedback, or FLIF) to help participant teams reflect and receive personal, private feedback on their facilitation experience. (In the OER course, this feedback is structured using the Learning Management System's quiz tool.)<\/li>\n \t
- Additional resources for facilitators to aid in coordination of the course (generally hidden from participants).<\/li>\n<\/ul>\nTabs corresponding to each week\u2019s activities include:\n
\n \t- An overview of the topic for the week.<\/li>\n \t
- A forum to discuss the week\u2019s topic (e.g. to respond to the questions posted by the facilitation team).<\/li>\n \t
- Other resources and\/or activities specific to that week.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\nThe tab for Facilitation Teams Workspace includes:\n
\n \t- A detailed activity plan for each team.<\/li>\n \t
- A workspace forum (private, if you choose) for each team\u2019s members to plan their facilitation strategies and tasks.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\nThe topics discussed in this course are:\n
\n \t- Week 1: Building Learning Community (facilitated by course facilitators).<\/li>\n \t
- Week 2: Diversity of Learners (facilitated by the orange team).<\/li>\n \t
- Week 3: Responsive Facilitation (facilitated by the blue team).<\/li>\n \t
- Week 4: Collaboration (facilitated by the yellow team).<\/li>\n \t
- Week 5: Reflective Practice (facilitated by the green team).<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
Course assessment strategies<\/h1>\nThis course is designed to be developmental; it is not a graded course in the traditional sense. Unless you decide otherwise, your participants will not be marked or assigned a formal grade on their performance. The course does include a number of activities to encourage self-reflection, as well as a comprehensive self-assessment rubric which could be used to assign a grade, if needed (see FLO Fundamentals Self-Assessment Rubric<\/a>).\n\nParticipants are also encouraged to self-assess their qualification for a Certificate of Completion. As facilitator(s), it is up to you to decide what form this Certificate should take.\nFacilitator task list: What you need to do before, during and after the course<\/h1>\nThe successful hosting of FLO Fundamentals requires good planning, timing, and coordination. Over the years, we\u2019ve developed a detailed, step-by-step Task List for course facilitators:\n\n \t- See FLO Fundamentals Task List<\/a> for a concise, detailed list of facilitator tasks.<\/li>\n \t
- You can also use the following Task List Explanations alongside the Task List for more background information and ideas.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
Task List Explanations<\/h2>\nSeveral weeks (or months) before the course begins\n\n \t- Access the OER course<\/strong>. The OER course Facilitating Learning Online - Fundamentals<\/a> is currently offered as a Moodle course with guest access; you should be able to enter the course and view all content.<\/li>\n \t
- Set up your own learning environment and copy content<\/strong>. Before you can offer FLO Fundamentals, you need a learning environment \u2013 a virtual place to host the course. At the very minimum, you need an online space (private or securable, if you choose) where facilitators and participants can conduct discussions and share facilitation discoveries and the results of experimentation. The course content must be added to the LMS or other learning space you have chosen:[footnote]In your institution, an LMS Administrator, IT support, or Instructional Designer may help with this step.[\/footnote]\n
\n \t- If using Moodle: restore the latest version of this course into your LMS (you can download it using the link in the OER).<\/li>\n \t
- If NOT using Moodle: establish and configure an online learning environment (LMS, CMS, wiki, etc.) into which you can copy all relevant content from FLO Fundamentals.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<\/li>\n \t
- If possible, find a colleague to assist you as a Co-Facilitator<\/strong>. Your ideal co-facilitator will be someone who can work with you to provide guidance and support to your participants, and can dedicate 15 to 25 hours per week to this task. Ideally, your co-facilitator will be familiar with online learning theories and practices, and with personal and technical skills to engage online participants. Not only do co-facilitators lessen the workload and enrich the facilitation process for you, they increase the facilitation expertise within your institution or organization. It would help a great deal if your colleague has already taken FLO Fundamentals.<\/li>\n \t
- Access your FLO Fundamentals learning environment to review content and tools<\/strong>. Prepare the course site or learning environment and (re)acquaint yourself with the facilitation tools you plan to use. Familiarize yourself with the course content, materials, philosophy, scheduling, flow, etc. of the course.<\/li>\n \t
- Set up a web conferencing tool for online synchronous sessions and conversations<\/strong>. There are many web conferencing applications to choose from, depending on your institution's requirements.<\/li>\n \t
- Connect with your co-facilitator for detailed pre-planning<\/strong>. Develop a planning regime that you\u2019re both comfortable with. Work together to develop a detailed list of tasks to be completed before, during, and after the course runs. You have a lot to do before the course begins:\n
\n \t- Ensure an easy-to-access place or process to store planning resources. Agree on planning tools and schedules.<\/li>\n \t
- Customize this Facilitator Task List to fit your needs.<\/li>\n \t
- Review the resources available in the OER and select some activities to try. You could also add your own ideas for icebreakers, discussion topics, resources, images, slides, etc.<\/li>\n \t
- Develop rough agendas for your synchronous sessions.<\/li>\n \t
- Prepare how-to resources for your participants to explain the features of the learning environments and tools.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<\/li>\n \t
- Practice using learning environment tools<\/strong>. If you\u2019re already pretty comfortable with both synchronous and asynchronous online tools, you may wish to try something new; to model for your participants an adventurous open mind when it comes to educational technology. However, be aware of the technical expertise of your potential participants: you don\u2019t want to choose something that most of them will have trouble accessing or learning to use.<\/li>\n \t
- Identify potential participants<\/strong>. Think about where you might find your course participants. Will you enlist from your institution only, or other institutions and organizations? Decide how far ahead you must start the recruitment process.<\/li>\n \t
- Ensure your content is accurate<\/strong>. Once you have a potential learner audience in mind, re-visit the learning environment and carefully review all content (forum post topics, reading lists, directions, etc.). Make sure your content is appropriate for your intended group of participants, and reflects the goals of your institution or program. Remember, the FLO courses have been developed as Open Educational Resources and are licenced under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License<\/a> so you\u2019re free to modify whatever you like! The only requirement is that you provide attribution and don\u2019t imply or suggest endorsement by the licensor.<\/li>\n \t
- Ensure your content is accurate<\/em>.<\/strong> Unfortunately, the web addresses (URLs) of internet resources change often with the result that your linked document may not appear when participants click on the link. Sometimes, through searching, you can locate the new URL for the resource but you may wish to consider finding a more up-to-date resource on the same topic instead.<\/li>\n \t
- (If you haven\u2019t done so already!) Choose a start date and promote<\/strong> your course to your target participants.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n\n\n
Your Technical Skills: The Least You Need to Know<\/h2>\n\n\nYour participants may dream up a variety of designs for their mini-session and, ideally, you and your co-facilitator will be comfortable setting up the tools they need. If you are working within an LMS, some commonly-used tools include:\n\n \t- Forums or discussion groups: LMS-based forums usually offer many different settings and you should be familiar with most of them. Learn to set up both open forums and team-based forums (if available) and explore other settings that can create new possibilities for structuring activities.<\/li>\n \t
- Polls or Choices: Many LMSs offer a tool for quickly polling participants -- handy for any time you want people to indicate a preference (e.g. \"what time should we meet for our synchronous session?\"), or to vote on a single question.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
One- to two weeks before the course begins<\/h2>\nOnce your FLO Fundamentals course is underway, you and your participants will be very busy indeed and you\u2019ll want to have as much preparatory work out of the way as possible. How you set up the course site and engage the community will directly impact how the rest of the course flows; keep in mind that you are modelling good facilitation practices (a detailed list of Core FLO Facilitation Skills is included in Chapter 3<\/a> of this Guide).\n\n \t- Complete recruitment and register participants<\/strong>. You may have begun the recruitment of participants weeks or even months ahead. Make sure you have a process in place to register your participants in accordance with your institution\u2019s policies. If you are managing your own site (e.g. a WordPress site), you may be able to organize this on your own. During recruitment, be sure to:\n
\n \t- Communicate expectations around time and teamwork.<\/li>\n \t
- Provide information to your participants about what they\u2019ll need to do and where to find what they\u2019ll need. Your goal is not to overwhelm your participants but to provide enough information so they can jump right in when the course begins.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n\n\n\n\nWhat\u2019s the right number of participants for this course?\n<\/strong>A small class of 10 or fewer participants will make it difficult to sustain rich online conversations. On the other hand, a large class of more than 25 may be more than 2 facilitators can handle. Our experience has shown that a class of 14 - 20 educators is a good size for this course.\n\n<\/div>\n
\n \t- Meet with co-facilitator<\/strong>, finalize the week ahead. Now is the time to check the details and do final revisions of your first week\u2019s activities & resources, including:\n
\n \t- Discussion topics, resources, images, slides, etc.<\/li>\n \t
- Icebreaker activities.<\/li>\n \t
- Your introductory welcome post.<\/li>\n \t
- Agenda for the first synchronous session.<\/li>\n \t
- Resource to explain the basic features of the synchronous environment & tools.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<\/li>\n \t
- Create or update co-facilitators\u2019 profiles<\/strong> and contact information. Tell a little about yourself in a profile or short biography. Establish your contact information and set \u201coffice hours\u201d (if appropriate).<\/li>\n \t
- Decide which aspects of the course will be displayed<\/strong> when the course opens and which aspects will be hidden until needed. Many learning environments will let you hide or show specific activities until you\u2019re ready for your participants to see them.<\/li>\n \t
- Ensure sufficient starting information for participants<\/strong>. Your new participants will need detailed information about how to access the course and get started (e.g. if using Moodle, see the FLO Handbook on the Hub tab, or consider preparing a screencast).<\/li>\n \t
- Finalize enrollment of participants<\/strong>, send out a Welcome email. Provide the participants with access to the course and\/or information about accessing technical support, if necessary.<\/li>\n \t
- Decide on your week\u2019s start day<\/strong> and modify your directions to the participants and the learning environment settings accordingly (if necessary). This course is not self-paced; the work is organized around weeks. Will the first day of your course week begin on a Sunday, Monday, or some other day?<\/li>\n \t
- Set a time for your first<\/strong> (Week 1) synchronous session<\/strong>. Prepare the synchronous environment as much as possible: upload slides, write\/draw\/embed a welcome message, etc.<\/li>\n \t
- Set up a separate online workspace for each team<\/strong>. You will be dividing up your participants into 4 teams; each team will facilitate one of the weekly mini-sessions. A unique team workspace (e.g. a forum or Google doc) with editing functions for team members should be sufficient. You may wish to limit access (e.g. read-only access) to this workspace to non-team participants.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n\n\n
Privacy and Confidentiality<\/h2>\n\n\nIn all FLO courses, our learning relies on the exchange of honest, constructive feedback, and we need to agree on rules that support this foundation of trust. Be aware of your institutional or organizational policies relating to privacy and confidentiality, determine how you will interpret these for your online learning environment, and decide how to communicate these rules to your participants. You can see an example of how privacy and confidentiality concerns are communicated in this page in the FLO Fundamentals Course Handbook<\/a> (in the Moodle OER). Some privacy and confidentiality rules you may wish to adopt:\n\n \t- Always seek permission to share content posted by participants.<\/li>\n \t
- When using social media and other online services to complete activities, ensure you are familiar with the levels of privacy available and how the information will be stored and shared. Communicate this information to the participants.<\/li>\n \t
- If you plan on recording your synchronous sessions, confirm that this is OK with the session participants before<\/em> you hit the record button.<\/li>\n \t
- Let participants know who else has access to this course (e.g. participants, facilitators, assistants, website administrators, etc.).<\/li>\n \t
- You may wish to establish \"Vegas rules<\/a>,\" i.e. what happens in the course, stays in the course.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\nSome other decisions you\u2019ll need to make:\n
\n \t- Decide which teams each co-facilitator will support<\/strong> during the course, and decide between yourselves what kind of support you will provide.<\/li>\n \t
- Confirm technical support<\/strong> is available and adequate, if needed. If you are providing your own tech support, confirm that your site has been backed up and no significant technical issues (e.g. scheduled downtime) exist. If tech support personnel are available, confirm they are standing by and aware of your course start date and enrollments.<\/li>\n \t
- Review the suggested assessment options for this course and select one (or more)<\/strong> to recommend for your participants. A self-assessment rubric can be adapted so the facilitator can assign a grade, if needed (see FLO Fundamentals Self-Assessment Rubric<\/a>).<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n
As time permits<\/h2>\n\n \t- Practice navigating your course site and other tools.<\/strong> If you are using the OER Moodle version of this course, you\u2019ll find it's a complex environment with lots of moving parts. Take the time to familiarize yourself with the course and revise it as you see fit. Move stuff around and explore different tools, modules, and plugins (if available). Consider (judiciously!) trying some new or less-used tools outside of your LMS or main learning environment.<\/li>\n \t
- Streamline or otherwise improve your course\u2019s navigation tools.<\/strong> When you refer to another part of your course or learning environment, provide a direct link whenever possible. Consider including a navigation screencast showing step-by-step how to get around your learning environment or LMS.<\/li>\n \t
- Fine-tune your reading list.<\/strong> In such a fascinating and fast-moving field like online facilitation, it\u2019s easy to get carried away with the list of readings you provide for participants. Consider making all readings optional but don\u2019t be afraid to strongly recommend a resource you know is important. After all, this course is intended to be informed by research and theory.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\nThe readings you\u2019ll see contained in this course have been chosen carefully to be both high quality and of reasonable length. However, as we have already mentioned, links to internet-based resources can break or become \u201cstale.\u201d Encourage your FLO participants to research and recommend better or more up-to-date readings for their own facilitation week.\n
A few days before the course begins<\/h2>\n\n \t- Connect with your participants<\/strong>. Make sure they\u2019re able to access the learning environment, and communicate some basic information about the course, expectations around time, etc.<\/li>\n \t
- Write your introductory welcome post<\/strong> (e.g. in an \u201cIntroductions\u201d forum within the course or as a new thread in the \u201cOpen\u201d forum) in a friendly, informal, and enthusiastic style that welcomes them to the online course environment and sets a tone for your online community. Encourage participants to respond with their own introductions.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n\n\n
Your Welcome post doesn\u2019t have to be just text\u2026<\/h2>\n\n\nAs a facilitator of FLO, you\u2019ll want to set an example from the beginning of what good facilitation looks like. Take the time to craft a friendly, welcoming message to begin the process of online community building.\n\nSome tips:<\/strong>\n\n \t- Your introductory post doesn\u2019t need to be just text; you can be creative and adventurous with technology. Part of your job as facilitator is to model an attitude of fearless experimentation with communication technologies. What about a video introduction against a backdrop of where you live? Or a narrated slideshow? Of course, you don\u2019t want to intimidate your participants if they\u2019re fairly novice technology users, so be sure to offer choices.<\/li>\n \t
- What to include is up to you; this is your first impression. You might like to talk a bit about your teaching and other professional experience. You could share an anecdote or advice from your own online facilitation experience, or use an icebreaker-type format.<\/li>\n \t
- Make sure your post sets a good impression: establishes instructor presence, presents a clear message without being too long or too short.<\/li>\n \t
- Be sure your introductory post ends with an invitation for your participants to share their introductions in a similar way.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
\n \t- Post the week\u2019s overview post<\/strong>, emphasizing for participants:\n
\n \t- Activities, etc. they must complete this week.<\/li>\n \t
- Tips on how to navigate the site.<\/li>\n \t
- The need to plan and schedule time to work on the course. Remind participants that a valuable learning experience cannot be achieved using a side-of-the-desk approach.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n\n\n\n\nShare time management tips<\/strong>\nEven with your explicit messages about the amount of time needed, participants may still expect to be able to slide their FLO work in on the weekends or in little bits and pieces between other daily tasks. This can leave people feeling they are always working on the course, even though their time on task may be quite short.\nRemind your participants to set aside time for the course, and repeat that advice early and often.\nEncourage them to book time to work with their facilitation team partners (and you, if they wish) well in advance.\n\n<\/div>\n
\n \t- Finalize your questions for Week 1\u2019s forum<\/strong> \u201cBuilding Online Community.\u201d The following are SAMPLE QUESTIONS only (you may have other questions to engage participants on this topic):\n
\n \t- What experiences have you had with online learning communities?<\/li>\n \t
- What can an instructor (or facilitator) do to develop and maintain a sense of community in an online learning environment?<\/li>\n \t
- What do you know about the Community of Inquiry model? How does it relate to building a sense of online community?<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<\/li>\n \t
- Organize participants into facilitation teams<\/strong> and post this information for all participants. You may decide to organize teams randomly or according to certain criteria; whether to make team interaction private or to open it up so that other participants can follow their planning process. Decide how and when participants can switch teams (preferably only within a short time period at the start of the course) if they wish.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n
Week 1: Building Online Community<\/h2>\n\n\nThroughout Week 1, your role is to establish a strong facilitator presence and effectively demonstrate what good online facilitation looks like. Aim to do this as transparently as possible; think out loud to your participants to show them how you plan and facilitate the various activities. This may be a good opportunity to incorporate other collaboration tools, such as wikis or other co-authoring platforms, to show how it is possible to communicate outside of a forum (which tends to be the default discussion tool).\n\n\n\n\nHelping participants cope who may feel overwhelmed during the first week.<\/strong>\n\nOffer brief explanations, clarifications and practical tips in an informal and friendly way. If your LMS offers forum \u201csubscriptions\u201d (in which participants automatically receive an email copy of all forum posts) make sure that not all forums are configured this way, and let participants know how to \u201cunsubscribe\u201d from a forum whenever possible.\n\n<\/div>\nWeek 1, Day 1 (the first day of the week):<\/h3>\n\n \t- Morning: Post facilitators\u2019 personal intros<\/strong> to the Introductory Forum.<\/li>\n \t
- Morning: Begin the Building Online Community forum<\/strong> activity. Post your questions to launch and guide the discussion.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n\n\n\n\nFind ways to allow participants to share their prior knowledge and experience. You can use the Building Online Community forum introductory activity to make the positive and negative perceptions of online learning visible by asking each participant to contribute words and an image that reflects their ideas about online community.\n\n<\/div>\n
\n \t- Evening: Finalize details for the first synchronous session<\/strong> in your agenda and\/or slidedeck, including:\n
\n \t- How to use the synchronous environment.<\/li>\n \t
- Icebreaker: quick intros of participants.<\/li>\n \t
- Review of the agenda - invite additional ideas.<\/li>\n \t
- Highlight course structure (and flow): roles, expectations, team facilitation, reflective practice, self-assessment.<\/li>\n \t
- Explain the purpose of the Facilitation Team Workspace with an activity plan and planning forum.<\/li>\n \t
- Highlight the importance of feedback, journaling, reflection, time management tips.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n
Week 1 Day 2<\/h3>\n\n \t- Earlier in day: Remind participants about the synchronous session<\/strong> a few hours before the session begins. (Reiterate that this session is not required although it is highly recommended.) Your reminder may be a forum post, LMS message, email, etc. Re-post session time, access information, and link to technical support, if needed.<\/li>\n \t
- Morning: Introduce the Learning Journal<\/strong> (perhaps as a post to the Open Forum). In your post:\n
\n \t- Explain the concept and the value of maintaining a record of what participants are learning and want to remember.<\/li>\n \t
- Remind them to regularly pause, reflect, assess and synthesize their learning.<\/li>\n \t
- Recommend they document these thoughts in a personal learning journal using paper-based, audio\/video, or electronic means.<\/li>\n \t
- Encourage participants to share nuggets (insights) in a Learning Journal.\nThe Learning Journal is explained in more detail in the Course Handbook<\/a>.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<\/li>\n \t
- Later: Host first synchronous session<\/strong>. Keep in mind this is your opportunity to connect with your participants both aurally and visually, and to demonstrate the value that a synchronous collaboration tool can bring to an online learning experience. If possible:\n
\n \t- Ensure you have technical support people (or your co-facilitator) standing by to assist with access problems.<\/li>\n \t
- Enter the synchronous session at least a half-hour early to greet early arrivals and troubleshoot navigation problems within the synchronous environment.<\/li>\n \t
- Remember to notify participants that the session will be recorded (if this is possible and if all agree) and hit the record button as your session begins.<\/li>\n \t
- Check in with participants about their comfort level navigating the site during the session and address any confusions.<\/li>\n \t
- Evening: Post a brief follow-up report about the synchronous session<\/strong>. Talk up the value of the session and encourage participants to attend the next synchronous session (mention the date and time). If the session was recorded, let participants know when a recording may be available.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n\n\n\n\nBe pro-active in the first week.\n<\/strong>If it doesn\u2019t come up spontaneously in the conversation: mention that the first week of an online course is often overwhelming (for both participants and facilitators), that it will get better, and that you will do what you can to mitigate start-up stresses.\n\n<\/div>\nSometimes the topic of feeling overwhelmed does come up naturally. The following is an example of one participant\u2019s experience (from the participant\u2019s Weekly Journal Share Forum for Week 1):\n\n\n
Time management, reflection and empathy<\/h2>\n\n\nOne participant's experience:<\/strong>\n\n\"I have a deep empathy for my students now on the first week experience. I think when we \"know the material\" we forget what it feels like to \"not know.\" As a student in my first online course, I now know how it feels to be in that place and will be more understanding of my students.\"\n\n\"Well, this week was hard. In taking time for reflection I realize that the commitment of this course while I am taking on a new role at work, in conjunction with my current full-time job and a side contract, is a lot. Time management has been a reoccurring issue for me as I never feel like I have enough time.\"\n\n\"I copied this sentence from the week 1 reading materials: 'When a person is feeling anxious, the likelihood that they will interpret things negatively increases.' I need to have this on a sticky note on my computer. I really valued the comments from others in the course about feeling overwhelmed. Online learning requires time to get used to the new ways of doing learning.\"\n\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\nWeek 1 Day 3<\/h3>\n\n \t- Connect with members of the first participant facilitation team<\/strong>. Post a message in the team planning forum for Diversity of Learners to encourage this team to get underway.<\/li>\n \t
- Remind participants to use Schedule and begin Learning Journal<\/strong>. Use a post in the Open Forum to remind participants to begin their Learning Journal and to use the FLO Fundamentals Schedule to keep on track. More information about the Learning Journal<\/a> and FLO Fundamentals Schedule<\/a> is available in the OER course. Make sure you revise the schedule to fit your own situation.<\/li>\n \t
- Post the recording (if available) of the synchronous session<\/strong>. Use a post in the Open Forum to provide a link to the recording and to highlight any key or outstanding topics.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n
Week 1 Day 4<\/h3>\n
Facilitate collaborative and individual learning<\/h2>\n\n \t- Facilitate collaborative and individual activities online.<\/li>\n \t
- Explore group dynamics in online collaborative activities.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
Provide constructive feedback and assessment<\/h2>\n\n \t- Model effective feedback and assessment.<\/li>\n \t
- Critically reflect on feedback and experience to self-evaluate work and learning.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
Manage the online course environment<\/h2>\n\n \t- Explore effective strategies to manage the workload.<\/li>\n \t
- Improve the use of tools within an online learning environment.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
Participants<\/h1>\nA wide variety of educators benefit from FLO Fundamentals. Participants are often full- or part-time instructors at post-secondary educational institutions who are new to teaching online or have already been teaching online for some time but would like to develop stronger facilitation skills. Other participants may be familiar with traditional teaching practices but are seeking to develop experience and confidence with more learner-centric educational approaches.\n\nFLO Fundamentals may also be of interest to many other educators, including instructional\/learning designers, educational developers, learning technologists and others who work in teaching and learning centres. It may also be useful for graduate students, consultants from the private sector, trainers employed by for-profit or non-profit organizations, and educational support providers.\nTechnology<\/h1>\nFLO Fundamentals requires no special technology beyond what has been recommended in Chapter 3: Tools to Support FLO. Because FLO Fundamentals is usually the first FLO course participants will encounter (and sometimes their first online course ever), be cautious about using too many external tools or apps until you are better aware of your participants\u2019 comfort levels.\nCourse content and layout<\/h1>\nFLO Fundamentals is a complete five-week workshop-style course with a comprehensive collection of information, activities, directions, assessments, and related resources. Within the Open Education Resources (OER) version of the course, resources are organized into tabs, with one tab for each of the five weeks, plus one Hub tab with introductory and general information, and one tab to organize the work of the teams (see the image below for an example).\n\n[caption id=\"attachment_749\" align=\"aligncenter\" width=\"659\"] Figure 4.1[\/caption]\n\nIn the Hub tab, you will find:\n\n \t- A Course Handbook, describing for participants how the course works, what\u2019s expected of them, learning outcomes, scheduling, etc.<\/li>\n \t
- A sample Schedule to help participants (and facilitators) stay on track.<\/li>\n \t
- Resources to help facilitators organize participant teams.<\/li>\n \t
- Sample forums to facilitate discussion:\n
\n \t- An Open Forum for sharing general information (clarification, announcements, social-type sharing) not necessarily related to the weekly discussion about content. Both facilitators and participants can post and respond.<\/li>\n \t
- A Weekly Journal Share forum, for posting reflections on learning.<\/li>\n \t
- A forum to provide Feedback for participant teams.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n \t
- A feedback form (Feel, Like, Improve, Feedback, or FLIF) to help participant teams reflect and receive personal, private feedback on their facilitation experience. (In the OER course, this feedback is structured using the Learning Management System's quiz tool.)<\/li>\n \t
- Additional resources for facilitators to aid in coordination of the course (generally hidden from participants).<\/li>\n<\/ul>\nTabs corresponding to each week\u2019s activities include:\n
\n \t- An overview of the topic for the week.<\/li>\n \t
- A forum to discuss the week\u2019s topic (e.g. to respond to the questions posted by the facilitation team).<\/li>\n \t
- Other resources and\/or activities specific to that week.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\nThe tab for Facilitation Teams Workspace includes:\n
\n \t- A detailed activity plan for each team.<\/li>\n \t
- A workspace forum (private, if you choose) for each team\u2019s members to plan their facilitation strategies and tasks.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\nThe topics discussed in this course are:\n
\n \t- Week 1: Building Learning Community (facilitated by course facilitators).<\/li>\n \t
- Week 2: Diversity of Learners (facilitated by the orange team).<\/li>\n \t
- Week 3: Responsive Facilitation (facilitated by the blue team).<\/li>\n \t
- Week 4: Collaboration (facilitated by the yellow team).<\/li>\n \t
- Week 5: Reflective Practice (facilitated by the green team).<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
Course assessment strategies<\/h1>\nThis course is designed to be developmental; it is not a graded course in the traditional sense. Unless you decide otherwise, your participants will not be marked or assigned a formal grade on their performance. The course does include a number of activities to encourage self-reflection, as well as a comprehensive self-assessment rubric which could be used to assign a grade, if needed (see FLO Fundamentals Self-Assessment Rubric<\/a>).\n\nParticipants are also encouraged to self-assess their qualification for a Certificate of Completion. As facilitator(s), it is up to you to decide what form this Certificate should take.\nFacilitator task list: What you need to do before, during and after the course<\/h1>\nThe successful hosting of FLO Fundamentals requires good planning, timing, and coordination. Over the years, we\u2019ve developed a detailed, step-by-step Task List for course facilitators:\n\n \t- See FLO Fundamentals Task List<\/a> for a concise, detailed list of facilitator tasks.<\/li>\n \t
- You can also use the following Task List Explanations alongside the Task List for more background information and ideas.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
Task List Explanations<\/h2>\nSeveral weeks (or months) before the course begins\n\n \t- Access the OER course<\/strong>. The OER course Facilitating Learning Online - Fundamentals<\/a> is currently offered as a Moodle course with guest access; you should be able to enter the course and view all content.<\/li>\n \t
- Set up your own learning environment and copy content<\/strong>. Before you can offer FLO Fundamentals, you need a learning environment \u2013 a virtual place to host the course. At the very minimum, you need an online space (private or securable, if you choose) where facilitators and participants can conduct discussions and share facilitation discoveries and the results of experimentation. The course content must be added to the LMS or other learning space you have chosen:[footnote]In your institution, an LMS Administrator, IT support, or Instructional Designer may help with this step.[\/footnote]\n
\n \t- If using Moodle: restore the latest version of this course into your LMS (you can download it using the link in the OER).<\/li>\n \t
- If NOT using Moodle: establish and configure an online learning environment (LMS, CMS, wiki, etc.) into which you can copy all relevant content from FLO Fundamentals.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<\/li>\n \t
- If possible, find a colleague to assist you as a Co-Facilitator<\/strong>. Your ideal co-facilitator will be someone who can work with you to provide guidance and support to your participants, and can dedicate 15 to 25 hours per week to this task. Ideally, your co-facilitator will be familiar with online learning theories and practices, and with personal and technical skills to engage online participants. Not only do co-facilitators lessen the workload and enrich the facilitation process for you, they increase the facilitation expertise within your institution or organization. It would help a great deal if your colleague has already taken FLO Fundamentals.<\/li>\n \t
- Access your FLO Fundamentals learning environment to review content and tools<\/strong>. Prepare the course site or learning environment and (re)acquaint yourself with the facilitation tools you plan to use. Familiarize yourself with the course content, materials, philosophy, scheduling, flow, etc. of the course.<\/li>\n \t
- Set up a web conferencing tool for online synchronous sessions and conversations<\/strong>. There are many web conferencing applications to choose from, depending on your institution's requirements.<\/li>\n \t
- Connect with your co-facilitator for detailed pre-planning<\/strong>. Develop a planning regime that you\u2019re both comfortable with. Work together to develop a detailed list of tasks to be completed before, during, and after the course runs. You have a lot to do before the course begins:\n
\n \t- Ensure an easy-to-access place or process to store planning resources. Agree on planning tools and schedules.<\/li>\n \t
- Customize this Facilitator Task List to fit your needs.<\/li>\n \t
- Review the resources available in the OER and select some activities to try. You could also add your own ideas for icebreakers, discussion topics, resources, images, slides, etc.<\/li>\n \t
- Develop rough agendas for your synchronous sessions.<\/li>\n \t
- Prepare how-to resources for your participants to explain the features of the learning environments and tools.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<\/li>\n \t
- Practice using learning environment tools<\/strong>. If you\u2019re already pretty comfortable with both synchronous and asynchronous online tools, you may wish to try something new; to model for your participants an adventurous open mind when it comes to educational technology. However, be aware of the technical expertise of your potential participants: you don\u2019t want to choose something that most of them will have trouble accessing or learning to use.<\/li>\n \t
- Identify potential participants<\/strong>. Think about where you might find your course participants. Will you enlist from your institution only, or other institutions and organizations? Decide how far ahead you must start the recruitment process.<\/li>\n \t
- Ensure your content is accurate<\/strong>. Once you have a potential learner audience in mind, re-visit the learning environment and carefully review all content (forum post topics, reading lists, directions, etc.). Make sure your content is appropriate for your intended group of participants, and reflects the goals of your institution or program. Remember, the FLO courses have been developed as Open Educational Resources and are licenced under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License<\/a> so you\u2019re free to modify whatever you like! The only requirement is that you provide attribution and don\u2019t imply or suggest endorsement by the licensor.<\/li>\n \t
- Ensure your content is accurate<\/em>.<\/strong> Unfortunately, the web addresses (URLs) of internet resources change often with the result that your linked document may not appear when participants click on the link. Sometimes, through searching, you can locate the new URL for the resource but you may wish to consider finding a more up-to-date resource on the same topic instead.<\/li>\n \t
- (If you haven\u2019t done so already!) Choose a start date and promote<\/strong> your course to your target participants.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n\n\n
Your Technical Skills: The Least You Need to Know<\/h2>\n\n\nYour participants may dream up a variety of designs for their mini-session and, ideally, you and your co-facilitator will be comfortable setting up the tools they need. If you are working within an LMS, some commonly-used tools include:\n\n \t- Forums or discussion groups: LMS-based forums usually offer many different settings and you should be familiar with most of them. Learn to set up both open forums and team-based forums (if available) and explore other settings that can create new possibilities for structuring activities.<\/li>\n \t
- Polls or Choices: Many LMSs offer a tool for quickly polling participants -- handy for any time you want people to indicate a preference (e.g. \"what time should we meet for our synchronous session?\"), or to vote on a single question.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
One- to two weeks before the course begins<\/h2>\nOnce your FLO Fundamentals course is underway, you and your participants will be very busy indeed and you\u2019ll want to have as much preparatory work out of the way as possible. How you set up the course site and engage the community will directly impact how the rest of the course flows; keep in mind that you are modelling good facilitation practices (a detailed list of Core FLO Facilitation Skills is included in Chapter 3<\/a> of this Guide).\n\n \t- Complete recruitment and register participants<\/strong>. You may have begun the recruitment of participants weeks or even months ahead. Make sure you have a process in place to register your participants in accordance with your institution\u2019s policies. If you are managing your own site (e.g. a WordPress site), you may be able to organize this on your own. During recruitment, be sure to:\n
\n \t- Communicate expectations around time and teamwork.<\/li>\n \t
- Provide information to your participants about what they\u2019ll need to do and where to find what they\u2019ll need. Your goal is not to overwhelm your participants but to provide enough information so they can jump right in when the course begins.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n\n\n\n\nWhat\u2019s the right number of participants for this course?\n<\/strong>A small class of 10 or fewer participants will make it difficult to sustain rich online conversations. On the other hand, a large class of more than 25 may be more than 2 facilitators can handle. Our experience has shown that a class of 14 - 20 educators is a good size for this course.\n\n<\/div>\n
\n \t- Meet with co-facilitator<\/strong>, finalize the week ahead. Now is the time to check the details and do final revisions of your first week\u2019s activities & resources, including:\n
\n \t- Discussion topics, resources, images, slides, etc.<\/li>\n \t
- Icebreaker activities.<\/li>\n \t
- Your introductory welcome post.<\/li>\n \t
- Agenda for the first synchronous session.<\/li>\n \t
- Resource to explain the basic features of the synchronous environment & tools.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<\/li>\n \t
- Create or update co-facilitators\u2019 profiles<\/strong> and contact information. Tell a little about yourself in a profile or short biography. Establish your contact information and set \u201coffice hours\u201d (if appropriate).<\/li>\n \t
- Decide which aspects of the course will be displayed<\/strong> when the course opens and which aspects will be hidden until needed. Many learning environments will let you hide or show specific activities until you\u2019re ready for your participants to see them.<\/li>\n \t
- Ensure sufficient starting information for participants<\/strong>. Your new participants will need detailed information about how to access the course and get started (e.g. if using Moodle, see the FLO Handbook on the Hub tab, or consider preparing a screencast).<\/li>\n \t
- Finalize enrollment of participants<\/strong>, send out a Welcome email. Provide the participants with access to the course and\/or information about accessing technical support, if necessary.<\/li>\n \t
- Decide on your week\u2019s start day<\/strong> and modify your directions to the participants and the learning environment settings accordingly (if necessary). This course is not self-paced; the work is organized around weeks. Will the first day of your course week begin on a Sunday, Monday, or some other day?<\/li>\n \t
- Set a time for your first<\/strong> (Week 1) synchronous session<\/strong>. Prepare the synchronous environment as much as possible: upload slides, write\/draw\/embed a welcome message, etc.<\/li>\n \t
- Set up a separate online workspace for each team<\/strong>. You will be dividing up your participants into 4 teams; each team will facilitate one of the weekly mini-sessions. A unique team workspace (e.g. a forum or Google doc) with editing functions for team members should be sufficient. You may wish to limit access (e.g. read-only access) to this workspace to non-team participants.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n\n\n
Privacy and Confidentiality<\/h2>\n\n\nIn all FLO courses, our learning relies on the exchange of honest, constructive feedback, and we need to agree on rules that support this foundation of trust. Be aware of your institutional or organizational policies relating to privacy and confidentiality, determine how you will interpret these for your online learning environment, and decide how to communicate these rules to your participants. You can see an example of how privacy and confidentiality concerns are communicated in this page in the FLO Fundamentals Course Handbook<\/a> (in the Moodle OER). Some privacy and confidentiality rules you may wish to adopt:\n\n \t- Always seek permission to share content posted by participants.<\/li>\n \t
- When using social media and other online services to complete activities, ensure you are familiar with the levels of privacy available and how the information will be stored and shared. Communicate this information to the participants.<\/li>\n \t
- If you plan on recording your synchronous sessions, confirm that this is OK with the session participants before<\/em> you hit the record button.<\/li>\n \t
- Let participants know who else has access to this course (e.g. participants, facilitators, assistants, website administrators, etc.).<\/li>\n \t
- You may wish to establish \"Vegas rules<\/a>,\" i.e. what happens in the course, stays in the course.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\nSome other decisions you\u2019ll need to make:\n
\n \t- Decide which teams each co-facilitator will support<\/strong> during the course, and decide between yourselves what kind of support you will provide.<\/li>\n \t
- Confirm technical support<\/strong> is available and adequate, if needed. If you are providing your own tech support, confirm that your site has been backed up and no significant technical issues (e.g. scheduled downtime) exist. If tech support personnel are available, confirm they are standing by and aware of your course start date and enrollments.<\/li>\n \t
- Review the suggested assessment options for this course and select one (or more)<\/strong> to recommend for your participants. A self-assessment rubric can be adapted so the facilitator can assign a grade, if needed (see FLO Fundamentals Self-Assessment Rubric<\/a>).<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n
As time permits<\/h2>\n\n \t- Practice navigating your course site and other tools.<\/strong> If you are using the OER Moodle version of this course, you\u2019ll find it's a complex environment with lots of moving parts. Take the time to familiarize yourself with the course and revise it as you see fit. Move stuff around and explore different tools, modules, and plugins (if available). Consider (judiciously!) trying some new or less-used tools outside of your LMS or main learning environment.<\/li>\n \t
- Streamline or otherwise improve your course\u2019s navigation tools.<\/strong> When you refer to another part of your course or learning environment, provide a direct link whenever possible. Consider including a navigation screencast showing step-by-step how to get around your learning environment or LMS.<\/li>\n \t
- Fine-tune your reading list.<\/strong> In such a fascinating and fast-moving field like online facilitation, it\u2019s easy to get carried away with the list of readings you provide for participants. Consider making all readings optional but don\u2019t be afraid to strongly recommend a resource you know is important. After all, this course is intended to be informed by research and theory.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\nThe readings you\u2019ll see contained in this course have been chosen carefully to be both high quality and of reasonable length. However, as we have already mentioned, links to internet-based resources can break or become \u201cstale.\u201d Encourage your FLO participants to research and recommend better or more up-to-date readings for their own facilitation week.\n
A few days before the course begins<\/h2>\n\n \t- Connect with your participants<\/strong>. Make sure they\u2019re able to access the learning environment, and communicate some basic information about the course, expectations around time, etc.<\/li>\n \t
- Write your introductory welcome post<\/strong> (e.g. in an \u201cIntroductions\u201d forum within the course or as a new thread in the \u201cOpen\u201d forum) in a friendly, informal, and enthusiastic style that welcomes them to the online course environment and sets a tone for your online community. Encourage participants to respond with their own introductions.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n\n\n
Your Welcome post doesn\u2019t have to be just text\u2026<\/h2>\n\n\nAs a facilitator of FLO, you\u2019ll want to set an example from the beginning of what good facilitation looks like. Take the time to craft a friendly, welcoming message to begin the process of online community building.\n\nSome tips:<\/strong>\n\n \t- Your introductory post doesn\u2019t need to be just text; you can be creative and adventurous with technology. Part of your job as facilitator is to model an attitude of fearless experimentation with communication technologies. What about a video introduction against a backdrop of where you live? Or a narrated slideshow? Of course, you don\u2019t want to intimidate your participants if they\u2019re fairly novice technology users, so be sure to offer choices.<\/li>\n \t
- What to include is up to you; this is your first impression. You might like to talk a bit about your teaching and other professional experience. You could share an anecdote or advice from your own online facilitation experience, or use an icebreaker-type format.<\/li>\n \t
- Make sure your post sets a good impression: establishes instructor presence, presents a clear message without being too long or too short.<\/li>\n \t
- Be sure your introductory post ends with an invitation for your participants to share their introductions in a similar way.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
\n \t- Post the week\u2019s overview post<\/strong>, emphasizing for participants:\n
\n \t- Activities, etc. they must complete this week.<\/li>\n \t
- Tips on how to navigate the site.<\/li>\n \t
- The need to plan and schedule time to work on the course. Remind participants that a valuable learning experience cannot be achieved using a side-of-the-desk approach.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n\n\n\n\nShare time management tips<\/strong>\nEven with your explicit messages about the amount of time needed, participants may still expect to be able to slide their FLO work in on the weekends or in little bits and pieces between other daily tasks. This can leave people feeling they are always working on the course, even though their time on task may be quite short.\nRemind your participants to set aside time for the course, and repeat that advice early and often.\nEncourage them to book time to work with their facilitation team partners (and you, if they wish) well in advance.\n\n<\/div>\n
\n \t- Finalize your questions for Week 1\u2019s forum<\/strong> \u201cBuilding Online Community.\u201d The following are SAMPLE QUESTIONS only (you may have other questions to engage participants on this topic):\n
\n \t- What experiences have you had with online learning communities?<\/li>\n \t
- What can an instructor (or facilitator) do to develop and maintain a sense of community in an online learning environment?<\/li>\n \t
- What do you know about the Community of Inquiry model? How does it relate to building a sense of online community?<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<\/li>\n \t
- Organize participants into facilitation teams<\/strong> and post this information for all participants. You may decide to organize teams randomly or according to certain criteria; whether to make team interaction private or to open it up so that other participants can follow their planning process. Decide how and when participants can switch teams (preferably only within a short time period at the start of the course) if they wish.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n
Week 1: Building Online Community<\/h2>\n\n\nThroughout Week 1, your role is to establish a strong facilitator presence and effectively demonstrate what good online facilitation looks like. Aim to do this as transparently as possible; think out loud to your participants to show them how you plan and facilitate the various activities. This may be a good opportunity to incorporate other collaboration tools, such as wikis or other co-authoring platforms, to show how it is possible to communicate outside of a forum (which tends to be the default discussion tool).\n\n\n\n\nHelping participants cope who may feel overwhelmed during the first week.<\/strong>\n\nOffer brief explanations, clarifications and practical tips in an informal and friendly way. If your LMS offers forum \u201csubscriptions\u201d (in which participants automatically receive an email copy of all forum posts) make sure that not all forums are configured this way, and let participants know how to \u201cunsubscribe\u201d from a forum whenever possible.\n\n<\/div>\nWeek 1, Day 1 (the first day of the week):<\/h3>\n\n \t- Morning: Post facilitators\u2019 personal intros<\/strong> to the Introductory Forum.<\/li>\n \t
- Morning: Begin the Building Online Community forum<\/strong> activity. Post your questions to launch and guide the discussion.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n\n\n\n\nFind ways to allow participants to share their prior knowledge and experience. You can use the Building Online Community forum introductory activity to make the positive and negative perceptions of online learning visible by asking each participant to contribute words and an image that reflects their ideas about online community.\n\n<\/div>\n
\n \t- Evening: Finalize details for the first synchronous session<\/strong> in your agenda and\/or slidedeck, including:\n
\n \t- How to use the synchronous environment.<\/li>\n \t
- Icebreaker: quick intros of participants.<\/li>\n \t
- Review of the agenda - invite additional ideas.<\/li>\n \t
- Highlight course structure (and flow): roles, expectations, team facilitation, reflective practice, self-assessment.<\/li>\n \t
- Explain the purpose of the Facilitation Team Workspace with an activity plan and planning forum.<\/li>\n \t
- Highlight the importance of feedback, journaling, reflection, time management tips.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n
Week 1 Day 2<\/h3>\n\n \t- Earlier in day: Remind participants about the synchronous session<\/strong> a few hours before the session begins. (Reiterate that this session is not required although it is highly recommended.) Your reminder may be a forum post, LMS message, email, etc. Re-post session time, access information, and link to technical support, if needed.<\/li>\n \t
- Morning: Introduce the Learning Journal<\/strong> (perhaps as a post to the Open Forum). In your post:\n
\n \t- Explain the concept and the value of maintaining a record of what participants are learning and want to remember.<\/li>\n \t
- Remind them to regularly pause, reflect, assess and synthesize their learning.<\/li>\n \t
- Recommend they document these thoughts in a personal learning journal using paper-based, audio\/video, or electronic means.<\/li>\n \t
- Encourage participants to share nuggets (insights) in a Learning Journal.\nThe Learning Journal is explained in more detail in the Course Handbook<\/a>.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<\/li>\n \t
- Later: Host first synchronous session<\/strong>. Keep in mind this is your opportunity to connect with your participants both aurally and visually, and to demonstrate the value that a synchronous collaboration tool can bring to an online learning experience. If possible:\n
\n \t- Ensure you have technical support people (or your co-facilitator) standing by to assist with access problems.<\/li>\n \t
- Enter the synchronous session at least a half-hour early to greet early arrivals and troubleshoot navigation problems within the synchronous environment.<\/li>\n \t
- Remember to notify participants that the session will be recorded (if this is possible and if all agree) and hit the record button as your session begins.<\/li>\n \t
- Check in with participants about their comfort level navigating the site during the session and address any confusions.<\/li>\n \t
- Evening: Post a brief follow-up report about the synchronous session<\/strong>. Talk up the value of the session and encourage participants to attend the next synchronous session (mention the date and time). If the session was recorded, let participants know when a recording may be available.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n\n\n\n\nBe pro-active in the first week.\n<\/strong>If it doesn\u2019t come up spontaneously in the conversation: mention that the first week of an online course is often overwhelming (for both participants and facilitators), that it will get better, and that you will do what you can to mitigate start-up stresses.\n\n<\/div>\nSometimes the topic of feeling overwhelmed does come up naturally. The following is an example of one participant\u2019s experience (from the participant\u2019s Weekly Journal Share Forum for Week 1):\n\n\n
Time management, reflection and empathy<\/h2>\n\n\nOne participant's experience:<\/strong>\n\n\"I have a deep empathy for my students now on the first week experience. I think when we \"know the material\" we forget what it feels like to \"not know.\" As a student in my first online course, I now know how it feels to be in that place and will be more understanding of my students.\"\n\n\"Well, this week was hard. In taking time for reflection I realize that the commitment of this course while I am taking on a new role at work, in conjunction with my current full-time job and a side contract, is a lot. Time management has been a reoccurring issue for me as I never feel like I have enough time.\"\n\n\"I copied this sentence from the week 1 reading materials: 'When a person is feeling anxious, the likelihood that they will interpret things negatively increases.' I need to have this on a sticky note on my computer. I really valued the comments from others in the course about feeling overwhelmed. Online learning requires time to get used to the new ways of doing learning.\"\n\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\nWeek 1 Day 3<\/h3>\n\n \t- Connect with members of the first participant facilitation team<\/strong>. Post a message in the team planning forum for Diversity of Learners to encourage this team to get underway.<\/li>\n \t
- Remind participants to use Schedule and begin Learning Journal<\/strong>. Use a post in the Open Forum to remind participants to begin their Learning Journal and to use the FLO Fundamentals Schedule to keep on track. More information about the Learning Journal<\/a> and FLO Fundamentals Schedule<\/a> is available in the OER course. Make sure you revise the schedule to fit your own situation.<\/li>\n \t
- Post the recording (if available) of the synchronous session<\/strong>. Use a post in the Open Forum to provide a link to the recording and to highlight any key or outstanding topics.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n
Week 1 Day 4<\/h3>\n
Provide constructive feedback and assessment<\/h2>\n\n \t- Model effective feedback and assessment.<\/li>\n \t
- Critically reflect on feedback and experience to self-evaluate work and learning.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
Manage the online course environment<\/h2>\n\n \t- Explore effective strategies to manage the workload.<\/li>\n \t
- Improve the use of tools within an online learning environment.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
Participants<\/h1>\nA wide variety of educators benefit from FLO Fundamentals. Participants are often full- or part-time instructors at post-secondary educational institutions who are new to teaching online or have already been teaching online for some time but would like to develop stronger facilitation skills. Other participants may be familiar with traditional teaching practices but are seeking to develop experience and confidence with more learner-centric educational approaches.\n\nFLO Fundamentals may also be of interest to many other educators, including instructional\/learning designers, educational developers, learning technologists and others who work in teaching and learning centres. It may also be useful for graduate students, consultants from the private sector, trainers employed by for-profit or non-profit organizations, and educational support providers.\nTechnology<\/h1>\nFLO Fundamentals requires no special technology beyond what has been recommended in Chapter 3: Tools to Support FLO. Because FLO Fundamentals is usually the first FLO course participants will encounter (and sometimes their first online course ever), be cautious about using too many external tools or apps until you are better aware of your participants\u2019 comfort levels.\nCourse content and layout<\/h1>\nFLO Fundamentals is a complete five-week workshop-style course with a comprehensive collection of information, activities, directions, assessments, and related resources. Within the Open Education Resources (OER) version of the course, resources are organized into tabs, with one tab for each of the five weeks, plus one Hub tab with introductory and general information, and one tab to organize the work of the teams (see the image below for an example).\n\n[caption id=\"attachment_749\" align=\"aligncenter\" width=\"659\"] Figure 4.1[\/caption]\n\nIn the Hub tab, you will find:\n\n \t- A Course Handbook, describing for participants how the course works, what\u2019s expected of them, learning outcomes, scheduling, etc.<\/li>\n \t
- A sample Schedule to help participants (and facilitators) stay on track.<\/li>\n \t
- Resources to help facilitators organize participant teams.<\/li>\n \t
- Sample forums to facilitate discussion:\n
\n \t- An Open Forum for sharing general information (clarification, announcements, social-type sharing) not necessarily related to the weekly discussion about content. Both facilitators and participants can post and respond.<\/li>\n \t
- A Weekly Journal Share forum, for posting reflections on learning.<\/li>\n \t
- A forum to provide Feedback for participant teams.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n \t
- A feedback form (Feel, Like, Improve, Feedback, or FLIF) to help participant teams reflect and receive personal, private feedback on their facilitation experience. (In the OER course, this feedback is structured using the Learning Management System's quiz tool.)<\/li>\n \t
- Additional resources for facilitators to aid in coordination of the course (generally hidden from participants).<\/li>\n<\/ul>\nTabs corresponding to each week\u2019s activities include:\n
\n \t- An overview of the topic for the week.<\/li>\n \t
- A forum to discuss the week\u2019s topic (e.g. to respond to the questions posted by the facilitation team).<\/li>\n \t
- Other resources and\/or activities specific to that week.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\nThe tab for Facilitation Teams Workspace includes:\n
\n \t- A detailed activity plan for each team.<\/li>\n \t
- A workspace forum (private, if you choose) for each team\u2019s members to plan their facilitation strategies and tasks.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\nThe topics discussed in this course are:\n
\n \t- Week 1: Building Learning Community (facilitated by course facilitators).<\/li>\n \t
- Week 2: Diversity of Learners (facilitated by the orange team).<\/li>\n \t
- Week 3: Responsive Facilitation (facilitated by the blue team).<\/li>\n \t
- Week 4: Collaboration (facilitated by the yellow team).<\/li>\n \t
- Week 5: Reflective Practice (facilitated by the green team).<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
Course assessment strategies<\/h1>\nThis course is designed to be developmental; it is not a graded course in the traditional sense. Unless you decide otherwise, your participants will not be marked or assigned a formal grade on their performance. The course does include a number of activities to encourage self-reflection, as well as a comprehensive self-assessment rubric which could be used to assign a grade, if needed (see FLO Fundamentals Self-Assessment Rubric<\/a>).\n\nParticipants are also encouraged to self-assess their qualification for a Certificate of Completion. As facilitator(s), it is up to you to decide what form this Certificate should take.\nFacilitator task list: What you need to do before, during and after the course<\/h1>\nThe successful hosting of FLO Fundamentals requires good planning, timing, and coordination. Over the years, we\u2019ve developed a detailed, step-by-step Task List for course facilitators:\n\n \t- See FLO Fundamentals Task List<\/a> for a concise, detailed list of facilitator tasks.<\/li>\n \t
- You can also use the following Task List Explanations alongside the Task List for more background information and ideas.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
Task List Explanations<\/h2>\nSeveral weeks (or months) before the course begins\n\n \t- Access the OER course<\/strong>. The OER course Facilitating Learning Online - Fundamentals<\/a> is currently offered as a Moodle course with guest access; you should be able to enter the course and view all content.<\/li>\n \t
- Set up your own learning environment and copy content<\/strong>. Before you can offer FLO Fundamentals, you need a learning environment \u2013 a virtual place to host the course. At the very minimum, you need an online space (private or securable, if you choose) where facilitators and participants can conduct discussions and share facilitation discoveries and the results of experimentation. The course content must be added to the LMS or other learning space you have chosen:[footnote]In your institution, an LMS Administrator, IT support, or Instructional Designer may help with this step.[\/footnote]\n
\n \t- If using Moodle: restore the latest version of this course into your LMS (you can download it using the link in the OER).<\/li>\n \t
- If NOT using Moodle: establish and configure an online learning environment (LMS, CMS, wiki, etc.) into which you can copy all relevant content from FLO Fundamentals.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<\/li>\n \t
- If possible, find a colleague to assist you as a Co-Facilitator<\/strong>. Your ideal co-facilitator will be someone who can work with you to provide guidance and support to your participants, and can dedicate 15 to 25 hours per week to this task. Ideally, your co-facilitator will be familiar with online learning theories and practices, and with personal and technical skills to engage online participants. Not only do co-facilitators lessen the workload and enrich the facilitation process for you, they increase the facilitation expertise within your institution or organization. It would help a great deal if your colleague has already taken FLO Fundamentals.<\/li>\n \t
- Access your FLO Fundamentals learning environment to review content and tools<\/strong>. Prepare the course site or learning environment and (re)acquaint yourself with the facilitation tools you plan to use. Familiarize yourself with the course content, materials, philosophy, scheduling, flow, etc. of the course.<\/li>\n \t
- Set up a web conferencing tool for online synchronous sessions and conversations<\/strong>. There are many web conferencing applications to choose from, depending on your institution's requirements.<\/li>\n \t
- Connect with your co-facilitator for detailed pre-planning<\/strong>. Develop a planning regime that you\u2019re both comfortable with. Work together to develop a detailed list of tasks to be completed before, during, and after the course runs. You have a lot to do before the course begins:\n
\n \t- Ensure an easy-to-access place or process to store planning resources. Agree on planning tools and schedules.<\/li>\n \t
- Customize this Facilitator Task List to fit your needs.<\/li>\n \t
- Review the resources available in the OER and select some activities to try. You could also add your own ideas for icebreakers, discussion topics, resources, images, slides, etc.<\/li>\n \t
- Develop rough agendas for your synchronous sessions.<\/li>\n \t
- Prepare how-to resources for your participants to explain the features of the learning environments and tools.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<\/li>\n \t
- Practice using learning environment tools<\/strong>. If you\u2019re already pretty comfortable with both synchronous and asynchronous online tools, you may wish to try something new; to model for your participants an adventurous open mind when it comes to educational technology. However, be aware of the technical expertise of your potential participants: you don\u2019t want to choose something that most of them will have trouble accessing or learning to use.<\/li>\n \t
- Identify potential participants<\/strong>. Think about where you might find your course participants. Will you enlist from your institution only, or other institutions and organizations? Decide how far ahead you must start the recruitment process.<\/li>\n \t
- Ensure your content is accurate<\/strong>. Once you have a potential learner audience in mind, re-visit the learning environment and carefully review all content (forum post topics, reading lists, directions, etc.). Make sure your content is appropriate for your intended group of participants, and reflects the goals of your institution or program. Remember, the FLO courses have been developed as Open Educational Resources and are licenced under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License<\/a> so you\u2019re free to modify whatever you like! The only requirement is that you provide attribution and don\u2019t imply or suggest endorsement by the licensor.<\/li>\n \t
- Ensure your content is accurate<\/em>.<\/strong> Unfortunately, the web addresses (URLs) of internet resources change often with the result that your linked document may not appear when participants click on the link. Sometimes, through searching, you can locate the new URL for the resource but you may wish to consider finding a more up-to-date resource on the same topic instead.<\/li>\n \t
- (If you haven\u2019t done so already!) Choose a start date and promote<\/strong> your course to your target participants.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n\n\n
Your Technical Skills: The Least You Need to Know<\/h2>\n\n\nYour participants may dream up a variety of designs for their mini-session and, ideally, you and your co-facilitator will be comfortable setting up the tools they need. If you are working within an LMS, some commonly-used tools include:\n\n \t- Forums or discussion groups: LMS-based forums usually offer many different settings and you should be familiar with most of them. Learn to set up both open forums and team-based forums (if available) and explore other settings that can create new possibilities for structuring activities.<\/li>\n \t
- Polls or Choices: Many LMSs offer a tool for quickly polling participants -- handy for any time you want people to indicate a preference (e.g. \"what time should we meet for our synchronous session?\"), or to vote on a single question.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
One- to two weeks before the course begins<\/h2>\nOnce your FLO Fundamentals course is underway, you and your participants will be very busy indeed and you\u2019ll want to have as much preparatory work out of the way as possible. How you set up the course site and engage the community will directly impact how the rest of the course flows; keep in mind that you are modelling good facilitation practices (a detailed list of Core FLO Facilitation Skills is included in Chapter 3<\/a> of this Guide).\n\n \t- Complete recruitment and register participants<\/strong>. You may have begun the recruitment of participants weeks or even months ahead. Make sure you have a process in place to register your participants in accordance with your institution\u2019s policies. If you are managing your own site (e.g. a WordPress site), you may be able to organize this on your own. During recruitment, be sure to:\n
\n \t- Communicate expectations around time and teamwork.<\/li>\n \t
- Provide information to your participants about what they\u2019ll need to do and where to find what they\u2019ll need. Your goal is not to overwhelm your participants but to provide enough information so they can jump right in when the course begins.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n\n\n\n\nWhat\u2019s the right number of participants for this course?\n<\/strong>A small class of 10 or fewer participants will make it difficult to sustain rich online conversations. On the other hand, a large class of more than 25 may be more than 2 facilitators can handle. Our experience has shown that a class of 14 - 20 educators is a good size for this course.\n\n<\/div>\n
\n \t- Meet with co-facilitator<\/strong>, finalize the week ahead. Now is the time to check the details and do final revisions of your first week\u2019s activities & resources, including:\n
\n \t- Discussion topics, resources, images, slides, etc.<\/li>\n \t
- Icebreaker activities.<\/li>\n \t
- Your introductory welcome post.<\/li>\n \t
- Agenda for the first synchronous session.<\/li>\n \t
- Resource to explain the basic features of the synchronous environment & tools.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<\/li>\n \t
- Create or update co-facilitators\u2019 profiles<\/strong> and contact information. Tell a little about yourself in a profile or short biography. Establish your contact information and set \u201coffice hours\u201d (if appropriate).<\/li>\n \t
- Decide which aspects of the course will be displayed<\/strong> when the course opens and which aspects will be hidden until needed. Many learning environments will let you hide or show specific activities until you\u2019re ready for your participants to see them.<\/li>\n \t
- Ensure sufficient starting information for participants<\/strong>. Your new participants will need detailed information about how to access the course and get started (e.g. if using Moodle, see the FLO Handbook on the Hub tab, or consider preparing a screencast).<\/li>\n \t
- Finalize enrollment of participants<\/strong>, send out a Welcome email. Provide the participants with access to the course and\/or information about accessing technical support, if necessary.<\/li>\n \t
- Decide on your week\u2019s start day<\/strong> and modify your directions to the participants and the learning environment settings accordingly (if necessary). This course is not self-paced; the work is organized around weeks. Will the first day of your course week begin on a Sunday, Monday, or some other day?<\/li>\n \t
- Set a time for your first<\/strong> (Week 1) synchronous session<\/strong>. Prepare the synchronous environment as much as possible: upload slides, write\/draw\/embed a welcome message, etc.<\/li>\n \t
- Set up a separate online workspace for each team<\/strong>. You will be dividing up your participants into 4 teams; each team will facilitate one of the weekly mini-sessions. A unique team workspace (e.g. a forum or Google doc) with editing functions for team members should be sufficient. You may wish to limit access (e.g. read-only access) to this workspace to non-team participants.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n\n\n
Privacy and Confidentiality<\/h2>\n\n\nIn all FLO courses, our learning relies on the exchange of honest, constructive feedback, and we need to agree on rules that support this foundation of trust. Be aware of your institutional or organizational policies relating to privacy and confidentiality, determine how you will interpret these for your online learning environment, and decide how to communicate these rules to your participants. You can see an example of how privacy and confidentiality concerns are communicated in this page in the FLO Fundamentals Course Handbook<\/a> (in the Moodle OER). Some privacy and confidentiality rules you may wish to adopt:\n\n \t- Always seek permission to share content posted by participants.<\/li>\n \t
- When using social media and other online services to complete activities, ensure you are familiar with the levels of privacy available and how the information will be stored and shared. Communicate this information to the participants.<\/li>\n \t
- If you plan on recording your synchronous sessions, confirm that this is OK with the session participants before<\/em> you hit the record button.<\/li>\n \t
- Let participants know who else has access to this course (e.g. participants, facilitators, assistants, website administrators, etc.).<\/li>\n \t
- You may wish to establish \"Vegas rules<\/a>,\" i.e. what happens in the course, stays in the course.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\nSome other decisions you\u2019ll need to make:\n
\n \t- Decide which teams each co-facilitator will support<\/strong> during the course, and decide between yourselves what kind of support you will provide.<\/li>\n \t
- Confirm technical support<\/strong> is available and adequate, if needed. If you are providing your own tech support, confirm that your site has been backed up and no significant technical issues (e.g. scheduled downtime) exist. If tech support personnel are available, confirm they are standing by and aware of your course start date and enrollments.<\/li>\n \t
- Review the suggested assessment options for this course and select one (or more)<\/strong> to recommend for your participants. A self-assessment rubric can be adapted so the facilitator can assign a grade, if needed (see FLO Fundamentals Self-Assessment Rubric<\/a>).<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n
As time permits<\/h2>\n\n \t- Practice navigating your course site and other tools.<\/strong> If you are using the OER Moodle version of this course, you\u2019ll find it's a complex environment with lots of moving parts. Take the time to familiarize yourself with the course and revise it as you see fit. Move stuff around and explore different tools, modules, and plugins (if available). Consider (judiciously!) trying some new or less-used tools outside of your LMS or main learning environment.<\/li>\n \t
- Streamline or otherwise improve your course\u2019s navigation tools.<\/strong> When you refer to another part of your course or learning environment, provide a direct link whenever possible. Consider including a navigation screencast showing step-by-step how to get around your learning environment or LMS.<\/li>\n \t
- Fine-tune your reading list.<\/strong> In such a fascinating and fast-moving field like online facilitation, it\u2019s easy to get carried away with the list of readings you provide for participants. Consider making all readings optional but don\u2019t be afraid to strongly recommend a resource you know is important. After all, this course is intended to be informed by research and theory.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\nThe readings you\u2019ll see contained in this course have been chosen carefully to be both high quality and of reasonable length. However, as we have already mentioned, links to internet-based resources can break or become \u201cstale.\u201d Encourage your FLO participants to research and recommend better or more up-to-date readings for their own facilitation week.\n
A few days before the course begins<\/h2>\n\n \t- Connect with your participants<\/strong>. Make sure they\u2019re able to access the learning environment, and communicate some basic information about the course, expectations around time, etc.<\/li>\n \t
- Write your introductory welcome post<\/strong> (e.g. in an \u201cIntroductions\u201d forum within the course or as a new thread in the \u201cOpen\u201d forum) in a friendly, informal, and enthusiastic style that welcomes them to the online course environment and sets a tone for your online community. Encourage participants to respond with their own introductions.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n\n\n
Your Welcome post doesn\u2019t have to be just text\u2026<\/h2>\n\n\nAs a facilitator of FLO, you\u2019ll want to set an example from the beginning of what good facilitation looks like. Take the time to craft a friendly, welcoming message to begin the process of online community building.\n\nSome tips:<\/strong>\n\n \t- Your introductory post doesn\u2019t need to be just text; you can be creative and adventurous with technology. Part of your job as facilitator is to model an attitude of fearless experimentation with communication technologies. What about a video introduction against a backdrop of where you live? Or a narrated slideshow? Of course, you don\u2019t want to intimidate your participants if they\u2019re fairly novice technology users, so be sure to offer choices.<\/li>\n \t
- What to include is up to you; this is your first impression. You might like to talk a bit about your teaching and other professional experience. You could share an anecdote or advice from your own online facilitation experience, or use an icebreaker-type format.<\/li>\n \t
- Make sure your post sets a good impression: establishes instructor presence, presents a clear message without being too long or too short.<\/li>\n \t
- Be sure your introductory post ends with an invitation for your participants to share their introductions in a similar way.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
\n \t- Post the week\u2019s overview post<\/strong>, emphasizing for participants:\n
\n \t- Activities, etc. they must complete this week.<\/li>\n \t
- Tips on how to navigate the site.<\/li>\n \t
- The need to plan and schedule time to work on the course. Remind participants that a valuable learning experience cannot be achieved using a side-of-the-desk approach.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n\n\n\n\nShare time management tips<\/strong>\nEven with your explicit messages about the amount of time needed, participants may still expect to be able to slide their FLO work in on the weekends or in little bits and pieces between other daily tasks. This can leave people feeling they are always working on the course, even though their time on task may be quite short.\nRemind your participants to set aside time for the course, and repeat that advice early and often.\nEncourage them to book time to work with their facilitation team partners (and you, if they wish) well in advance.\n\n<\/div>\n
\n \t- Finalize your questions for Week 1\u2019s forum<\/strong> \u201cBuilding Online Community.\u201d The following are SAMPLE QUESTIONS only (you may have other questions to engage participants on this topic):\n
\n \t- What experiences have you had with online learning communities?<\/li>\n \t
- What can an instructor (or facilitator) do to develop and maintain a sense of community in an online learning environment?<\/li>\n \t
- What do you know about the Community of Inquiry model? How does it relate to building a sense of online community?<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<\/li>\n \t
- Organize participants into facilitation teams<\/strong> and post this information for all participants. You may decide to organize teams randomly or according to certain criteria; whether to make team interaction private or to open it up so that other participants can follow their planning process. Decide how and when participants can switch teams (preferably only within a short time period at the start of the course) if they wish.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n
Week 1: Building Online Community<\/h2>\n\n\nThroughout Week 1, your role is to establish a strong facilitator presence and effectively demonstrate what good online facilitation looks like. Aim to do this as transparently as possible; think out loud to your participants to show them how you plan and facilitate the various activities. This may be a good opportunity to incorporate other collaboration tools, such as wikis or other co-authoring platforms, to show how it is possible to communicate outside of a forum (which tends to be the default discussion tool).\n\n\n\n\nHelping participants cope who may feel overwhelmed during the first week.<\/strong>\n\nOffer brief explanations, clarifications and practical tips in an informal and friendly way. If your LMS offers forum \u201csubscriptions\u201d (in which participants automatically receive an email copy of all forum posts) make sure that not all forums are configured this way, and let participants know how to \u201cunsubscribe\u201d from a forum whenever possible.\n\n<\/div>\nWeek 1, Day 1 (the first day of the week):<\/h3>\n\n \t- Morning: Post facilitators\u2019 personal intros<\/strong> to the Introductory Forum.<\/li>\n \t
- Morning: Begin the Building Online Community forum<\/strong> activity. Post your questions to launch and guide the discussion.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n\n\n\n\nFind ways to allow participants to share their prior knowledge and experience. You can use the Building Online Community forum introductory activity to make the positive and negative perceptions of online learning visible by asking each participant to contribute words and an image that reflects their ideas about online community.\n\n<\/div>\n
\n \t- Evening: Finalize details for the first synchronous session<\/strong> in your agenda and\/or slidedeck, including:\n
\n \t- How to use the synchronous environment.<\/li>\n \t
- Icebreaker: quick intros of participants.<\/li>\n \t
- Review of the agenda - invite additional ideas.<\/li>\n \t
- Highlight course structure (and flow): roles, expectations, team facilitation, reflective practice, self-assessment.<\/li>\n \t
- Explain the purpose of the Facilitation Team Workspace with an activity plan and planning forum.<\/li>\n \t
- Highlight the importance of feedback, journaling, reflection, time management tips.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n
Week 1 Day 2<\/h3>\n\n \t- Earlier in day: Remind participants about the synchronous session<\/strong> a few hours before the session begins. (Reiterate that this session is not required although it is highly recommended.) Your reminder may be a forum post, LMS message, email, etc. Re-post session time, access information, and link to technical support, if needed.<\/li>\n \t
- Morning: Introduce the Learning Journal<\/strong> (perhaps as a post to the Open Forum). In your post:\n
\n \t- Explain the concept and the value of maintaining a record of what participants are learning and want to remember.<\/li>\n \t
- Remind them to regularly pause, reflect, assess and synthesize their learning.<\/li>\n \t
- Recommend they document these thoughts in a personal learning journal using paper-based, audio\/video, or electronic means.<\/li>\n \t
- Encourage participants to share nuggets (insights) in a Learning Journal.\nThe Learning Journal is explained in more detail in the Course Handbook<\/a>.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<\/li>\n \t
- Later: Host first synchronous session<\/strong>. Keep in mind this is your opportunity to connect with your participants both aurally and visually, and to demonstrate the value that a synchronous collaboration tool can bring to an online learning experience. If possible:\n
\n \t- Ensure you have technical support people (or your co-facilitator) standing by to assist with access problems.<\/li>\n \t
- Enter the synchronous session at least a half-hour early to greet early arrivals and troubleshoot navigation problems within the synchronous environment.<\/li>\n \t
- Remember to notify participants that the session will be recorded (if this is possible and if all agree) and hit the record button as your session begins.<\/li>\n \t
- Check in with participants about their comfort level navigating the site during the session and address any confusions.<\/li>\n \t
- Evening: Post a brief follow-up report about the synchronous session<\/strong>. Talk up the value of the session and encourage participants to attend the next synchronous session (mention the date and time). If the session was recorded, let participants know when a recording may be available.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n\n\n\n\nBe pro-active in the first week.\n<\/strong>If it doesn\u2019t come up spontaneously in the conversation: mention that the first week of an online course is often overwhelming (for both participants and facilitators), that it will get better, and that you will do what you can to mitigate start-up stresses.\n\n<\/div>\nSometimes the topic of feeling overwhelmed does come up naturally. The following is an example of one participant\u2019s experience (from the participant\u2019s Weekly Journal Share Forum for Week 1):\n\n\n
Time management, reflection and empathy<\/h2>\n\n\nOne participant's experience:<\/strong>\n\n\"I have a deep empathy for my students now on the first week experience. I think when we \"know the material\" we forget what it feels like to \"not know.\" As a student in my first online course, I now know how it feels to be in that place and will be more understanding of my students.\"\n\n\"Well, this week was hard. In taking time for reflection I realize that the commitment of this course while I am taking on a new role at work, in conjunction with my current full-time job and a side contract, is a lot. Time management has been a reoccurring issue for me as I never feel like I have enough time.\"\n\n\"I copied this sentence from the week 1 reading materials: 'When a person is feeling anxious, the likelihood that they will interpret things negatively increases.' I need to have this on a sticky note on my computer. I really valued the comments from others in the course about feeling overwhelmed. Online learning requires time to get used to the new ways of doing learning.\"\n\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\nWeek 1 Day 3<\/h3>\n\n \t- Connect with members of the first participant facilitation team<\/strong>. Post a message in the team planning forum for Diversity of Learners to encourage this team to get underway.<\/li>\n \t
- Remind participants to use Schedule and begin Learning Journal<\/strong>. Use a post in the Open Forum to remind participants to begin their Learning Journal and to use the FLO Fundamentals Schedule to keep on track. More information about the Learning Journal<\/a> and FLO Fundamentals Schedule<\/a> is available in the OER course. Make sure you revise the schedule to fit your own situation.<\/li>\n \t
- Post the recording (if available) of the synchronous session<\/strong>. Use a post in the Open Forum to provide a link to the recording and to highlight any key or outstanding topics.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n
Week 1 Day 4<\/h3>\n
Manage the online course environment<\/h2>\n\n \t- Explore effective strategies to manage the workload.<\/li>\n \t
- Improve the use of tools within an online learning environment.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
Participants<\/h1>\nA wide variety of educators benefit from FLO Fundamentals. Participants are often full- or part-time instructors at post-secondary educational institutions who are new to teaching online or have already been teaching online for some time but would like to develop stronger facilitation skills. Other participants may be familiar with traditional teaching practices but are seeking to develop experience and confidence with more learner-centric educational approaches.\n\nFLO Fundamentals may also be of interest to many other educators, including instructional\/learning designers, educational developers, learning technologists and others who work in teaching and learning centres. It may also be useful for graduate students, consultants from the private sector, trainers employed by for-profit or non-profit organizations, and educational support providers.\nTechnology<\/h1>\nFLO Fundamentals requires no special technology beyond what has been recommended in Chapter 3: Tools to Support FLO. Because FLO Fundamentals is usually the first FLO course participants will encounter (and sometimes their first online course ever), be cautious about using too many external tools or apps until you are better aware of your participants\u2019 comfort levels.\nCourse content and layout<\/h1>\nFLO Fundamentals is a complete five-week workshop-style course with a comprehensive collection of information, activities, directions, assessments, and related resources. Within the Open Education Resources (OER) version of the course, resources are organized into tabs, with one tab for each of the five weeks, plus one Hub tab with introductory and general information, and one tab to organize the work of the teams (see the image below for an example).\n\n[caption id=\"attachment_749\" align=\"aligncenter\" width=\"659\"] Figure 4.1[\/caption]\n\nIn the Hub tab, you will find:\n\n \t- A Course Handbook, describing for participants how the course works, what\u2019s expected of them, learning outcomes, scheduling, etc.<\/li>\n \t
- A sample Schedule to help participants (and facilitators) stay on track.<\/li>\n \t
- Resources to help facilitators organize participant teams.<\/li>\n \t
- Sample forums to facilitate discussion:\n
\n \t- An Open Forum for sharing general information (clarification, announcements, social-type sharing) not necessarily related to the weekly discussion about content. Both facilitators and participants can post and respond.<\/li>\n \t
- A Weekly Journal Share forum, for posting reflections on learning.<\/li>\n \t
- A forum to provide Feedback for participant teams.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n \t
- A feedback form (Feel, Like, Improve, Feedback, or FLIF) to help participant teams reflect and receive personal, private feedback on their facilitation experience. (In the OER course, this feedback is structured using the Learning Management System's quiz tool.)<\/li>\n \t
- Additional resources for facilitators to aid in coordination of the course (generally hidden from participants).<\/li>\n<\/ul>\nTabs corresponding to each week\u2019s activities include:\n
\n \t- An overview of the topic for the week.<\/li>\n \t
- A forum to discuss the week\u2019s topic (e.g. to respond to the questions posted by the facilitation team).<\/li>\n \t
- Other resources and\/or activities specific to that week.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\nThe tab for Facilitation Teams Workspace includes:\n
\n \t- A detailed activity plan for each team.<\/li>\n \t
- A workspace forum (private, if you choose) for each team\u2019s members to plan their facilitation strategies and tasks.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\nThe topics discussed in this course are:\n
\n \t- Week 1: Building Learning Community (facilitated by course facilitators).<\/li>\n \t
- Week 2: Diversity of Learners (facilitated by the orange team).<\/li>\n \t
- Week 3: Responsive Facilitation (facilitated by the blue team).<\/li>\n \t
- Week 4: Collaboration (facilitated by the yellow team).<\/li>\n \t
- Week 5: Reflective Practice (facilitated by the green team).<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
Course assessment strategies<\/h1>\nThis course is designed to be developmental; it is not a graded course in the traditional sense. Unless you decide otherwise, your participants will not be marked or assigned a formal grade on their performance. The course does include a number of activities to encourage self-reflection, as well as a comprehensive self-assessment rubric which could be used to assign a grade, if needed (see FLO Fundamentals Self-Assessment Rubric<\/a>).\n\nParticipants are also encouraged to self-assess their qualification for a Certificate of Completion. As facilitator(s), it is up to you to decide what form this Certificate should take.\nFacilitator task list: What you need to do before, during and after the course<\/h1>\nThe successful hosting of FLO Fundamentals requires good planning, timing, and coordination. Over the years, we\u2019ve developed a detailed, step-by-step Task List for course facilitators:\n\n \t- See FLO Fundamentals Task List<\/a> for a concise, detailed list of facilitator tasks.<\/li>\n \t
- You can also use the following Task List Explanations alongside the Task List for more background information and ideas.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
Task List Explanations<\/h2>\nSeveral weeks (or months) before the course begins\n\n \t- Access the OER course<\/strong>. The OER course Facilitating Learning Online - Fundamentals<\/a> is currently offered as a Moodle course with guest access; you should be able to enter the course and view all content.<\/li>\n \t
- Set up your own learning environment and copy content<\/strong>. Before you can offer FLO Fundamentals, you need a learning environment \u2013 a virtual place to host the course. At the very minimum, you need an online space (private or securable, if you choose) where facilitators and participants can conduct discussions and share facilitation discoveries and the results of experimentation. The course content must be added to the LMS or other learning space you have chosen:[footnote]In your institution, an LMS Administrator, IT support, or Instructional Designer may help with this step.[\/footnote]\n
\n \t- If using Moodle: restore the latest version of this course into your LMS (you can download it using the link in the OER).<\/li>\n \t
- If NOT using Moodle: establish and configure an online learning environment (LMS, CMS, wiki, etc.) into which you can copy all relevant content from FLO Fundamentals.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<\/li>\n \t
- If possible, find a colleague to assist you as a Co-Facilitator<\/strong>. Your ideal co-facilitator will be someone who can work with you to provide guidance and support to your participants, and can dedicate 15 to 25 hours per week to this task. Ideally, your co-facilitator will be familiar with online learning theories and practices, and with personal and technical skills to engage online participants. Not only do co-facilitators lessen the workload and enrich the facilitation process for you, they increase the facilitation expertise within your institution or organization. It would help a great deal if your colleague has already taken FLO Fundamentals.<\/li>\n \t
- Access your FLO Fundamentals learning environment to review content and tools<\/strong>. Prepare the course site or learning environment and (re)acquaint yourself with the facilitation tools you plan to use. Familiarize yourself with the course content, materials, philosophy, scheduling, flow, etc. of the course.<\/li>\n \t
- Set up a web conferencing tool for online synchronous sessions and conversations<\/strong>. There are many web conferencing applications to choose from, depending on your institution's requirements.<\/li>\n \t
- Connect with your co-facilitator for detailed pre-planning<\/strong>. Develop a planning regime that you\u2019re both comfortable with. Work together to develop a detailed list of tasks to be completed before, during, and after the course runs. You have a lot to do before the course begins:\n
\n \t- Ensure an easy-to-access place or process to store planning resources. Agree on planning tools and schedules.<\/li>\n \t
- Customize this Facilitator Task List to fit your needs.<\/li>\n \t
- Review the resources available in the OER and select some activities to try. You could also add your own ideas for icebreakers, discussion topics, resources, images, slides, etc.<\/li>\n \t
- Develop rough agendas for your synchronous sessions.<\/li>\n \t
- Prepare how-to resources for your participants to explain the features of the learning environments and tools.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<\/li>\n \t
- Practice using learning environment tools<\/strong>. If you\u2019re already pretty comfortable with both synchronous and asynchronous online tools, you may wish to try something new; to model for your participants an adventurous open mind when it comes to educational technology. However, be aware of the technical expertise of your potential participants: you don\u2019t want to choose something that most of them will have trouble accessing or learning to use.<\/li>\n \t
- Identify potential participants<\/strong>. Think about where you might find your course participants. Will you enlist from your institution only, or other institutions and organizations? Decide how far ahead you must start the recruitment process.<\/li>\n \t
- Ensure your content is accurate<\/strong>. Once you have a potential learner audience in mind, re-visit the learning environment and carefully review all content (forum post topics, reading lists, directions, etc.). Make sure your content is appropriate for your intended group of participants, and reflects the goals of your institution or program. Remember, the FLO courses have been developed as Open Educational Resources and are licenced under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License<\/a> so you\u2019re free to modify whatever you like! The only requirement is that you provide attribution and don\u2019t imply or suggest endorsement by the licensor.<\/li>\n \t
- Ensure your content is accurate<\/em>.<\/strong> Unfortunately, the web addresses (URLs) of internet resources change often with the result that your linked document may not appear when participants click on the link. Sometimes, through searching, you can locate the new URL for the resource but you may wish to consider finding a more up-to-date resource on the same topic instead.<\/li>\n \t
- (If you haven\u2019t done so already!) Choose a start date and promote<\/strong> your course to your target participants.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n\n\n
Your Technical Skills: The Least You Need to Know<\/h2>\n\n\nYour participants may dream up a variety of designs for their mini-session and, ideally, you and your co-facilitator will be comfortable setting up the tools they need. If you are working within an LMS, some commonly-used tools include:\n\n \t- Forums or discussion groups: LMS-based forums usually offer many different settings and you should be familiar with most of them. Learn to set up both open forums and team-based forums (if available) and explore other settings that can create new possibilities for structuring activities.<\/li>\n \t
- Polls or Choices: Many LMSs offer a tool for quickly polling participants -- handy for any time you want people to indicate a preference (e.g. \"what time should we meet for our synchronous session?\"), or to vote on a single question.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
One- to two weeks before the course begins<\/h2>\nOnce your FLO Fundamentals course is underway, you and your participants will be very busy indeed and you\u2019ll want to have as much preparatory work out of the way as possible. How you set up the course site and engage the community will directly impact how the rest of the course flows; keep in mind that you are modelling good facilitation practices (a detailed list of Core FLO Facilitation Skills is included in Chapter 3<\/a> of this Guide).\n\n \t- Complete recruitment and register participants<\/strong>. You may have begun the recruitment of participants weeks or even months ahead. Make sure you have a process in place to register your participants in accordance with your institution\u2019s policies. If you are managing your own site (e.g. a WordPress site), you may be able to organize this on your own. During recruitment, be sure to:\n
\n \t- Communicate expectations around time and teamwork.<\/li>\n \t
- Provide information to your participants about what they\u2019ll need to do and where to find what they\u2019ll need. Your goal is not to overwhelm your participants but to provide enough information so they can jump right in when the course begins.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n\n\n\n\nWhat\u2019s the right number of participants for this course?\n<\/strong>A small class of 10 or fewer participants will make it difficult to sustain rich online conversations. On the other hand, a large class of more than 25 may be more than 2 facilitators can handle. Our experience has shown that a class of 14 - 20 educators is a good size for this course.\n\n<\/div>\n
\n \t- Meet with co-facilitator<\/strong>, finalize the week ahead. Now is the time to check the details and do final revisions of your first week\u2019s activities & resources, including:\n
\n \t- Discussion topics, resources, images, slides, etc.<\/li>\n \t
- Icebreaker activities.<\/li>\n \t
- Your introductory welcome post.<\/li>\n \t
- Agenda for the first synchronous session.<\/li>\n \t
- Resource to explain the basic features of the synchronous environment & tools.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<\/li>\n \t
- Create or update co-facilitators\u2019 profiles<\/strong> and contact information. Tell a little about yourself in a profile or short biography. Establish your contact information and set \u201coffice hours\u201d (if appropriate).<\/li>\n \t
- Decide which aspects of the course will be displayed<\/strong> when the course opens and which aspects will be hidden until needed. Many learning environments will let you hide or show specific activities until you\u2019re ready for your participants to see them.<\/li>\n \t
- Ensure sufficient starting information for participants<\/strong>. Your new participants will need detailed information about how to access the course and get started (e.g. if using Moodle, see the FLO Handbook on the Hub tab, or consider preparing a screencast).<\/li>\n \t
- Finalize enrollment of participants<\/strong>, send out a Welcome email. Provide the participants with access to the course and\/or information about accessing technical support, if necessary.<\/li>\n \t
- Decide on your week\u2019s start day<\/strong> and modify your directions to the participants and the learning environment settings accordingly (if necessary). This course is not self-paced; the work is organized around weeks. Will the first day of your course week begin on a Sunday, Monday, or some other day?<\/li>\n \t
- Set a time for your first<\/strong> (Week 1) synchronous session<\/strong>. Prepare the synchronous environment as much as possible: upload slides, write\/draw\/embed a welcome message, etc.<\/li>\n \t
- Set up a separate online workspace for each team<\/strong>. You will be dividing up your participants into 4 teams; each team will facilitate one of the weekly mini-sessions. A unique team workspace (e.g. a forum or Google doc) with editing functions for team members should be sufficient. You may wish to limit access (e.g. read-only access) to this workspace to non-team participants.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n\n\n
Privacy and Confidentiality<\/h2>\n\n\nIn all FLO courses, our learning relies on the exchange of honest, constructive feedback, and we need to agree on rules that support this foundation of trust. Be aware of your institutional or organizational policies relating to privacy and confidentiality, determine how you will interpret these for your online learning environment, and decide how to communicate these rules to your participants. You can see an example of how privacy and confidentiality concerns are communicated in this page in the FLO Fundamentals Course Handbook<\/a> (in the Moodle OER). Some privacy and confidentiality rules you may wish to adopt:\n\n \t- Always seek permission to share content posted by participants.<\/li>\n \t
- When using social media and other online services to complete activities, ensure you are familiar with the levels of privacy available and how the information will be stored and shared. Communicate this information to the participants.<\/li>\n \t
- If you plan on recording your synchronous sessions, confirm that this is OK with the session participants before<\/em> you hit the record button.<\/li>\n \t
- Let participants know who else has access to this course (e.g. participants, facilitators, assistants, website administrators, etc.).<\/li>\n \t
- You may wish to establish \"Vegas rules<\/a>,\" i.e. what happens in the course, stays in the course.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\nSome other decisions you\u2019ll need to make:\n
\n \t- Decide which teams each co-facilitator will support<\/strong> during the course, and decide between yourselves what kind of support you will provide.<\/li>\n \t
- Confirm technical support<\/strong> is available and adequate, if needed. If you are providing your own tech support, confirm that your site has been backed up and no significant technical issues (e.g. scheduled downtime) exist. If tech support personnel are available, confirm they are standing by and aware of your course start date and enrollments.<\/li>\n \t
- Review the suggested assessment options for this course and select one (or more)<\/strong> to recommend for your participants. A self-assessment rubric can be adapted so the facilitator can assign a grade, if needed (see FLO Fundamentals Self-Assessment Rubric<\/a>).<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n
As time permits<\/h2>\n\n \t- Practice navigating your course site and other tools.<\/strong> If you are using the OER Moodle version of this course, you\u2019ll find it's a complex environment with lots of moving parts. Take the time to familiarize yourself with the course and revise it as you see fit. Move stuff around and explore different tools, modules, and plugins (if available). Consider (judiciously!) trying some new or less-used tools outside of your LMS or main learning environment.<\/li>\n \t
- Streamline or otherwise improve your course\u2019s navigation tools.<\/strong> When you refer to another part of your course or learning environment, provide a direct link whenever possible. Consider including a navigation screencast showing step-by-step how to get around your learning environment or LMS.<\/li>\n \t
- Fine-tune your reading list.<\/strong> In such a fascinating and fast-moving field like online facilitation, it\u2019s easy to get carried away with the list of readings you provide for participants. Consider making all readings optional but don\u2019t be afraid to strongly recommend a resource you know is important. After all, this course is intended to be informed by research and theory.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\nThe readings you\u2019ll see contained in this course have been chosen carefully to be both high quality and of reasonable length. However, as we have already mentioned, links to internet-based resources can break or become \u201cstale.\u201d Encourage your FLO participants to research and recommend better or more up-to-date readings for their own facilitation week.\n
A few days before the course begins<\/h2>\n\n \t- Connect with your participants<\/strong>. Make sure they\u2019re able to access the learning environment, and communicate some basic information about the course, expectations around time, etc.<\/li>\n \t
- Write your introductory welcome post<\/strong> (e.g. in an \u201cIntroductions\u201d forum within the course or as a new thread in the \u201cOpen\u201d forum) in a friendly, informal, and enthusiastic style that welcomes them to the online course environment and sets a tone for your online community. Encourage participants to respond with their own introductions.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n\n\n
Your Welcome post doesn\u2019t have to be just text\u2026<\/h2>\n\n\nAs a facilitator of FLO, you\u2019ll want to set an example from the beginning of what good facilitation looks like. Take the time to craft a friendly, welcoming message to begin the process of online community building.\n\nSome tips:<\/strong>\n\n \t- Your introductory post doesn\u2019t need to be just text; you can be creative and adventurous with technology. Part of your job as facilitator is to model an attitude of fearless experimentation with communication technologies. What about a video introduction against a backdrop of where you live? Or a narrated slideshow? Of course, you don\u2019t want to intimidate your participants if they\u2019re fairly novice technology users, so be sure to offer choices.<\/li>\n \t
- What to include is up to you; this is your first impression. You might like to talk a bit about your teaching and other professional experience. You could share an anecdote or advice from your own online facilitation experience, or use an icebreaker-type format.<\/li>\n \t
- Make sure your post sets a good impression: establishes instructor presence, presents a clear message without being too long or too short.<\/li>\n \t
- Be sure your introductory post ends with an invitation for your participants to share their introductions in a similar way.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
\n \t- Post the week\u2019s overview post<\/strong>, emphasizing for participants:\n
\n \t- Activities, etc. they must complete this week.<\/li>\n \t
- Tips on how to navigate the site.<\/li>\n \t
- The need to plan and schedule time to work on the course. Remind participants that a valuable learning experience cannot be achieved using a side-of-the-desk approach.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n\n\n\n\nShare time management tips<\/strong>\nEven with your explicit messages about the amount of time needed, participants may still expect to be able to slide their FLO work in on the weekends or in little bits and pieces between other daily tasks. This can leave people feeling they are always working on the course, even though their time on task may be quite short.\nRemind your participants to set aside time for the course, and repeat that advice early and often.\nEncourage them to book time to work with their facilitation team partners (and you, if they wish) well in advance.\n\n<\/div>\n
\n \t- Finalize your questions for Week 1\u2019s forum<\/strong> \u201cBuilding Online Community.\u201d The following are SAMPLE QUESTIONS only (you may have other questions to engage participants on this topic):\n
\n \t- What experiences have you had with online learning communities?<\/li>\n \t
- What can an instructor (or facilitator) do to develop and maintain a sense of community in an online learning environment?<\/li>\n \t
- What do you know about the Community of Inquiry model? How does it relate to building a sense of online community?<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<\/li>\n \t
- Organize participants into facilitation teams<\/strong> and post this information for all participants. You may decide to organize teams randomly or according to certain criteria; whether to make team interaction private or to open it up so that other participants can follow their planning process. Decide how and when participants can switch teams (preferably only within a short time period at the start of the course) if they wish.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n
Week 1: Building Online Community<\/h2>\n\n\nThroughout Week 1, your role is to establish a strong facilitator presence and effectively demonstrate what good online facilitation looks like. Aim to do this as transparently as possible; think out loud to your participants to show them how you plan and facilitate the various activities. This may be a good opportunity to incorporate other collaboration tools, such as wikis or other co-authoring platforms, to show how it is possible to communicate outside of a forum (which tends to be the default discussion tool).\n\n\n\n\nHelping participants cope who may feel overwhelmed during the first week.<\/strong>\n\nOffer brief explanations, clarifications and practical tips in an informal and friendly way. If your LMS offers forum \u201csubscriptions\u201d (in which participants automatically receive an email copy of all forum posts) make sure that not all forums are configured this way, and let participants know how to \u201cunsubscribe\u201d from a forum whenever possible.\n\n<\/div>\nWeek 1, Day 1 (the first day of the week):<\/h3>\n\n \t- Morning: Post facilitators\u2019 personal intros<\/strong> to the Introductory Forum.<\/li>\n \t
- Morning: Begin the Building Online Community forum<\/strong> activity. Post your questions to launch and guide the discussion.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n\n\n\n\nFind ways to allow participants to share their prior knowledge and experience. You can use the Building Online Community forum introductory activity to make the positive and negative perceptions of online learning visible by asking each participant to contribute words and an image that reflects their ideas about online community.\n\n<\/div>\n
\n \t- Evening: Finalize details for the first synchronous session<\/strong> in your agenda and\/or slidedeck, including:\n
\n \t- How to use the synchronous environment.<\/li>\n \t
- Icebreaker: quick intros of participants.<\/li>\n \t
- Review of the agenda - invite additional ideas.<\/li>\n \t
- Highlight course structure (and flow): roles, expectations, team facilitation, reflective practice, self-assessment.<\/li>\n \t
- Explain the purpose of the Facilitation Team Workspace with an activity plan and planning forum.<\/li>\n \t
- Highlight the importance of feedback, journaling, reflection, time management tips.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n
Week 1 Day 2<\/h3>\n\n \t- Earlier in day: Remind participants about the synchronous session<\/strong> a few hours before the session begins. (Reiterate that this session is not required although it is highly recommended.) Your reminder may be a forum post, LMS message, email, etc. Re-post session time, access information, and link to technical support, if needed.<\/li>\n \t
- Morning: Introduce the Learning Journal<\/strong> (perhaps as a post to the Open Forum). In your post:\n
\n \t- Explain the concept and the value of maintaining a record of what participants are learning and want to remember.<\/li>\n \t
- Remind them to regularly pause, reflect, assess and synthesize their learning.<\/li>\n \t
- Recommend they document these thoughts in a personal learning journal using paper-based, audio\/video, or electronic means.<\/li>\n \t
- Encourage participants to share nuggets (insights) in a Learning Journal.\nThe Learning Journal is explained in more detail in the Course Handbook<\/a>.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<\/li>\n \t
- Later: Host first synchronous session<\/strong>. Keep in mind this is your opportunity to connect with your participants both aurally and visually, and to demonstrate the value that a synchronous collaboration tool can bring to an online learning experience. If possible:\n
\n \t- Ensure you have technical support people (or your co-facilitator) standing by to assist with access problems.<\/li>\n \t
- Enter the synchronous session at least a half-hour early to greet early arrivals and troubleshoot navigation problems within the synchronous environment.<\/li>\n \t
- Remember to notify participants that the session will be recorded (if this is possible and if all agree) and hit the record button as your session begins.<\/li>\n \t
- Check in with participants about their comfort level navigating the site during the session and address any confusions.<\/li>\n \t
- Evening: Post a brief follow-up report about the synchronous session<\/strong>. Talk up the value of the session and encourage participants to attend the next synchronous session (mention the date and time). If the session was recorded, let participants know when a recording may be available.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n\n\n\n\nBe pro-active in the first week.\n<\/strong>If it doesn\u2019t come up spontaneously in the conversation: mention that the first week of an online course is often overwhelming (for both participants and facilitators), that it will get better, and that you will do what you can to mitigate start-up stresses.\n\n<\/div>\nSometimes the topic of feeling overwhelmed does come up naturally. The following is an example of one participant\u2019s experience (from the participant\u2019s Weekly Journal Share Forum for Week 1):\n\n\n
Time management, reflection and empathy<\/h2>\n\n\nOne participant's experience:<\/strong>\n\n\"I have a deep empathy for my students now on the first week experience. I think when we \"know the material\" we forget what it feels like to \"not know.\" As a student in my first online course, I now know how it feels to be in that place and will be more understanding of my students.\"\n\n\"Well, this week was hard. In taking time for reflection I realize that the commitment of this course while I am taking on a new role at work, in conjunction with my current full-time job and a side contract, is a lot. Time management has been a reoccurring issue for me as I never feel like I have enough time.\"\n\n\"I copied this sentence from the week 1 reading materials: 'When a person is feeling anxious, the likelihood that they will interpret things negatively increases.' I need to have this on a sticky note on my computer. I really valued the comments from others in the course about feeling overwhelmed. Online learning requires time to get used to the new ways of doing learning.\"\n\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\nWeek 1 Day 3<\/h3>\n\n \t- Connect with members of the first participant facilitation team<\/strong>. Post a message in the team planning forum for Diversity of Learners to encourage this team to get underway.<\/li>\n \t
- Remind participants to use Schedule and begin Learning Journal<\/strong>. Use a post in the Open Forum to remind participants to begin their Learning Journal and to use the FLO Fundamentals Schedule to keep on track. More information about the Learning Journal<\/a> and FLO Fundamentals Schedule<\/a> is available in the OER course. Make sure you revise the schedule to fit your own situation.<\/li>\n \t
- Post the recording (if available) of the synchronous session<\/strong>. Use a post in the Open Forum to provide a link to the recording and to highlight any key or outstanding topics.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n
Week 1 Day 4<\/h3>\n
Participants<\/h1>\nA wide variety of educators benefit from FLO Fundamentals. Participants are often full- or part-time instructors at post-secondary educational institutions who are new to teaching online or have already been teaching online for some time but would like to develop stronger facilitation skills. Other participants may be familiar with traditional teaching practices but are seeking to develop experience and confidence with more learner-centric educational approaches.\n\nFLO Fundamentals may also be of interest to many other educators, including instructional\/learning designers, educational developers, learning technologists and others who work in teaching and learning centres. It may also be useful for graduate students, consultants from the private sector, trainers employed by for-profit or non-profit organizations, and educational support providers.\nTechnology<\/h1>\nFLO Fundamentals requires no special technology beyond what has been recommended in Chapter 3: Tools to Support FLO. Because FLO Fundamentals is usually the first FLO course participants will encounter (and sometimes their first online course ever), be cautious about using too many external tools or apps until you are better aware of your participants\u2019 comfort levels.\nCourse content and layout<\/h1>\nFLO Fundamentals is a complete five-week workshop-style course with a comprehensive collection of information, activities, directions, assessments, and related resources. Within the Open Education Resources (OER) version of the course, resources are organized into tabs, with one tab for each of the five weeks, plus one Hub tab with introductory and general information, and one tab to organize the work of the teams (see the image below for an example).\n\n[caption id=\"attachment_749\" align=\"aligncenter\" width=\"659\"] Figure 4.1[\/caption]\n\nIn the Hub tab, you will find:\n\n \t- A Course Handbook, describing for participants how the course works, what\u2019s expected of them, learning outcomes, scheduling, etc.<\/li>\n \t
- A sample Schedule to help participants (and facilitators) stay on track.<\/li>\n \t
- Resources to help facilitators organize participant teams.<\/li>\n \t
- Sample forums to facilitate discussion:\n
\n \t- An Open Forum for sharing general information (clarification, announcements, social-type sharing) not necessarily related to the weekly discussion about content. Both facilitators and participants can post and respond.<\/li>\n \t
- A Weekly Journal Share forum, for posting reflections on learning.<\/li>\n \t
- A forum to provide Feedback for participant teams.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n \t
- A feedback form (Feel, Like, Improve, Feedback, or FLIF) to help participant teams reflect and receive personal, private feedback on their facilitation experience. (In the OER course, this feedback is structured using the Learning Management System's quiz tool.)<\/li>\n \t
- Additional resources for facilitators to aid in coordination of the course (generally hidden from participants).<\/li>\n<\/ul>\nTabs corresponding to each week\u2019s activities include:\n
\n \t- An overview of the topic for the week.<\/li>\n \t
- A forum to discuss the week\u2019s topic (e.g. to respond to the questions posted by the facilitation team).<\/li>\n \t
- Other resources and\/or activities specific to that week.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\nThe tab for Facilitation Teams Workspace includes:\n
\n \t- A detailed activity plan for each team.<\/li>\n \t
- A workspace forum (private, if you choose) for each team\u2019s members to plan their facilitation strategies and tasks.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\nThe topics discussed in this course are:\n
\n \t- Week 1: Building Learning Community (facilitated by course facilitators).<\/li>\n \t
- Week 2: Diversity of Learners (facilitated by the orange team).<\/li>\n \t
- Week 3: Responsive Facilitation (facilitated by the blue team).<\/li>\n \t
- Week 4: Collaboration (facilitated by the yellow team).<\/li>\n \t
- Week 5: Reflective Practice (facilitated by the green team).<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
Course assessment strategies<\/h1>\nThis course is designed to be developmental; it is not a graded course in the traditional sense. Unless you decide otherwise, your participants will not be marked or assigned a formal grade on their performance. The course does include a number of activities to encourage self-reflection, as well as a comprehensive self-assessment rubric which could be used to assign a grade, if needed (see FLO Fundamentals Self-Assessment Rubric<\/a>).\n\nParticipants are also encouraged to self-assess their qualification for a Certificate of Completion. As facilitator(s), it is up to you to decide what form this Certificate should take.\nFacilitator task list: What you need to do before, during and after the course<\/h1>\nThe successful hosting of FLO Fundamentals requires good planning, timing, and coordination. Over the years, we\u2019ve developed a detailed, step-by-step Task List for course facilitators:\n\n \t- See FLO Fundamentals Task List<\/a> for a concise, detailed list of facilitator tasks.<\/li>\n \t
- You can also use the following Task List Explanations alongside the Task List for more background information and ideas.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
Task List Explanations<\/h2>\nSeveral weeks (or months) before the course begins\n\n \t- Access the OER course<\/strong>. The OER course Facilitating Learning Online - Fundamentals<\/a> is currently offered as a Moodle course with guest access; you should be able to enter the course and view all content.<\/li>\n \t
- Set up your own learning environment and copy content<\/strong>. Before you can offer FLO Fundamentals, you need a learning environment \u2013 a virtual place to host the course. At the very minimum, you need an online space (private or securable, if you choose) where facilitators and participants can conduct discussions and share facilitation discoveries and the results of experimentation. The course content must be added to the LMS or other learning space you have chosen:[footnote]In your institution, an LMS Administrator, IT support, or Instructional Designer may help with this step.[\/footnote]\n
\n \t- If using Moodle: restore the latest version of this course into your LMS (you can download it using the link in the OER).<\/li>\n \t
- If NOT using Moodle: establish and configure an online learning environment (LMS, CMS, wiki, etc.) into which you can copy all relevant content from FLO Fundamentals.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<\/li>\n \t
- If possible, find a colleague to assist you as a Co-Facilitator<\/strong>. Your ideal co-facilitator will be someone who can work with you to provide guidance and support to your participants, and can dedicate 15 to 25 hours per week to this task. Ideally, your co-facilitator will be familiar with online learning theories and practices, and with personal and technical skills to engage online participants. Not only do co-facilitators lessen the workload and enrich the facilitation process for you, they increase the facilitation expertise within your institution or organization. It would help a great deal if your colleague has already taken FLO Fundamentals.<\/li>\n \t
- Access your FLO Fundamentals learning environment to review content and tools<\/strong>. Prepare the course site or learning environment and (re)acquaint yourself with the facilitation tools you plan to use. Familiarize yourself with the course content, materials, philosophy, scheduling, flow, etc. of the course.<\/li>\n \t
- Set up a web conferencing tool for online synchronous sessions and conversations<\/strong>. There are many web conferencing applications to choose from, depending on your institution's requirements.<\/li>\n \t
- Connect with your co-facilitator for detailed pre-planning<\/strong>. Develop a planning regime that you\u2019re both comfortable with. Work together to develop a detailed list of tasks to be completed before, during, and after the course runs. You have a lot to do before the course begins:\n
\n \t- Ensure an easy-to-access place or process to store planning resources. Agree on planning tools and schedules.<\/li>\n \t
- Customize this Facilitator Task List to fit your needs.<\/li>\n \t
- Review the resources available in the OER and select some activities to try. You could also add your own ideas for icebreakers, discussion topics, resources, images, slides, etc.<\/li>\n \t
- Develop rough agendas for your synchronous sessions.<\/li>\n \t
- Prepare how-to resources for your participants to explain the features of the learning environments and tools.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<\/li>\n \t
- Practice using learning environment tools<\/strong>. If you\u2019re already pretty comfortable with both synchronous and asynchronous online tools, you may wish to try something new; to model for your participants an adventurous open mind when it comes to educational technology. However, be aware of the technical expertise of your potential participants: you don\u2019t want to choose something that most of them will have trouble accessing or learning to use.<\/li>\n \t
- Identify potential participants<\/strong>. Think about where you might find your course participants. Will you enlist from your institution only, or other institutions and organizations? Decide how far ahead you must start the recruitment process.<\/li>\n \t
- Ensure your content is accurate<\/strong>. Once you have a potential learner audience in mind, re-visit the learning environment and carefully review all content (forum post topics, reading lists, directions, etc.). Make sure your content is appropriate for your intended group of participants, and reflects the goals of your institution or program. Remember, the FLO courses have been developed as Open Educational Resources and are licenced under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License<\/a> so you\u2019re free to modify whatever you like! The only requirement is that you provide attribution and don\u2019t imply or suggest endorsement by the licensor.<\/li>\n \t
- Ensure your content is accurate<\/em>.<\/strong> Unfortunately, the web addresses (URLs) of internet resources change often with the result that your linked document may not appear when participants click on the link. Sometimes, through searching, you can locate the new URL for the resource but you may wish to consider finding a more up-to-date resource on the same topic instead.<\/li>\n \t
- (If you haven\u2019t done so already!) Choose a start date and promote<\/strong> your course to your target participants.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n\n\n
Your Technical Skills: The Least You Need to Know<\/h2>\n\n\nYour participants may dream up a variety of designs for their mini-session and, ideally, you and your co-facilitator will be comfortable setting up the tools they need. If you are working within an LMS, some commonly-used tools include:\n\n \t- Forums or discussion groups: LMS-based forums usually offer many different settings and you should be familiar with most of them. Learn to set up both open forums and team-based forums (if available) and explore other settings that can create new possibilities for structuring activities.<\/li>\n \t
- Polls or Choices: Many LMSs offer a tool for quickly polling participants -- handy for any time you want people to indicate a preference (e.g. \"what time should we meet for our synchronous session?\"), or to vote on a single question.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
One- to two weeks before the course begins<\/h2>\nOnce your FLO Fundamentals course is underway, you and your participants will be very busy indeed and you\u2019ll want to have as much preparatory work out of the way as possible. How you set up the course site and engage the community will directly impact how the rest of the course flows; keep in mind that you are modelling good facilitation practices (a detailed list of Core FLO Facilitation Skills is included in Chapter 3<\/a> of this Guide).\n\n \t- Complete recruitment and register participants<\/strong>. You may have begun the recruitment of participants weeks or even months ahead. Make sure you have a process in place to register your participants in accordance with your institution\u2019s policies. If you are managing your own site (e.g. a WordPress site), you may be able to organize this on your own. During recruitment, be sure to:\n
\n \t- Communicate expectations around time and teamwork.<\/li>\n \t
- Provide information to your participants about what they\u2019ll need to do and where to find what they\u2019ll need. Your goal is not to overwhelm your participants but to provide enough information so they can jump right in when the course begins.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n\n\n\n\nWhat\u2019s the right number of participants for this course?\n<\/strong>A small class of 10 or fewer participants will make it difficult to sustain rich online conversations. On the other hand, a large class of more than 25 may be more than 2 facilitators can handle. Our experience has shown that a class of 14 - 20 educators is a good size for this course.\n\n<\/div>\n
\n \t- Meet with co-facilitator<\/strong>, finalize the week ahead. Now is the time to check the details and do final revisions of your first week\u2019s activities & resources, including:\n
\n \t- Discussion topics, resources, images, slides, etc.<\/li>\n \t
- Icebreaker activities.<\/li>\n \t
- Your introductory welcome post.<\/li>\n \t
- Agenda for the first synchronous session.<\/li>\n \t
- Resource to explain the basic features of the synchronous environment & tools.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<\/li>\n \t
- Create or update co-facilitators\u2019 profiles<\/strong> and contact information. Tell a little about yourself in a profile or short biography. Establish your contact information and set \u201coffice hours\u201d (if appropriate).<\/li>\n \t
- Decide which aspects of the course will be displayed<\/strong> when the course opens and which aspects will be hidden until needed. Many learning environments will let you hide or show specific activities until you\u2019re ready for your participants to see them.<\/li>\n \t
- Ensure sufficient starting information for participants<\/strong>. Your new participants will need detailed information about how to access the course and get started (e.g. if using Moodle, see the FLO Handbook on the Hub tab, or consider preparing a screencast).<\/li>\n \t
- Finalize enrollment of participants<\/strong>, send out a Welcome email. Provide the participants with access to the course and\/or information about accessing technical support, if necessary.<\/li>\n \t
- Decide on your week\u2019s start day<\/strong> and modify your directions to the participants and the learning environment settings accordingly (if necessary). This course is not self-paced; the work is organized around weeks. Will the first day of your course week begin on a Sunday, Monday, or some other day?<\/li>\n \t
- Set a time for your first<\/strong> (Week 1) synchronous session<\/strong>. Prepare the synchronous environment as much as possible: upload slides, write\/draw\/embed a welcome message, etc.<\/li>\n \t
- Set up a separate online workspace for each team<\/strong>. You will be dividing up your participants into 4 teams; each team will facilitate one of the weekly mini-sessions. A unique team workspace (e.g. a forum or Google doc) with editing functions for team members should be sufficient. You may wish to limit access (e.g. read-only access) to this workspace to non-team participants.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n\n\n
Privacy and Confidentiality<\/h2>\n\n\nIn all FLO courses, our learning relies on the exchange of honest, constructive feedback, and we need to agree on rules that support this foundation of trust. Be aware of your institutional or organizational policies relating to privacy and confidentiality, determine how you will interpret these for your online learning environment, and decide how to communicate these rules to your participants. You can see an example of how privacy and confidentiality concerns are communicated in this page in the FLO Fundamentals Course Handbook<\/a> (in the Moodle OER). Some privacy and confidentiality rules you may wish to adopt:\n\n \t- Always seek permission to share content posted by participants.<\/li>\n \t
- When using social media and other online services to complete activities, ensure you are familiar with the levels of privacy available and how the information will be stored and shared. Communicate this information to the participants.<\/li>\n \t
- If you plan on recording your synchronous sessions, confirm that this is OK with the session participants before<\/em> you hit the record button.<\/li>\n \t
- Let participants know who else has access to this course (e.g. participants, facilitators, assistants, website administrators, etc.).<\/li>\n \t
- You may wish to establish \"Vegas rules<\/a>,\" i.e. what happens in the course, stays in the course.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\nSome other decisions you\u2019ll need to make:\n
\n \t- Decide which teams each co-facilitator will support<\/strong> during the course, and decide between yourselves what kind of support you will provide.<\/li>\n \t
- Confirm technical support<\/strong> is available and adequate, if needed. If you are providing your own tech support, confirm that your site has been backed up and no significant technical issues (e.g. scheduled downtime) exist. If tech support personnel are available, confirm they are standing by and aware of your course start date and enrollments.<\/li>\n \t
- Review the suggested assessment options for this course and select one (or more)<\/strong> to recommend for your participants. A self-assessment rubric can be adapted so the facilitator can assign a grade, if needed (see FLO Fundamentals Self-Assessment Rubric<\/a>).<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n
As time permits<\/h2>\n\n \t- Practice navigating your course site and other tools.<\/strong> If you are using the OER Moodle version of this course, you\u2019ll find it's a complex environment with lots of moving parts. Take the time to familiarize yourself with the course and revise it as you see fit. Move stuff around and explore different tools, modules, and plugins (if available). Consider (judiciously!) trying some new or less-used tools outside of your LMS or main learning environment.<\/li>\n \t
- Streamline or otherwise improve your course\u2019s navigation tools.<\/strong> When you refer to another part of your course or learning environment, provide a direct link whenever possible. Consider including a navigation screencast showing step-by-step how to get around your learning environment or LMS.<\/li>\n \t
- Fine-tune your reading list.<\/strong> In such a fascinating and fast-moving field like online facilitation, it\u2019s easy to get carried away with the list of readings you provide for participants. Consider making all readings optional but don\u2019t be afraid to strongly recommend a resource you know is important. After all, this course is intended to be informed by research and theory.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\nThe readings you\u2019ll see contained in this course have been chosen carefully to be both high quality and of reasonable length. However, as we have already mentioned, links to internet-based resources can break or become \u201cstale.\u201d Encourage your FLO participants to research and recommend better or more up-to-date readings for their own facilitation week.\n
A few days before the course begins<\/h2>\n\n \t- Connect with your participants<\/strong>. Make sure they\u2019re able to access the learning environment, and communicate some basic information about the course, expectations around time, etc.<\/li>\n \t
- Write your introductory welcome post<\/strong> (e.g. in an \u201cIntroductions\u201d forum within the course or as a new thread in the \u201cOpen\u201d forum) in a friendly, informal, and enthusiastic style that welcomes them to the online course environment and sets a tone for your online community. Encourage participants to respond with their own introductions.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n\n\n
Your Welcome post doesn\u2019t have to be just text\u2026<\/h2>\n\n\nAs a facilitator of FLO, you\u2019ll want to set an example from the beginning of what good facilitation looks like. Take the time to craft a friendly, welcoming message to begin the process of online community building.\n\nSome tips:<\/strong>\n\n \t- Your introductory post doesn\u2019t need to be just text; you can be creative and adventurous with technology. Part of your job as facilitator is to model an attitude of fearless experimentation with communication technologies. What about a video introduction against a backdrop of where you live? Or a narrated slideshow? Of course, you don\u2019t want to intimidate your participants if they\u2019re fairly novice technology users, so be sure to offer choices.<\/li>\n \t
- What to include is up to you; this is your first impression. You might like to talk a bit about your teaching and other professional experience. You could share an anecdote or advice from your own online facilitation experience, or use an icebreaker-type format.<\/li>\n \t
- Make sure your post sets a good impression: establishes instructor presence, presents a clear message without being too long or too short.<\/li>\n \t
- Be sure your introductory post ends with an invitation for your participants to share their introductions in a similar way.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
\n \t- Post the week\u2019s overview post<\/strong>, emphasizing for participants:\n
\n \t- Activities, etc. they must complete this week.<\/li>\n \t
- Tips on how to navigate the site.<\/li>\n \t
- The need to plan and schedule time to work on the course. Remind participants that a valuable learning experience cannot be achieved using a side-of-the-desk approach.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n\n\n\n\nShare time management tips<\/strong>\nEven with your explicit messages about the amount of time needed, participants may still expect to be able to slide their FLO work in on the weekends or in little bits and pieces between other daily tasks. This can leave people feeling they are always working on the course, even though their time on task may be quite short.\nRemind your participants to set aside time for the course, and repeat that advice early and often.\nEncourage them to book time to work with their facilitation team partners (and you, if they wish) well in advance.\n\n<\/div>\n
\n \t- Finalize your questions for Week 1\u2019s forum<\/strong> \u201cBuilding Online Community.\u201d The following are SAMPLE QUESTIONS only (you may have other questions to engage participants on this topic):\n
\n \t- What experiences have you had with online learning communities?<\/li>\n \t
- What can an instructor (or facilitator) do to develop and maintain a sense of community in an online learning environment?<\/li>\n \t
- What do you know about the Community of Inquiry model? How does it relate to building a sense of online community?<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<\/li>\n \t
- Organize participants into facilitation teams<\/strong> and post this information for all participants. You may decide to organize teams randomly or according to certain criteria; whether to make team interaction private or to open it up so that other participants can follow their planning process. Decide how and when participants can switch teams (preferably only within a short time period at the start of the course) if they wish.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n
Week 1: Building Online Community<\/h2>\n\n\nThroughout Week 1, your role is to establish a strong facilitator presence and effectively demonstrate what good online facilitation looks like. Aim to do this as transparently as possible; think out loud to your participants to show them how you plan and facilitate the various activities. This may be a good opportunity to incorporate other collaboration tools, such as wikis or other co-authoring platforms, to show how it is possible to communicate outside of a forum (which tends to be the default discussion tool).\n\n\n\n\nHelping participants cope who may feel overwhelmed during the first week.<\/strong>\n\nOffer brief explanations, clarifications and practical tips in an informal and friendly way. If your LMS offers forum \u201csubscriptions\u201d (in which participants automatically receive an email copy of all forum posts) make sure that not all forums are configured this way, and let participants know how to \u201cunsubscribe\u201d from a forum whenever possible.\n\n<\/div>\nWeek 1, Day 1 (the first day of the week):<\/h3>\n\n \t- Morning: Post facilitators\u2019 personal intros<\/strong> to the Introductory Forum.<\/li>\n \t
- Morning: Begin the Building Online Community forum<\/strong> activity. Post your questions to launch and guide the discussion.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n\n\n\n\nFind ways to allow participants to share their prior knowledge and experience. You can use the Building Online Community forum introductory activity to make the positive and negative perceptions of online learning visible by asking each participant to contribute words and an image that reflects their ideas about online community.\n\n<\/div>\n
\n \t- Evening: Finalize details for the first synchronous session<\/strong> in your agenda and\/or slidedeck, including:\n
\n \t- How to use the synchronous environment.<\/li>\n \t
- Icebreaker: quick intros of participants.<\/li>\n \t
- Review of the agenda - invite additional ideas.<\/li>\n \t
- Highlight course structure (and flow): roles, expectations, team facilitation, reflective practice, self-assessment.<\/li>\n \t
- Explain the purpose of the Facilitation Team Workspace with an activity plan and planning forum.<\/li>\n \t
- Highlight the importance of feedback, journaling, reflection, time management tips.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n
Week 1 Day 2<\/h3>\n\n \t- Earlier in day: Remind participants about the synchronous session<\/strong> a few hours before the session begins. (Reiterate that this session is not required although it is highly recommended.) Your reminder may be a forum post, LMS message, email, etc. Re-post session time, access information, and link to technical support, if needed.<\/li>\n \t
- Morning: Introduce the Learning Journal<\/strong> (perhaps as a post to the Open Forum). In your post:\n
\n \t- Explain the concept and the value of maintaining a record of what participants are learning and want to remember.<\/li>\n \t
- Remind them to regularly pause, reflect, assess and synthesize their learning.<\/li>\n \t
- Recommend they document these thoughts in a personal learning journal using paper-based, audio\/video, or electronic means.<\/li>\n \t
- Encourage participants to share nuggets (insights) in a Learning Journal.\nThe Learning Journal is explained in more detail in the Course Handbook<\/a>.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<\/li>\n \t
- Later: Host first synchronous session<\/strong>. Keep in mind this is your opportunity to connect with your participants both aurally and visually, and to demonstrate the value that a synchronous collaboration tool can bring to an online learning experience. If possible:\n
\n \t- Ensure you have technical support people (or your co-facilitator) standing by to assist with access problems.<\/li>\n \t
- Enter the synchronous session at least a half-hour early to greet early arrivals and troubleshoot navigation problems within the synchronous environment.<\/li>\n \t
- Remember to notify participants that the session will be recorded (if this is possible and if all agree) and hit the record button as your session begins.<\/li>\n \t
- Check in with participants about their comfort level navigating the site during the session and address any confusions.<\/li>\n \t
- Evening: Post a brief follow-up report about the synchronous session<\/strong>. Talk up the value of the session and encourage participants to attend the next synchronous session (mention the date and time). If the session was recorded, let participants know when a recording may be available.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n\n\n\n\nBe pro-active in the first week.\n<\/strong>If it doesn\u2019t come up spontaneously in the conversation: mention that the first week of an online course is often overwhelming (for both participants and facilitators), that it will get better, and that you will do what you can to mitigate start-up stresses.\n\n<\/div>\nSometimes the topic of feeling overwhelmed does come up naturally. The following is an example of one participant\u2019s experience (from the participant\u2019s Weekly Journal Share Forum for Week 1):\n\n\n
Time management, reflection and empathy<\/h2>\n\n\nOne participant's experience:<\/strong>\n\n\"I have a deep empathy for my students now on the first week experience. I think when we \"know the material\" we forget what it feels like to \"not know.\" As a student in my first online course, I now know how it feels to be in that place and will be more understanding of my students.\"\n\n\"Well, this week was hard. In taking time for reflection I realize that the commitment of this course while I am taking on a new role at work, in conjunction with my current full-time job and a side contract, is a lot. Time management has been a reoccurring issue for me as I never feel like I have enough time.\"\n\n\"I copied this sentence from the week 1 reading materials: 'When a person is feeling anxious, the likelihood that they will interpret things negatively increases.' I need to have this on a sticky note on my computer. I really valued the comments from others in the course about feeling overwhelmed. Online learning requires time to get used to the new ways of doing learning.\"\n\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\nWeek 1 Day 3<\/h3>\n\n \t- Connect with members of the first participant facilitation team<\/strong>. Post a message in the team planning forum for Diversity of Learners to encourage this team to get underway.<\/li>\n \t
- Remind participants to use Schedule and begin Learning Journal<\/strong>. Use a post in the Open Forum to remind participants to begin their Learning Journal and to use the FLO Fundamentals Schedule to keep on track. More information about the Learning Journal<\/a> and FLO Fundamentals Schedule<\/a> is available in the OER course. Make sure you revise the schedule to fit your own situation.<\/li>\n \t
- Post the recording (if available) of the synchronous session<\/strong>. Use a post in the Open Forum to provide a link to the recording and to highlight any key or outstanding topics.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n
Week 1 Day 4<\/h3>\n
Course content and layout<\/h1>\nFLO Fundamentals is a complete five-week workshop-style course with a comprehensive collection of information, activities, directions, assessments, and related resources. Within the Open Education Resources (OER) version of the course, resources are organized into tabs, with one tab for each of the five weeks, plus one Hub tab with introductory and general information, and one tab to organize the work of the teams (see the image below for an example).\n\n[caption id=\"attachment_749\" align=\"aligncenter\" width=\"659\"] Figure 4.1[\/caption]\n\nIn the Hub tab, you will find:\n\n \t- A Course Handbook, describing for participants how the course works, what\u2019s expected of them, learning outcomes, scheduling, etc.<\/li>\n \t
- A sample Schedule to help participants (and facilitators) stay on track.<\/li>\n \t
- Resources to help facilitators organize participant teams.<\/li>\n \t
- Sample forums to facilitate discussion:\n
\n \t- An Open Forum for sharing general information (clarification, announcements, social-type sharing) not necessarily related to the weekly discussion about content. Both facilitators and participants can post and respond.<\/li>\n \t
- A Weekly Journal Share forum, for posting reflections on learning.<\/li>\n \t
- A forum to provide Feedback for participant teams.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n \t
- A feedback form (Feel, Like, Improve, Feedback, or FLIF) to help participant teams reflect and receive personal, private feedback on their facilitation experience. (In the OER course, this feedback is structured using the Learning Management System's quiz tool.)<\/li>\n \t
- Additional resources for facilitators to aid in coordination of the course (generally hidden from participants).<\/li>\n<\/ul>\nTabs corresponding to each week\u2019s activities include:\n
\n \t- An overview of the topic for the week.<\/li>\n \t
- A forum to discuss the week\u2019s topic (e.g. to respond to the questions posted by the facilitation team).<\/li>\n \t
- Other resources and\/or activities specific to that week.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\nThe tab for Facilitation Teams Workspace includes:\n
\n \t- A detailed activity plan for each team.<\/li>\n \t
- A workspace forum (private, if you choose) for each team\u2019s members to plan their facilitation strategies and tasks.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\nThe topics discussed in this course are:\n
\n \t- Week 1: Building Learning Community (facilitated by course facilitators).<\/li>\n \t
- Week 2: Diversity of Learners (facilitated by the orange team).<\/li>\n \t
- Week 3: Responsive Facilitation (facilitated by the blue team).<\/li>\n \t
- Week 4: Collaboration (facilitated by the yellow team).<\/li>\n \t
- Week 5: Reflective Practice (facilitated by the green team).<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
Course assessment strategies<\/h1>\nThis course is designed to be developmental; it is not a graded course in the traditional sense. Unless you decide otherwise, your participants will not be marked or assigned a formal grade on their performance. The course does include a number of activities to encourage self-reflection, as well as a comprehensive self-assessment rubric which could be used to assign a grade, if needed (see FLO Fundamentals Self-Assessment Rubric<\/a>).\n\nParticipants are also encouraged to self-assess their qualification for a Certificate of Completion. As facilitator(s), it is up to you to decide what form this Certificate should take.\nFacilitator task list: What you need to do before, during and after the course<\/h1>\nThe successful hosting of FLO Fundamentals requires good planning, timing, and coordination. Over the years, we\u2019ve developed a detailed, step-by-step Task List for course facilitators:\n\n \t- See FLO Fundamentals Task List<\/a> for a concise, detailed list of facilitator tasks.<\/li>\n \t
- You can also use the following Task List Explanations alongside the Task List for more background information and ideas.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
Task List Explanations<\/h2>\nSeveral weeks (or months) before the course begins\n\n \t- Access the OER course<\/strong>. The OER course Facilitating Learning Online - Fundamentals<\/a> is currently offered as a Moodle course with guest access; you should be able to enter the course and view all content.<\/li>\n \t
- Set up your own learning environment and copy content<\/strong>. Before you can offer FLO Fundamentals, you need a learning environment \u2013 a virtual place to host the course. At the very minimum, you need an online space (private or securable, if you choose) where facilitators and participants can conduct discussions and share facilitation discoveries and the results of experimentation. The course content must be added to the LMS or other learning space you have chosen:[footnote]In your institution, an LMS Administrator, IT support, or Instructional Designer may help with this step.[\/footnote]\n
\n \t- If using Moodle: restore the latest version of this course into your LMS (you can download it using the link in the OER).<\/li>\n \t
- If NOT using Moodle: establish and configure an online learning environment (LMS, CMS, wiki, etc.) into which you can copy all relevant content from FLO Fundamentals.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<\/li>\n \t
- If possible, find a colleague to assist you as a Co-Facilitator<\/strong>. Your ideal co-facilitator will be someone who can work with you to provide guidance and support to your participants, and can dedicate 15 to 25 hours per week to this task. Ideally, your co-facilitator will be familiar with online learning theories and practices, and with personal and technical skills to engage online participants. Not only do co-facilitators lessen the workload and enrich the facilitation process for you, they increase the facilitation expertise within your institution or organization. It would help a great deal if your colleague has already taken FLO Fundamentals.<\/li>\n \t
- Access your FLO Fundamentals learning environment to review content and tools<\/strong>. Prepare the course site or learning environment and (re)acquaint yourself with the facilitation tools you plan to use. Familiarize yourself with the course content, materials, philosophy, scheduling, flow, etc. of the course.<\/li>\n \t
- Set up a web conferencing tool for online synchronous sessions and conversations<\/strong>. There are many web conferencing applications to choose from, depending on your institution's requirements.<\/li>\n \t
- Connect with your co-facilitator for detailed pre-planning<\/strong>. Develop a planning regime that you\u2019re both comfortable with. Work together to develop a detailed list of tasks to be completed before, during, and after the course runs. You have a lot to do before the course begins:\n
\n \t- Ensure an easy-to-access place or process to store planning resources. Agree on planning tools and schedules.<\/li>\n \t
- Customize this Facilitator Task List to fit your needs.<\/li>\n \t
- Review the resources available in the OER and select some activities to try. You could also add your own ideas for icebreakers, discussion topics, resources, images, slides, etc.<\/li>\n \t
- Develop rough agendas for your synchronous sessions.<\/li>\n \t
- Prepare how-to resources for your participants to explain the features of the learning environments and tools.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<\/li>\n \t
- Practice using learning environment tools<\/strong>. If you\u2019re already pretty comfortable with both synchronous and asynchronous online tools, you may wish to try something new; to model for your participants an adventurous open mind when it comes to educational technology. However, be aware of the technical expertise of your potential participants: you don\u2019t want to choose something that most of them will have trouble accessing or learning to use.<\/li>\n \t
- Identify potential participants<\/strong>. Think about where you might find your course participants. Will you enlist from your institution only, or other institutions and organizations? Decide how far ahead you must start the recruitment process.<\/li>\n \t
- Ensure your content is accurate<\/strong>. Once you have a potential learner audience in mind, re-visit the learning environment and carefully review all content (forum post topics, reading lists, directions, etc.). Make sure your content is appropriate for your intended group of participants, and reflects the goals of your institution or program. Remember, the FLO courses have been developed as Open Educational Resources and are licenced under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License<\/a> so you\u2019re free to modify whatever you like! The only requirement is that you provide attribution and don\u2019t imply or suggest endorsement by the licensor.<\/li>\n \t
- Ensure your content is accurate<\/em>.<\/strong> Unfortunately, the web addresses (URLs) of internet resources change often with the result that your linked document may not appear when participants click on the link. Sometimes, through searching, you can locate the new URL for the resource but you may wish to consider finding a more up-to-date resource on the same topic instead.<\/li>\n \t
- (If you haven\u2019t done so already!) Choose a start date and promote<\/strong> your course to your target participants.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n\n\n
Your Technical Skills: The Least You Need to Know<\/h2>\n\n\nYour participants may dream up a variety of designs for their mini-session and, ideally, you and your co-facilitator will be comfortable setting up the tools they need. If you are working within an LMS, some commonly-used tools include:\n\n \t- Forums or discussion groups: LMS-based forums usually offer many different settings and you should be familiar with most of them. Learn to set up both open forums and team-based forums (if available) and explore other settings that can create new possibilities for structuring activities.<\/li>\n \t
- Polls or Choices: Many LMSs offer a tool for quickly polling participants -- handy for any time you want people to indicate a preference (e.g. \"what time should we meet for our synchronous session?\"), or to vote on a single question.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
One- to two weeks before the course begins<\/h2>\nOnce your FLO Fundamentals course is underway, you and your participants will be very busy indeed and you\u2019ll want to have as much preparatory work out of the way as possible. How you set up the course site and engage the community will directly impact how the rest of the course flows; keep in mind that you are modelling good facilitation practices (a detailed list of Core FLO Facilitation Skills is included in Chapter 3<\/a> of this Guide).\n\n \t- Complete recruitment and register participants<\/strong>. You may have begun the recruitment of participants weeks or even months ahead. Make sure you have a process in place to register your participants in accordance with your institution\u2019s policies. If you are managing your own site (e.g. a WordPress site), you may be able to organize this on your own. During recruitment, be sure to:\n
\n \t- Communicate expectations around time and teamwork.<\/li>\n \t
- Provide information to your participants about what they\u2019ll need to do and where to find what they\u2019ll need. Your goal is not to overwhelm your participants but to provide enough information so they can jump right in when the course begins.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n\n\n\n\nWhat\u2019s the right number of participants for this course?\n<\/strong>A small class of 10 or fewer participants will make it difficult to sustain rich online conversations. On the other hand, a large class of more than 25 may be more than 2 facilitators can handle. Our experience has shown that a class of 14 - 20 educators is a good size for this course.\n\n<\/div>\n
\n \t- Meet with co-facilitator<\/strong>, finalize the week ahead. Now is the time to check the details and do final revisions of your first week\u2019s activities & resources, including:\n
\n \t- Discussion topics, resources, images, slides, etc.<\/li>\n \t
- Icebreaker activities.<\/li>\n \t
- Your introductory welcome post.<\/li>\n \t
- Agenda for the first synchronous session.<\/li>\n \t
- Resource to explain the basic features of the synchronous environment & tools.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<\/li>\n \t
- Create or update co-facilitators\u2019 profiles<\/strong> and contact information. Tell a little about yourself in a profile or short biography. Establish your contact information and set \u201coffice hours\u201d (if appropriate).<\/li>\n \t
- Decide which aspects of the course will be displayed<\/strong> when the course opens and which aspects will be hidden until needed. Many learning environments will let you hide or show specific activities until you\u2019re ready for your participants to see them.<\/li>\n \t
- Ensure sufficient starting information for participants<\/strong>. Your new participants will need detailed information about how to access the course and get started (e.g. if using Moodle, see the FLO Handbook on the Hub tab, or consider preparing a screencast).<\/li>\n \t
- Finalize enrollment of participants<\/strong>, send out a Welcome email. Provide the participants with access to the course and\/or information about accessing technical support, if necessary.<\/li>\n \t
- Decide on your week\u2019s start day<\/strong> and modify your directions to the participants and the learning environment settings accordingly (if necessary). This course is not self-paced; the work is organized around weeks. Will the first day of your course week begin on a Sunday, Monday, or some other day?<\/li>\n \t
- Set a time for your first<\/strong> (Week 1) synchronous session<\/strong>. Prepare the synchronous environment as much as possible: upload slides, write\/draw\/embed a welcome message, etc.<\/li>\n \t
- Set up a separate online workspace for each team<\/strong>. You will be dividing up your participants into 4 teams; each team will facilitate one of the weekly mini-sessions. A unique team workspace (e.g. a forum or Google doc) with editing functions for team members should be sufficient. You may wish to limit access (e.g. read-only access) to this workspace to non-team participants.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n\n\n
Privacy and Confidentiality<\/h2>\n\n\nIn all FLO courses, our learning relies on the exchange of honest, constructive feedback, and we need to agree on rules that support this foundation of trust. Be aware of your institutional or organizational policies relating to privacy and confidentiality, determine how you will interpret these for your online learning environment, and decide how to communicate these rules to your participants. You can see an example of how privacy and confidentiality concerns are communicated in this page in the FLO Fundamentals Course Handbook<\/a> (in the Moodle OER). Some privacy and confidentiality rules you may wish to adopt:\n\n \t- Always seek permission to share content posted by participants.<\/li>\n \t
- When using social media and other online services to complete activities, ensure you are familiar with the levels of privacy available and how the information will be stored and shared. Communicate this information to the participants.<\/li>\n \t
- If you plan on recording your synchronous sessions, confirm that this is OK with the session participants before<\/em> you hit the record button.<\/li>\n \t
- Let participants know who else has access to this course (e.g. participants, facilitators, assistants, website administrators, etc.).<\/li>\n \t
- You may wish to establish \"Vegas rules<\/a>,\" i.e. what happens in the course, stays in the course.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\nSome other decisions you\u2019ll need to make:\n
\n \t- Decide which teams each co-facilitator will support<\/strong> during the course, and decide between yourselves what kind of support you will provide.<\/li>\n \t
- Confirm technical support<\/strong> is available and adequate, if needed. If you are providing your own tech support, confirm that your site has been backed up and no significant technical issues (e.g. scheduled downtime) exist. If tech support personnel are available, confirm they are standing by and aware of your course start date and enrollments.<\/li>\n \t
- Review the suggested assessment options for this course and select one (or more)<\/strong> to recommend for your participants. A self-assessment rubric can be adapted so the facilitator can assign a grade, if needed (see FLO Fundamentals Self-Assessment Rubric<\/a>).<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n
As time permits<\/h2>\n\n \t- Practice navigating your course site and other tools.<\/strong> If you are using the OER Moodle version of this course, you\u2019ll find it's a complex environment with lots of moving parts. Take the time to familiarize yourself with the course and revise it as you see fit. Move stuff around and explore different tools, modules, and plugins (if available). Consider (judiciously!) trying some new or less-used tools outside of your LMS or main learning environment.<\/li>\n \t
- Streamline or otherwise improve your course\u2019s navigation tools.<\/strong> When you refer to another part of your course or learning environment, provide a direct link whenever possible. Consider including a navigation screencast showing step-by-step how to get around your learning environment or LMS.<\/li>\n \t
- Fine-tune your reading list.<\/strong> In such a fascinating and fast-moving field like online facilitation, it\u2019s easy to get carried away with the list of readings you provide for participants. Consider making all readings optional but don\u2019t be afraid to strongly recommend a resource you know is important. After all, this course is intended to be informed by research and theory.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\nThe readings you\u2019ll see contained in this course have been chosen carefully to be both high quality and of reasonable length. However, as we have already mentioned, links to internet-based resources can break or become \u201cstale.\u201d Encourage your FLO participants to research and recommend better or more up-to-date readings for their own facilitation week.\n
A few days before the course begins<\/h2>\n\n \t- Connect with your participants<\/strong>. Make sure they\u2019re able to access the learning environment, and communicate some basic information about the course, expectations around time, etc.<\/li>\n \t
- Write your introductory welcome post<\/strong> (e.g. in an \u201cIntroductions\u201d forum within the course or as a new thread in the \u201cOpen\u201d forum) in a friendly, informal, and enthusiastic style that welcomes them to the online course environment and sets a tone for your online community. Encourage participants to respond with their own introductions.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n\n\n
Your Welcome post doesn\u2019t have to be just text\u2026<\/h2>\n\n\nAs a facilitator of FLO, you\u2019ll want to set an example from the beginning of what good facilitation looks like. Take the time to craft a friendly, welcoming message to begin the process of online community building.\n\nSome tips:<\/strong>\n\n \t- Your introductory post doesn\u2019t need to be just text; you can be creative and adventurous with technology. Part of your job as facilitator is to model an attitude of fearless experimentation with communication technologies. What about a video introduction against a backdrop of where you live? Or a narrated slideshow? Of course, you don\u2019t want to intimidate your participants if they\u2019re fairly novice technology users, so be sure to offer choices.<\/li>\n \t
- What to include is up to you; this is your first impression. You might like to talk a bit about your teaching and other professional experience. You could share an anecdote or advice from your own online facilitation experience, or use an icebreaker-type format.<\/li>\n \t
- Make sure your post sets a good impression: establishes instructor presence, presents a clear message without being too long or too short.<\/li>\n \t
- Be sure your introductory post ends with an invitation for your participants to share their introductions in a similar way.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
\n \t- Post the week\u2019s overview post<\/strong>, emphasizing for participants:\n
\n \t- Activities, etc. they must complete this week.<\/li>\n \t
- Tips on how to navigate the site.<\/li>\n \t
- The need to plan and schedule time to work on the course. Remind participants that a valuable learning experience cannot be achieved using a side-of-the-desk approach.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n\n\n\n\nShare time management tips<\/strong>\nEven with your explicit messages about the amount of time needed, participants may still expect to be able to slide their FLO work in on the weekends or in little bits and pieces between other daily tasks. This can leave people feeling they are always working on the course, even though their time on task may be quite short.\nRemind your participants to set aside time for the course, and repeat that advice early and often.\nEncourage them to book time to work with their facilitation team partners (and you, if they wish) well in advance.\n\n<\/div>\n
\n \t- Finalize your questions for Week 1\u2019s forum<\/strong> \u201cBuilding Online Community.\u201d The following are SAMPLE QUESTIONS only (you may have other questions to engage participants on this topic):\n
\n \t- What experiences have you had with online learning communities?<\/li>\n \t
- What can an instructor (or facilitator) do to develop and maintain a sense of community in an online learning environment?<\/li>\n \t
- What do you know about the Community of Inquiry model? How does it relate to building a sense of online community?<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<\/li>\n \t
- Organize participants into facilitation teams<\/strong> and post this information for all participants. You may decide to organize teams randomly or according to certain criteria; whether to make team interaction private or to open it up so that other participants can follow their planning process. Decide how and when participants can switch teams (preferably only within a short time period at the start of the course) if they wish.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n
Week 1: Building Online Community<\/h2>\n\n\nThroughout Week 1, your role is to establish a strong facilitator presence and effectively demonstrate what good online facilitation looks like. Aim to do this as transparently as possible; think out loud to your participants to show them how you plan and facilitate the various activities. This may be a good opportunity to incorporate other collaboration tools, such as wikis or other co-authoring platforms, to show how it is possible to communicate outside of a forum (which tends to be the default discussion tool).\n\n\n\n\nHelping participants cope who may feel overwhelmed during the first week.<\/strong>\n\nOffer brief explanations, clarifications and practical tips in an informal and friendly way. If your LMS offers forum \u201csubscriptions\u201d (in which participants automatically receive an email copy of all forum posts) make sure that not all forums are configured this way, and let participants know how to \u201cunsubscribe\u201d from a forum whenever possible.\n\n<\/div>\nWeek 1, Day 1 (the first day of the week):<\/h3>\n\n \t- Morning: Post facilitators\u2019 personal intros<\/strong> to the Introductory Forum.<\/li>\n \t
- Morning: Begin the Building Online Community forum<\/strong> activity. Post your questions to launch and guide the discussion.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n\n\n\n\nFind ways to allow participants to share their prior knowledge and experience. You can use the Building Online Community forum introductory activity to make the positive and negative perceptions of online learning visible by asking each participant to contribute words and an image that reflects their ideas about online community.\n\n<\/div>\n
\n \t- Evening: Finalize details for the first synchronous session<\/strong> in your agenda and\/or slidedeck, including:\n
\n \t- How to use the synchronous environment.<\/li>\n \t
- Icebreaker: quick intros of participants.<\/li>\n \t
- Review of the agenda - invite additional ideas.<\/li>\n \t
- Highlight course structure (and flow): roles, expectations, team facilitation, reflective practice, self-assessment.<\/li>\n \t
- Explain the purpose of the Facilitation Team Workspace with an activity plan and planning forum.<\/li>\n \t
- Highlight the importance of feedback, journaling, reflection, time management tips.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n
Week 1 Day 2<\/h3>\n\n \t- Earlier in day: Remind participants about the synchronous session<\/strong> a few hours before the session begins. (Reiterate that this session is not required although it is highly recommended.) Your reminder may be a forum post, LMS message, email, etc. Re-post session time, access information, and link to technical support, if needed.<\/li>\n \t
- Morning: Introduce the Learning Journal<\/strong> (perhaps as a post to the Open Forum). In your post:\n
\n \t- Explain the concept and the value of maintaining a record of what participants are learning and want to remember.<\/li>\n \t
- Remind them to regularly pause, reflect, assess and synthesize their learning.<\/li>\n \t
- Recommend they document these thoughts in a personal learning journal using paper-based, audio\/video, or electronic means.<\/li>\n \t
- Encourage participants to share nuggets (insights) in a Learning Journal.\nThe Learning Journal is explained in more detail in the Course Handbook<\/a>.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<\/li>\n \t
- Later: Host first synchronous session<\/strong>. Keep in mind this is your opportunity to connect with your participants both aurally and visually, and to demonstrate the value that a synchronous collaboration tool can bring to an online learning experience. If possible:\n
\n \t- Ensure you have technical support people (or your co-facilitator) standing by to assist with access problems.<\/li>\n \t
- Enter the synchronous session at least a half-hour early to greet early arrivals and troubleshoot navigation problems within the synchronous environment.<\/li>\n \t
- Remember to notify participants that the session will be recorded (if this is possible and if all agree) and hit the record button as your session begins.<\/li>\n \t
- Check in with participants about their comfort level navigating the site during the session and address any confusions.<\/li>\n \t
- Evening: Post a brief follow-up report about the synchronous session<\/strong>. Talk up the value of the session and encourage participants to attend the next synchronous session (mention the date and time). If the session was recorded, let participants know when a recording may be available.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n\n\n\n\nBe pro-active in the first week.\n<\/strong>If it doesn\u2019t come up spontaneously in the conversation: mention that the first week of an online course is often overwhelming (for both participants and facilitators), that it will get better, and that you will do what you can to mitigate start-up stresses.\n\n<\/div>\nSometimes the topic of feeling overwhelmed does come up naturally. The following is an example of one participant\u2019s experience (from the participant\u2019s Weekly Journal Share Forum for Week 1):\n\n\n
Time management, reflection and empathy<\/h2>\n\n\nOne participant's experience:<\/strong>\n\n\"I have a deep empathy for my students now on the first week experience. I think when we \"know the material\" we forget what it feels like to \"not know.\" As a student in my first online course, I now know how it feels to be in that place and will be more understanding of my students.\"\n\n\"Well, this week was hard. In taking time for reflection I realize that the commitment of this course while I am taking on a new role at work, in conjunction with my current full-time job and a side contract, is a lot. Time management has been a reoccurring issue for me as I never feel like I have enough time.\"\n\n\"I copied this sentence from the week 1 reading materials: 'When a person is feeling anxious, the likelihood that they will interpret things negatively increases.' I need to have this on a sticky note on my computer. I really valued the comments from others in the course about feeling overwhelmed. Online learning requires time to get used to the new ways of doing learning.\"\n\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\nWeek 1 Day 3<\/h3>\n\n \t- Connect with members of the first participant facilitation team<\/strong>. Post a message in the team planning forum for Diversity of Learners to encourage this team to get underway.<\/li>\n \t
- Remind participants to use Schedule and begin Learning Journal<\/strong>. Use a post in the Open Forum to remind participants to begin their Learning Journal and to use the FLO Fundamentals Schedule to keep on track. More information about the Learning Journal<\/a> and FLO Fundamentals Schedule<\/a> is available in the OER course. Make sure you revise the schedule to fit your own situation.<\/li>\n \t
- Post the recording (if available) of the synchronous session<\/strong>. Use a post in the Open Forum to provide a link to the recording and to highlight any key or outstanding topics.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n
Week 1 Day 4<\/h3>\n
- \n \t
- An Open Forum for sharing general information (clarification, announcements, social-type sharing) not necessarily related to the weekly discussion about content. Both facilitators and participants can post and respond.<\/li>\n \t
- A Weekly Journal Share forum, for posting reflections on learning.<\/li>\n \t
- A forum to provide Feedback for participant teams.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n \t
- A feedback form (Feel, Like, Improve, Feedback, or FLIF) to help participant teams reflect and receive personal, private feedback on their facilitation experience. (In the OER course, this feedback is structured using the Learning Management System's quiz tool.)<\/li>\n \t
- Additional resources for facilitators to aid in coordination of the course (generally hidden from participants).<\/li>\n<\/ul>\nTabs corresponding to each week\u2019s activities include:\n
- \n \t
- An overview of the topic for the week.<\/li>\n \t
- A forum to discuss the week\u2019s topic (e.g. to respond to the questions posted by the facilitation team).<\/li>\n \t
- Other resources and\/or activities specific to that week.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\nThe tab for Facilitation Teams Workspace includes:\n
- \n \t
- A detailed activity plan for each team.<\/li>\n \t
- A workspace forum (private, if you choose) for each team\u2019s members to plan their facilitation strategies and tasks.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\nThe topics discussed in this course are:\n
- \n \t
- Week 1: Building Learning Community (facilitated by course facilitators).<\/li>\n \t
- Week 2: Diversity of Learners (facilitated by the orange team).<\/li>\n \t
- Week 3: Responsive Facilitation (facilitated by the blue team).<\/li>\n \t
- Week 4: Collaboration (facilitated by the yellow team).<\/li>\n \t
- Week 5: Reflective Practice (facilitated by the green team).<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
Course assessment strategies<\/h1>\nThis course is designed to be developmental; it is not a graded course in the traditional sense. Unless you decide otherwise, your participants will not be marked or assigned a formal grade on their performance. The course does include a number of activities to encourage self-reflection, as well as a comprehensive self-assessment rubric which could be used to assign a grade, if needed (see FLO Fundamentals Self-Assessment Rubric<\/a>).\n\nParticipants are also encouraged to self-assess their qualification for a Certificate of Completion. As facilitator(s), it is up to you to decide what form this Certificate should take.\n
Facilitator task list: What you need to do before, during and after the course<\/h1>\nThe successful hosting of FLO Fundamentals requires good planning, timing, and coordination. Over the years, we\u2019ve developed a detailed, step-by-step Task List for course facilitators:\n
- \n \t
- See FLO Fundamentals Task List<\/a> for a concise, detailed list of facilitator tasks.<\/li>\n \t
- You can also use the following Task List Explanations alongside the Task List for more background information and ideas.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
Task List Explanations<\/h2>\nSeveral weeks (or months) before the course begins\n
- \n \t
- Access the OER course<\/strong>. The OER course Facilitating Learning Online - Fundamentals<\/a> is currently offered as a Moodle course with guest access; you should be able to enter the course and view all content.<\/li>\n \t
- Set up your own learning environment and copy content<\/strong>. Before you can offer FLO Fundamentals, you need a learning environment \u2013 a virtual place to host the course. At the very minimum, you need an online space (private or securable, if you choose) where facilitators and participants can conduct discussions and share facilitation discoveries and the results of experimentation. The course content must be added to the LMS or other learning space you have chosen:[footnote]In your institution, an LMS Administrator, IT support, or Instructional Designer may help with this step.[\/footnote]\n
- \n \t
- If using Moodle: restore the latest version of this course into your LMS (you can download it using the link in the OER).<\/li>\n \t
- If NOT using Moodle: establish and configure an online learning environment (LMS, CMS, wiki, etc.) into which you can copy all relevant content from FLO Fundamentals.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<\/li>\n \t
- If possible, find a colleague to assist you as a Co-Facilitator<\/strong>. Your ideal co-facilitator will be someone who can work with you to provide guidance and support to your participants, and can dedicate 15 to 25 hours per week to this task. Ideally, your co-facilitator will be familiar with online learning theories and practices, and with personal and technical skills to engage online participants. Not only do co-facilitators lessen the workload and enrich the facilitation process for you, they increase the facilitation expertise within your institution or organization. It would help a great deal if your colleague has already taken FLO Fundamentals.<\/li>\n \t
- Access your FLO Fundamentals learning environment to review content and tools<\/strong>. Prepare the course site or learning environment and (re)acquaint yourself with the facilitation tools you plan to use. Familiarize yourself with the course content, materials, philosophy, scheduling, flow, etc. of the course.<\/li>\n \t
- Set up a web conferencing tool for online synchronous sessions and conversations<\/strong>. There are many web conferencing applications to choose from, depending on your institution's requirements.<\/li>\n \t
- Connect with your co-facilitator for detailed pre-planning<\/strong>. Develop a planning regime that you\u2019re both comfortable with. Work together to develop a detailed list of tasks to be completed before, during, and after the course runs. You have a lot to do before the course begins:\n
- \n \t
- Ensure an easy-to-access place or process to store planning resources. Agree on planning tools and schedules.<\/li>\n \t
- Customize this Facilitator Task List to fit your needs.<\/li>\n \t
- Review the resources available in the OER and select some activities to try. You could also add your own ideas for icebreakers, discussion topics, resources, images, slides, etc.<\/li>\n \t
- Develop rough agendas for your synchronous sessions.<\/li>\n \t
- Prepare how-to resources for your participants to explain the features of the learning environments and tools.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<\/li>\n \t
- Practice using learning environment tools<\/strong>. If you\u2019re already pretty comfortable with both synchronous and asynchronous online tools, you may wish to try something new; to model for your participants an adventurous open mind when it comes to educational technology. However, be aware of the technical expertise of your potential participants: you don\u2019t want to choose something that most of them will have trouble accessing or learning to use.<\/li>\n \t
- Identify potential participants<\/strong>. Think about where you might find your course participants. Will you enlist from your institution only, or other institutions and organizations? Decide how far ahead you must start the recruitment process.<\/li>\n \t
- Ensure your content is accurate<\/strong>. Once you have a potential learner audience in mind, re-visit the learning environment and carefully review all content (forum post topics, reading lists, directions, etc.). Make sure your content is appropriate for your intended group of participants, and reflects the goals of your institution or program. Remember, the FLO courses have been developed as Open Educational Resources and are licenced under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License<\/a> so you\u2019re free to modify whatever you like! The only requirement is that you provide attribution and don\u2019t imply or suggest endorsement by the licensor.<\/li>\n \t
- Ensure your content is accurate<\/em>.<\/strong> Unfortunately, the web addresses (URLs) of internet resources change often with the result that your linked document may not appear when participants click on the link. Sometimes, through searching, you can locate the new URL for the resource but you may wish to consider finding a more up-to-date resource on the same topic instead.<\/li>\n \t
- (If you haven\u2019t done so already!) Choose a start date and promote<\/strong> your course to your target participants.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n
\n\nYour Technical Skills: The Least You Need to Know<\/h2>\n
\n\nYour participants may dream up a variety of designs for their mini-session and, ideally, you and your co-facilitator will be comfortable setting up the tools they need. If you are working within an LMS, some commonly-used tools include:\n- \n \t
- Forums or discussion groups: LMS-based forums usually offer many different settings and you should be familiar with most of them. Learn to set up both open forums and team-based forums (if available) and explore other settings that can create new possibilities for structuring activities.<\/li>\n \t
- Polls or Choices: Many LMSs offer a tool for quickly polling participants -- handy for any time you want people to indicate a preference (e.g. \"what time should we meet for our synchronous session?\"), or to vote on a single question.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
One- to two weeks before the course begins<\/h2>\nOnce your FLO Fundamentals course is underway, you and your participants will be very busy indeed and you\u2019ll want to have as much preparatory work out of the way as possible. How you set up the course site and engage the community will directly impact how the rest of the course flows; keep in mind that you are modelling good facilitation practices (a detailed list of Core FLO Facilitation Skills is included in Chapter 3<\/a> of this Guide).\n
- \n \t
- Complete recruitment and register participants<\/strong>. You may have begun the recruitment of participants weeks or even months ahead. Make sure you have a process in place to register your participants in accordance with your institution\u2019s policies. If you are managing your own site (e.g. a WordPress site), you may be able to organize this on your own. During recruitment, be sure to:\n
- \n \t
- Communicate expectations around time and teamwork.<\/li>\n \t
- Provide information to your participants about what they\u2019ll need to do and where to find what they\u2019ll need. Your goal is not to overwhelm your participants but to provide enough information so they can jump right in when the course begins.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n\n\n\n\nWhat\u2019s the right number of participants for this course?\n<\/strong>A small class of 10 or fewer participants will make it difficult to sustain rich online conversations. On the other hand, a large class of more than 25 may be more than 2 facilitators can handle. Our experience has shown that a class of 14 - 20 educators is a good size for this course.\n\n<\/div>\n
- \n \t
- Meet with co-facilitator<\/strong>, finalize the week ahead. Now is the time to check the details and do final revisions of your first week\u2019s activities & resources, including:\n
- \n \t
- Discussion topics, resources, images, slides, etc.<\/li>\n \t
- Icebreaker activities.<\/li>\n \t
- Your introductory welcome post.<\/li>\n \t
- Agenda for the first synchronous session.<\/li>\n \t
- Resource to explain the basic features of the synchronous environment & tools.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<\/li>\n \t
- Create or update co-facilitators\u2019 profiles<\/strong> and contact information. Tell a little about yourself in a profile or short biography. Establish your contact information and set \u201coffice hours\u201d (if appropriate).<\/li>\n \t
- Decide which aspects of the course will be displayed<\/strong> when the course opens and which aspects will be hidden until needed. Many learning environments will let you hide or show specific activities until you\u2019re ready for your participants to see them.<\/li>\n \t
- Ensure sufficient starting information for participants<\/strong>. Your new participants will need detailed information about how to access the course and get started (e.g. if using Moodle, see the FLO Handbook on the Hub tab, or consider preparing a screencast).<\/li>\n \t
- Finalize enrollment of participants<\/strong>, send out a Welcome email. Provide the participants with access to the course and\/or information about accessing technical support, if necessary.<\/li>\n \t
- Decide on your week\u2019s start day<\/strong> and modify your directions to the participants and the learning environment settings accordingly (if necessary). This course is not self-paced; the work is organized around weeks. Will the first day of your course week begin on a Sunday, Monday, or some other day?<\/li>\n \t
- Set a time for your first<\/strong> (Week 1) synchronous session<\/strong>. Prepare the synchronous environment as much as possible: upload slides, write\/draw\/embed a welcome message, etc.<\/li>\n \t
- Set up a separate online workspace for each team<\/strong>. You will be dividing up your participants into 4 teams; each team will facilitate one of the weekly mini-sessions. A unique team workspace (e.g. a forum or Google doc) with editing functions for team members should be sufficient. You may wish to limit access (e.g. read-only access) to this workspace to non-team participants.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n
\n\nPrivacy and Confidentiality<\/h2>\n
\n\nIn all FLO courses, our learning relies on the exchange of honest, constructive feedback, and we need to agree on rules that support this foundation of trust. Be aware of your institutional or organizational policies relating to privacy and confidentiality, determine how you will interpret these for your online learning environment, and decide how to communicate these rules to your participants. You can see an example of how privacy and confidentiality concerns are communicated in this page in the FLO Fundamentals Course Handbook<\/a> (in the Moodle OER). Some privacy and confidentiality rules you may wish to adopt:\n- \n \t
- Always seek permission to share content posted by participants.<\/li>\n \t
- When using social media and other online services to complete activities, ensure you are familiar with the levels of privacy available and how the information will be stored and shared. Communicate this information to the participants.<\/li>\n \t
- If you plan on recording your synchronous sessions, confirm that this is OK with the session participants before<\/em> you hit the record button.<\/li>\n \t
- Let participants know who else has access to this course (e.g. participants, facilitators, assistants, website administrators, etc.).<\/li>\n \t
- You may wish to establish \"Vegas rules<\/a>,\" i.e. what happens in the course, stays in the course.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\nSome other decisions you\u2019ll need to make:\n
- \n \t
- Decide which teams each co-facilitator will support<\/strong> during the course, and decide between yourselves what kind of support you will provide.<\/li>\n \t
- Confirm technical support<\/strong> is available and adequate, if needed. If you are providing your own tech support, confirm that your site has been backed up and no significant technical issues (e.g. scheduled downtime) exist. If tech support personnel are available, confirm they are standing by and aware of your course start date and enrollments.<\/li>\n \t
- Review the suggested assessment options for this course and select one (or more)<\/strong> to recommend for your participants. A self-assessment rubric can be adapted so the facilitator can assign a grade, if needed (see FLO Fundamentals Self-Assessment Rubric<\/a>).<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n
As time permits<\/h2>\n
- \n \t
- Practice navigating your course site and other tools.<\/strong> If you are using the OER Moodle version of this course, you\u2019ll find it's a complex environment with lots of moving parts. Take the time to familiarize yourself with the course and revise it as you see fit. Move stuff around and explore different tools, modules, and plugins (if available). Consider (judiciously!) trying some new or less-used tools outside of your LMS or main learning environment.<\/li>\n \t
- Streamline or otherwise improve your course\u2019s navigation tools.<\/strong> When you refer to another part of your course or learning environment, provide a direct link whenever possible. Consider including a navigation screencast showing step-by-step how to get around your learning environment or LMS.<\/li>\n \t
- Fine-tune your reading list.<\/strong> In such a fascinating and fast-moving field like online facilitation, it\u2019s easy to get carried away with the list of readings you provide for participants. Consider making all readings optional but don\u2019t be afraid to strongly recommend a resource you know is important. After all, this course is intended to be informed by research and theory.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\nThe readings you\u2019ll see contained in this course have been chosen carefully to be both high quality and of reasonable length. However, as we have already mentioned, links to internet-based resources can break or become \u201cstale.\u201d Encourage your FLO participants to research and recommend better or more up-to-date readings for their own facilitation week.\n
A few days before the course begins<\/h2>\n
- \n \t
- Connect with your participants<\/strong>. Make sure they\u2019re able to access the learning environment, and communicate some basic information about the course, expectations around time, etc.<\/li>\n \t
- Write your introductory welcome post<\/strong> (e.g. in an \u201cIntroductions\u201d forum within the course or as a new thread in the \u201cOpen\u201d forum) in a friendly, informal, and enthusiastic style that welcomes them to the online course environment and sets a tone for your online community. Encourage participants to respond with their own introductions.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n
\n\nYour Welcome post doesn\u2019t have to be just text\u2026<\/h2>\n
\n\nAs a facilitator of FLO, you\u2019ll want to set an example from the beginning of what good facilitation looks like. Take the time to craft a friendly, welcoming message to begin the process of online community building.\n\nSome tips:<\/strong>\n- \n \t
- Your introductory post doesn\u2019t need to be just text; you can be creative and adventurous with technology. Part of your job as facilitator is to model an attitude of fearless experimentation with communication technologies. What about a video introduction against a backdrop of where you live? Or a narrated slideshow? Of course, you don\u2019t want to intimidate your participants if they\u2019re fairly novice technology users, so be sure to offer choices.<\/li>\n \t
- What to include is up to you; this is your first impression. You might like to talk a bit about your teaching and other professional experience. You could share an anecdote or advice from your own online facilitation experience, or use an icebreaker-type format.<\/li>\n \t
- Make sure your post sets a good impression: establishes instructor presence, presents a clear message without being too long or too short.<\/li>\n \t
- Be sure your introductory post ends with an invitation for your participants to share their introductions in a similar way.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
- \n \t
- Post the week\u2019s overview post<\/strong>, emphasizing for participants:\n
- \n \t
- Activities, etc. they must complete this week.<\/li>\n \t
- Tips on how to navigate the site.<\/li>\n \t
- The need to plan and schedule time to work on the course. Remind participants that a valuable learning experience cannot be achieved using a side-of-the-desk approach.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n\n\n\n\nShare time management tips<\/strong>\nEven with your explicit messages about the amount of time needed, participants may still expect to be able to slide their FLO work in on the weekends or in little bits and pieces between other daily tasks. This can leave people feeling they are always working on the course, even though their time on task may be quite short.\nRemind your participants to set aside time for the course, and repeat that advice early and often.\nEncourage them to book time to work with their facilitation team partners (and you, if they wish) well in advance.\n\n<\/div>\n
- \n \t
- Finalize your questions for Week 1\u2019s forum<\/strong> \u201cBuilding Online Community.\u201d The following are SAMPLE QUESTIONS only (you may have other questions to engage participants on this topic):\n
- \n \t
- What experiences have you had with online learning communities?<\/li>\n \t
- What can an instructor (or facilitator) do to develop and maintain a sense of community in an online learning environment?<\/li>\n \t
- What do you know about the Community of Inquiry model? How does it relate to building a sense of online community?<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<\/li>\n \t
- Organize participants into facilitation teams<\/strong> and post this information for all participants. You may decide to organize teams randomly or according to certain criteria; whether to make team interaction private or to open it up so that other participants can follow their planning process. Decide how and when participants can switch teams (preferably only within a short time period at the start of the course) if they wish.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n
Week 1: Building Online Community<\/h2>\n
\n\nThroughout Week 1, your role is to establish a strong facilitator presence and effectively demonstrate what good online facilitation looks like. Aim to do this as transparently as possible; think out loud to your participants to show them how you plan and facilitate the various activities. This may be a good opportunity to incorporate other collaboration tools, such as wikis or other co-authoring platforms, to show how it is possible to communicate outside of a forum (which tends to be the default discussion tool).\n\n\n\n\nHelping participants cope who may feel overwhelmed during the first week.<\/strong>\n\nOffer brief explanations, clarifications and practical tips in an informal and friendly way. If your LMS offers forum \u201csubscriptions\u201d (in which participants automatically receive an email copy of all forum posts) make sure that not all forums are configured this way, and let participants know how to \u201cunsubscribe\u201d from a forum whenever possible.\n\n<\/div>\nWeek 1, Day 1 (the first day of the week):<\/h3>\n
- \n \t
- Morning: Post facilitators\u2019 personal intros<\/strong> to the Introductory Forum.<\/li>\n \t
- Morning: Begin the Building Online Community forum<\/strong> activity. Post your questions to launch and guide the discussion.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n
\n\n\n\nFind ways to allow participants to share their prior knowledge and experience. You can use the Building Online Community forum introductory activity to make the positive and negative perceptions of online learning visible by asking each participant to contribute words and an image that reflects their ideas about online community.\n\n<\/div>\n- \n \t
- Evening: Finalize details for the first synchronous session<\/strong> in your agenda and\/or slidedeck, including:\n
- \n \t
- How to use the synchronous environment.<\/li>\n \t
- Icebreaker: quick intros of participants.<\/li>\n \t
- Review of the agenda - invite additional ideas.<\/li>\n \t
- Highlight course structure (and flow): roles, expectations, team facilitation, reflective practice, self-assessment.<\/li>\n \t
- Explain the purpose of the Facilitation Team Workspace with an activity plan and planning forum.<\/li>\n \t
- Highlight the importance of feedback, journaling, reflection, time management tips.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n
Week 1 Day 2<\/h3>\n
- \n \t
- Earlier in day: Remind participants about the synchronous session<\/strong> a few hours before the session begins. (Reiterate that this session is not required although it is highly recommended.) Your reminder may be a forum post, LMS message, email, etc. Re-post session time, access information, and link to technical support, if needed.<\/li>\n \t
- Morning: Introduce the Learning Journal<\/strong> (perhaps as a post to the Open Forum). In your post:\n
- \n \t
- Explain the concept and the value of maintaining a record of what participants are learning and want to remember.<\/li>\n \t
- Remind them to regularly pause, reflect, assess and synthesize their learning.<\/li>\n \t
- Recommend they document these thoughts in a personal learning journal using paper-based, audio\/video, or electronic means.<\/li>\n \t
- Encourage participants to share nuggets (insights) in a Learning Journal.\nThe Learning Journal is explained in more detail in the Course Handbook<\/a>.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<\/li>\n \t
- Later: Host first synchronous session<\/strong>. Keep in mind this is your opportunity to connect with your participants both aurally and visually, and to demonstrate the value that a synchronous collaboration tool can bring to an online learning experience. If possible:\n
- \n \t
- Ensure you have technical support people (or your co-facilitator) standing by to assist with access problems.<\/li>\n \t
- Enter the synchronous session at least a half-hour early to greet early arrivals and troubleshoot navigation problems within the synchronous environment.<\/li>\n \t
- Remember to notify participants that the session will be recorded (if this is possible and if all agree) and hit the record button as your session begins.<\/li>\n \t
- Check in with participants about their comfort level navigating the site during the session and address any confusions.<\/li>\n \t
- Evening: Post a brief follow-up report about the synchronous session<\/strong>. Talk up the value of the session and encourage participants to attend the next synchronous session (mention the date and time). If the session was recorded, let participants know when a recording may be available.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n\n\n\n\nBe pro-active in the first week.\n<\/strong>If it doesn\u2019t come up spontaneously in the conversation: mention that the first week of an online course is often overwhelming (for both participants and facilitators), that it will get better, and that you will do what you can to mitigate start-up stresses.\n\n<\/div>\nSometimes the topic of feeling overwhelmed does come up naturally. The following is an example of one participant\u2019s experience (from the participant\u2019s Weekly Journal Share Forum for Week 1):\n\n\n
Time management, reflection and empathy<\/h2>\n
\n\nOne participant's experience:<\/strong>\n\n\"I have a deep empathy for my students now on the first week experience. I think when we \"know the material\" we forget what it feels like to \"not know.\" As a student in my first online course, I now know how it feels to be in that place and will be more understanding of my students.\"\n\n\"Well, this week was hard. In taking time for reflection I realize that the commitment of this course while I am taking on a new role at work, in conjunction with my current full-time job and a side contract, is a lot. Time management has been a reoccurring issue for me as I never feel like I have enough time.\"\n\n\"I copied this sentence from the week 1 reading materials: 'When a person is feeling anxious, the likelihood that they will interpret things negatively increases.' I need to have this on a sticky note on my computer. I really valued the comments from others in the course about feeling overwhelmed. Online learning requires time to get used to the new ways of doing learning.\"\n\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\nWeek 1 Day 3<\/h3>\n
- \n \t
- Connect with members of the first participant facilitation team<\/strong>. Post a message in the team planning forum for Diversity of Learners to encourage this team to get underway.<\/li>\n \t
- Remind participants to use Schedule and begin Learning Journal<\/strong>. Use a post in the Open Forum to remind participants to begin their Learning Journal and to use the FLO Fundamentals Schedule to keep on track. More information about the Learning Journal<\/a> and FLO Fundamentals Schedule<\/a> is available in the OER course. Make sure you revise the schedule to fit your own situation.<\/li>\n \t
- Post the recording (if available) of the synchronous session<\/strong>. Use a post in the Open Forum to provide a link to the recording and to highlight any key or outstanding topics.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n
Week 1 Day 4<\/h3>\n
- Remind participants to use Schedule and begin Learning Journal<\/strong>. Use a post in the Open Forum to remind participants to begin their Learning Journal and to use the FLO Fundamentals Schedule to keep on track. More information about the Learning Journal<\/a> and FLO Fundamentals Schedule<\/a> is available in the OER course. Make sure you revise the schedule to fit your own situation.<\/li>\n \t
- Connect with members of the first participant facilitation team<\/strong>. Post a message in the team planning forum for Diversity of Learners to encourage this team to get underway.<\/li>\n \t
- Later: Host first synchronous session<\/strong>. Keep in mind this is your opportunity to connect with your participants both aurally and visually, and to demonstrate the value that a synchronous collaboration tool can bring to an online learning experience. If possible:\n
- Morning: Introduce the Learning Journal<\/strong> (perhaps as a post to the Open Forum). In your post:\n
- Earlier in day: Remind participants about the synchronous session<\/strong> a few hours before the session begins. (Reiterate that this session is not required although it is highly recommended.) Your reminder may be a forum post, LMS message, email, etc. Re-post session time, access information, and link to technical support, if needed.<\/li>\n \t
- Morning: Begin the Building Online Community forum<\/strong> activity. Post your questions to launch and guide the discussion.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n
- Morning: Post facilitators\u2019 personal intros<\/strong> to the Introductory Forum.<\/li>\n \t
- Finalize your questions for Week 1\u2019s forum<\/strong> \u201cBuilding Online Community.\u201d The following are SAMPLE QUESTIONS only (you may have other questions to engage participants on this topic):\n
- Post the week\u2019s overview post<\/strong>, emphasizing for participants:\n
- Write your introductory welcome post<\/strong> (e.g. in an \u201cIntroductions\u201d forum within the course or as a new thread in the \u201cOpen\u201d forum) in a friendly, informal, and enthusiastic style that welcomes them to the online course environment and sets a tone for your online community. Encourage participants to respond with their own introductions.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n
- Streamline or otherwise improve your course\u2019s navigation tools.<\/strong> When you refer to another part of your course or learning environment, provide a direct link whenever possible. Consider including a navigation screencast showing step-by-step how to get around your learning environment or LMS.<\/li>\n \t
- Confirm technical support<\/strong> is available and adequate, if needed. If you are providing your own tech support, confirm that your site has been backed up and no significant technical issues (e.g. scheduled downtime) exist. If tech support personnel are available, confirm they are standing by and aware of your course start date and enrollments.<\/li>\n \t
- Decide which aspects of the course will be displayed<\/strong> when the course opens and which aspects will be hidden until needed. Many learning environments will let you hide or show specific activities until you\u2019re ready for your participants to see them.<\/li>\n \t
- Meet with co-facilitator<\/strong>, finalize the week ahead. Now is the time to check the details and do final revisions of your first week\u2019s activities & resources, including:\n
- Complete recruitment and register participants<\/strong>. You may have begun the recruitment of participants weeks or even months ahead. Make sure you have a process in place to register your participants in accordance with your institution\u2019s policies. If you are managing your own site (e.g. a WordPress site), you may be able to organize this on your own. During recruitment, be sure to:\n
- Identify potential participants<\/strong>. Think about where you might find your course participants. Will you enlist from your institution only, or other institutions and organizations? Decide how far ahead you must start the recruitment process.<\/li>\n \t
- Access your FLO Fundamentals learning environment to review content and tools<\/strong>. Prepare the course site or learning environment and (re)acquaint yourself with the facilitation tools you plan to use. Familiarize yourself with the course content, materials, philosophy, scheduling, flow, etc. of the course.<\/li>\n \t
- Set up your own learning environment and copy content<\/strong>. Before you can offer FLO Fundamentals, you need a learning environment \u2013 a virtual place to host the course. At the very minimum, you need an online space (private or securable, if you choose) where facilitators and participants can conduct discussions and share facilitation discoveries and the results of experimentation. The course content must be added to the LMS or other learning space you have chosen:[footnote]In your institution, an LMS Administrator, IT support, or Instructional Designer may help with this step.[\/footnote]\n
- You can also use the following Task List Explanations alongside the Task List for more background information and ideas.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
- See FLO Fundamentals Task List<\/a> for a concise, detailed list of facilitator tasks.<\/li>\n \t
![\"Magnifying](\"https:\/\/opentextbc.ca\/flofacilitatorguide\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/169\/2020\/04\/BCCampus-FLOGuide-LongExample-Colour.png\")
\n\nWeek 1 Journal Share - by Sylvia Riessner<\/em> - Friday, 2 October 2015, 6:53 AM\n\nThis is a nuggets starter post for everyone's journal share for Week 1.\n\nPlease reply to this thread when posting your journal share for this week. This will have the effect of collecting all the posts each week.\n\nA quick reminder from the Handbook:\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/opentextbc.ca\/flofacilitatorguide\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/169\/2020\/04\/BCCampus-FLOGuide-Diversity-Colour-1-300x298.png\")
\n