6201 Relections on my Facilitation of Lesson 6-Managerial Before Class Starts(3-5-15) 3-23-15

REFLECTIONS ON MY FACILITATION EXPERIENCE

6201  LESSON 6 – MANAGERIAL BEFORE CLASS STARTS 3-5-15

3-23-15

     I was especially excited to practice the synchronous communication using Collaborate which I want very much to use in our Survey of Biology 1100 online course.  We do not have it as part of our Blackboard LMS currently but I am expecting to have a tool like it in the near future.  Having never facilitated a live session before I was also somewhat nervous about how students would respond.  I prepared the session by reading all of the lesson material and reading articles.  I then organized the content and planned the powerpoint lesson to be informative and clear for students to use.  Starting with an icebreaker got students talking and ready for the lesson.  As I went through the powerpoint I felt more comfortable and tried to engage them by asking questions and letting them make comments.  I tried to include things that I had experienced teaching online to provide an interesting connection for the students.  The more practice I get at live facilitation the better I will get in presenting as well as being able to actively engage the students in the lesson.

     For the asynchronous portion of our facilitation, my understanding was that we were to be present in the threads but not dominate.  I chose to not make my own original posts, although several students said that they would have liked to have had my original opinions.  I made it a point to go to each student’s original posts for each of two threads and make a comment and posed a question to redirect the discussion.  If I had additional time I would have gone into each person’s thread again to continue my presence in the discussion.  As the week went on I felt that it was easier to post and stay involved with each discussion thread.

     Overall I felt that my facilitation experience was positive.  Facilitating both the synchronous and asynchronous communication required a lot of preparation and time involvement, but I felt that I learned the basics of facilitation in terms of using Collaborate from the instructor side, presenting a lesson, and beginning to learn skills in engaging students actively in the lesson.  I am looking forward to using both synchronous and asynchronous communication with my online students in the future as we revise our course to include these important elements for building a learning community in the classroom.