Facilitator,Moderator and Teacher Role

I work as a facilitator in blended delivery(online and classroom) course and we too face the challenge of making our roles as a facilitator understood as mentioned in the post To Facilitate or to Teach by Leigh.

Facilitating online groups is different to facilitating face to face in self-paced classroom as students learn by sharing with one another and support from facilitator. In the face-to-face setting the facilitator gets chance to clear lot of misunderstandings and understandings , than in a online setting, where it could take days to straighten out.

At this point creating a teaching-learning environment becomes necessary. Its not easy to achieve it and takes time, as students start participating in online discussion forums and get in the e-rhythm. Compared to this, students have the added advantage in face-to-face teaching. Can we say "skillful facilitation is skillful teaching".

Facilitator role is to increase student participation and motivate them by raising curiousity of the course. A good facilitator would offer skills that lead to students learning. As someone in response to Leigh's post talked about Success of online-learning is because you are encouraging and stretching their learning. Facilitator as compared to a moderator catches up with students on their progress and provides student support. I was going slow with blogging , but thanks to Sarah's wake up calls I am on to it. Yes, I agree with Leigh about assuming the role of a teacher, but difficult to adopt and maintain the role of a facilitator, whether its face-to-face or in a online environment.

The facilitators role involves circumstances that enable students to engage with the learning opportunities and construct for themselves their understandings and skills.[1]

A teacher is someone who too enables, helps student learn, by giving them tools and detail explanation (unlike a facilitator). A teacher transfers his/her knowledge,experience with learners. A teacher is a guide,mentor who establishes relationship and understanding to help the student achieve its goals.

A teacher explains how problems are solved and also explains lessons to the students. Students taught in a inspiring way, enjoy learning and are more motivated to succeed. Teacher will undermine the role of a facilitator, when teacher is not able to provide students with opportunities to learn by exploring themselves.
Moderators are users (or employees) of the forum who are granted access to the posts and threads of all members for the purpose of moderating discussion (similar to arbitration) and also keeping the forum clean (neutralising spam and spambots etc). [2]
A Facilitator can also act like a moderator.

In Gilly Salmons Five stage model for e-moderating , each stage requires different levels of interaction,and would require different type of support from moderator (if he/she is also the facilitator). Moderator moderates all activities by facilitators and students. There will be times when students may get side-tracked, moderator may advice facilitator/students about things expected in the forum. Moderator role is also to ensure activities in the forum are engaging and solutions are appropritate to their queries.

Recent studies have shown that the role of the online instructor should not be limited to that of a facilitator. The online instructor also creates a "teaching presence" through appropriate organization of course materials as well as facilitative discourse to guide students toward critical exploration of the content [3].

References

[1] Retrieved 15 Sep 2009 http://www.education4skills.com/jtylee/teacher_as_facilitator.html

[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forum_moderator#Moderator

[3] Anderson, Terry, Liam Rourke, D. Randy Garrison, and Walter Archer (2001). "Assessing Teaching Presence in a Computer Conferencing Context." JALN Volume 5, Issue 2-September.

This,that & other of Online Community

As promised..continuation of online community,Part II

better late than never

This, That and the Other, by Mark Pesce
The videos and the article analyses the impact of hyper connectivity, where crowds turned communities or vice-versa connect to share, or to benefit from being connected to the world wide web.
When i finished school, it wasn’t very common to have a phone connnection, let alone email ids. However with help of social networking sites like batchmates and facebook i managed to get in touch with my school friends who are all over the world. Gosh so much changed over the past 15 years.
One of my mates who i haven’t met for 15 years had a baby girl and he shared the photos to all through facebook wall. It was instant, i feel like i have actually seen the baby, i will eventually see progress of baby through facebook And if/when we meet up it won’t be odd and not many surprised faces, just friendly exciting gestures. It all depends on how we keep going.
That’s the power of connectivity. But it is still us the users who can step forward using/sharing information. Its upto us how we want to further use or share information learnt.
Just like in my case, i may not have wanted to get in touch with my old friends, or may not want to acknowledge someone.
Mark takes us through a roller coaster ride of thousand pictures in this.It was intense, fast and mind boggling in the first instance ,re-reading points clearer.
In this Mark mentions the law of Dunbar’s number, which defines threshold between community and crowd. How many connections can we manage? One of my friend has 530 connections in facebook, i got curious (i haven’t reached 100 yet). I asked her “How she managed to be connected to so many, or does she” guess the answer.
That gives a insight on managing hyper-networked relationships. Crowd sourced knowledge can be shared within a community.
In the other I could relate to the aspect of taking initiative. We have lots of ideas which we keep to ourselves, sometimes share and then go further or do nothing about it. Just like in Marks case, where people expected from his carrier service. Stepping up....next step, or be clear of your intentions. If someone’s creates a community forum i will participate but not going to be a leader. Or take it as an opportunity to learn and lead, maybe you are born with it: p
It’s the same with online communities; users need to be engaged, shown solutions to problems for relationships to be built. Trust can be imbibed and progress made. That would make online community a healthy online community.

Online Communities:- Groups of people communicate online asynchronously and share a sense of belonging among one another. A classic example would be Wikipedia where people share, moderate and learn collaboratively.

Having pondered on points from this, that and other, question arises:
"Does technology have all the answers"

What is an online community-Youtube

About YouTube

YouTube is the world's most popular online video community allowing millions of people to discover, watch and share originally created videos. YouTube provides a forum for people to connect, inform and inspire others across the globe and acts as a distribution platform for original content creators and advertisers large and small.[1]

Watched the video An anthropological introduction to YouTube - Michael Wesch video presented at the Library of Congress, June 23rd 2008, where he talks about the culture of Youtube and how we connect as a community through it.

Its 55 minutes long but definitely worth the watch, as you gain lots of insights on the power of technology, power of YouTube.

It’s a great video about YouTube, which is becoming the biggest public space in the world.

Here Michael Wesch talks about new forms of communities, technology, expression and identities emerging.

Following are the points noted from his video:
o “88% of YouTube is New and Original Content, Professor Michael Wesch Says”
o Medium of community for YouTube is the platform itself that is the webcamera and screens. It’s asynchronous, which means users are not responding straightway.We also won’t know when,where someone’s going to be watching us.
o Participant observation is the core of the methodology, participants are not only observed but they also participate.
o The advantages of recording and uploading are that the events can be recalled. When something is played for the 1st time its cognition and when replayed 2nd time, it becomes re-cognition, which is deeper level of awareness.
o When a video is watched it’s anonymous. I liked his formula:
Anonymity + physical distance + rare dialogue=freedom to experience without fear or anxiety.
o YouTube offers possibility of connection without constraints. We crave connection to humans without constraints (without feeling the responsibility)
o ”Media do not just distance us, they connect us in many way, and sometimes distance allows us to connect more deeply as a community than ever before”
o Thousands of people all over the world collaborate together, connection here is the key “We are all connected”. Strong community is emerging out of it.

This video highlights the fact that technology is still about people.

Many YouTube’s have gone on to create a strong community on YouTube that extend beyond the screen into physical contexts. There are a growing number of YouTube gatherings worldwide in which Tubers meet one another face-to-face.

YouTube is sort of a necessity in my home now, and the person who uses it the most is my 2.5 month old daughter for her rhymes or cartoons. She waits patiently when its buffering and asks us to wait too “it will come,wait" she says not allowing us to touch the mouse.Ummmmm....ok, just need to be more patient.

The factor that would determine an online community in this context would be:
Users are able to connect share, learn in a asynchronous environment(talking about 100% online).
The ability to replay videos, to gain better re-cognition and re-enforcement.
Participant observation, where the user/learner observes and is being observed, thereby giving the power & responsibility to the same individual. (In the end “all”).
Be able to reach communities worldwide through the common platform which is web camera and the monitor .

Sense of community is reflected in the interaction patterns of the users.

Next on blog looking @ link This, That and the Other, by Mark Pesce

References
[1] Retrieved 26th Aug 09 http://www.youtube.com/press_room_entry?entry=obf8VKKHwSk

Week 2 Facilitating Online Course

Hi everybody,
Firstly i apologise for coming in picture after 1 week.Took a while to get sorted.
I work as a Computing Faciliator for FreeB community learning department of Manukau Inst of Technology.We offer self paced ,facilitator led free courses in Office 2007.
There is never a dull moment, there is always teaching and learning.Love this experience of interchange and would like to know how to achieve teaching and learning in a e-learning environment.
Heres to my second blog,yay.
Cheers
Meena

E-Padhai Journey-

Hi all,
Thanks for visiting my blog.
My 1st step in the blog world.
My name is Meena Adhikari.
Main reason to blog:
Its part of the e-learning course that i am doing from Manukau Inst of Technology.
another reason to blog:
The only thing that remains when we look back are memories frozen in time.