online course facilitation building a community of learners

Online Course Facilitation

Building a Community of Learners

Issues

• Newness of the Environment– Trust

• Facilitator• Participants

– Navigation• Course areas• Discussion and assignments

Issues

• Technical– Hardware

• Computers• Dial-up vs Broadband

– Software• Browser• Virus protection• Applications for posting assignments

Issues

• Time Constraints– Participants– Yours– AOHS

Issues

• Lack of visual cues– Text only environment– Participants prior experiences

• With Facilitator• With each other• With Online Courses

Sarcasm

What are your concerns?

Effective Professional Development

• Focus

• Balance

• Engage

• Relate

• Provide

• Support

• Foster

Source: http://www.edtechleaders.org/Resources/opd_report/genconsiderations.htm

Types of Online Professional Development

• Broadcast approaches

• Self-paced, independent study

• College lecture course model

• Tutorial models

• Learning community model

Learning Community

• Interactions among all the

participants and facilitator

• Many-to-many interactions

• Synchronous "chats"

Building Community

• Resources– Provided here– In this course shell– On the web

• Adult learning theory– Google Search– In this course shell

• Modeling– Email– Responses

• “Judo”

Practice

• Select partner

• Login to Tech Tools training course

• Click Class Discussion – Open Practice– Formulate solutions to the challenges– Post your response

• Review responses

Review of Presentation

• What worked?

• What didn’t?

• What is missing?

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