Facilitating Online 2011: March 14th Setting the scene

This week we would like you to think about what you want to achieve during this course - what is it you want to learn to facilitate? Are you a teacher wanting to know how to facilitate online teaching and learning? Or, do you work for a non-profit organisation wanting to know how to facilitate online communities and networks, or run information campaigns? It may be that you work for a business and would like to know how to facilitate online meetings or collaborative projects. This plan will act as a guide for your learning, and will also help us to tailor the content of this course to meet your needs.

Here are some ideas about online facilitation that you may wish to explore during this course:

Meetings
Events eg seminars, workshops or conferences
One to one meetings eg academic supervision or business coaching/mentoring
Long term (or short term) projects eg collaborative work
Teaching an online class
Presenting information to sell a service or business
Develop an online community or network
Run an online campaign

Web conferencing

Join the virtual class meeting in Elluminate to share your ideas and plans with other participants

Wednesday 16th March 20.00 hours New Zealand (World Clock)
Thursday 17th March 13.00 hours New Zealand (World Clock). This session will be co-facilitated by Sarah Stewart (Otago Polytechnic, New Zealand) and Greg Walker, Leeward Community College, Hawaii. The students of FO2011 will be joining students of Leeward Community College until the middle of April. We will be sharing resources, conversations and supporting each other. In this session, Greg and Sarah will be explaining how this collaboration will work.

Activity

1. Watch the video by Clive Shepherd called "Welcome to the virtual classroom". This video explains the difference between asynchronous and synchronous communication, and explains why and how you'd use online communication.
2. Join the 'Facilitating Online' Google email group.

NB: This resource will be available to facilitated and formal students.

3. Make a plan for what you want to learn and explore, and write it up (or present in another way eg mindmap, video recording) on your blog. Answer these questions.

What do you want to learn to facilitate?
What are you doing now in terms of online facilitation?
What would you like to achieve, change or do more of?
What do you need to do or make happen to achieve your goal?

4. For those of you who are educators and/or are interested in using virtual worlds and Second Life for online facilitation, there is an opportunity to attend a free international conference Virtual Worlds Best Practice in Education on 17-19th March. This is not a required activity - we will be looking more closely at Second Life and virtual worlds later in the course. However, this is a great opportunity to see how Second Life is used for facilitating a large international event, as well as hearing how virtual worlds are used for facilitating teaching and learning.

Click here for more information about how to get started in Second Life.

5. For those of you who are interested in seeing how others use Elluminate to facilitate events, or learning more about online teaching and learning, you may wish to attend one or more events that are freely available via LearnCentral (this is not a required event). LearnCentral is an online community that is sponsored by Elluminate, which produces asynchronous resources, synchronous webinars, networking opportunities and a free conferencing space. There is a program of weekly events held in Elluminate which are all free to attend.