My first experience as an online facilitator

Facilitator and collaborative learning

As an online facilitator I really enjoyed putting together the power point presentation for the Wimba session. When I started preparing for the live wimba session there were a lot of uncertainties dwelling in my mind concerning preparing the right material. The first thing I did was to review the “pdf” Wimba resource guide online. Reviewing the guide helped me to understand some basic things about the Wimba tools. After reviewing the guide and logging into the practice Wimba session, I felt somewhat comfortable with using the Wimba tools. As the week progressed I felt the need to visit the Wimba practice room to review my power point presentation one last time, after that time it was do or die. Three things that were very successful for me was the reviewing the “pdf Wimba resource guide, taking time to practice or to become familiar with the Wimba tools and presetting the power point presentation for the live session.

My experience with working with the asynchronous activities or the discussion questions was somewhat surprising to me. I started out logging in three times a day, once in the morning, next at mid day and again in the evening to check for new posting. The surprise was that it did not take up as much time as I thought it would. I really think this worked out well for me even though I must say it did require me to be more conscious of my time management skills.

Overall the experience was rewarding and my perspective on the online facilitator has changed somewhat. The main reason for the slight change is because I now know from this one experience that to facilitate online is a two way street. If you have supportive classmates and your instructor is assessable you cannot go wrong. I mean you can consider the experience successful because everyone is learning together. The one important thing I will keep in mind is that collaboration is necessary for the online facilitation experience to be truly successful.

Part Two Summary

Part two in the second covered a number of things that will help me with my future goal of teaching online classes and in the traditional classroom environment. As I Reflect back on the fifth week of class when the information presented was focused on the pedagogy of a virtual course. There were a number of things that will be useful for me. First it will be the idea of presenting a lecture in a story like format as pages rather than as one file. The fact of just sitting at home conducting a lecture for students sounds great and in fact is a very good thing. However there are so many things to consider when putting together an online lecture.

Another very interesting concept that was discussed was the social role of building a community for the online environment. This is something that is very important for the online teaching and learning environment. There were many activities presented in the reading about how to build a social community to engage in ongoing educational activities. One suggestion given was to discover and contribute to the communication etiquette for the group. Another suggestion is to supportive relationships with others as individuals and as group members. The social role in building a community for the online environment is definitely necessary for the success of any course.

The managerial role gave insight on strategies to help organize a online course before the class starts and after the class begins. The material had some interesting elements in both units concerning knowing how to structure the class from the beginning phase. This was followed by a variety of ways of setting up the syllabus and placing other resources on the home page in an organized manner. I found this activity quite useful. Posturing as students, the material broke down the use of all the online tools including chat rooms, discussion boards and calendars. The online tools were instrumental from the student’s perspective as it enabled one to experience how this all comes together from an instructor’s point of view.

The last unit in this session denotes the technical skills and role for the instructor, which requires teaching as well as designs and/or development of courses. Hence, it is necessary for the instructor to have the appropriate technical skills in teaching online. For instance, an instructor must be knowledgeable of a variety of electronic techniques as training tools to reach an array of students that have different learning styles. Also, instructors must endeavor to stay abreast with contemporary information in this industry in order to maintain effectiveness in the class room environment.