Participation dilemmas are not unheard of in online courses. It's to your advantage to think about how you would approach problems as the facilitator of a peer-to-peer course ahead of time. We'll be speaking with expert Tony Carr this week about facilitating and moderating. We've pulled the following suggested excerpt's from his larger work Facilitating Online which was co-authored with Shaheeda Jaffer and Jeanne Smuts and published as an Open Educational Resource by the Centre for Educational Technology at University of Cape Town in 2009.

1. Developing strategies to encourage participation   (Tuesday - Thursday)

We participate in learning communities in different ways. In the online environment where we cannot see or hear each other, this may lead to misunderstandings and possibly even to conflict. As an example, highly vocal participants and their more reflective peers may have very different ideas of how learning happens.

Task: Imagine that you are a course leader. Y ou encourage participants to contact you if they experience any problems in the course. It is Friday of Week 1 and you find the following message in the ‘Week 1 Reflections’ forum:

One thing that really irritates me is the really loud students who like to dominate discussions and then have the nerve to call those of us who prefer to observe and reflect a bit, before participating, ‘lurkers’.

It is 20 minutes since the message was posted and none of the participants has yet replied. How would you respond to this message?

Discuss your thoughts on how you will handle this situation in the discussion on the new courses list at p2pu-new-courses@googlegroups.com
 

2. Developing guidelines for effective online facilitation  (Wednesday - Friday)

There are so many books and articles about facilitation in general and online facilitation in particular. What have  we learned that can help us to become highly effective online facilitators? We will share what we think are the most important aspects of online facilitation.

Task: Read the article ‘The art of hosting good conversations online’ http://www.rheingold.com/texts/artonlinehost.html by Howard Rheingold. Then develop a document on what you think are the most important aspects of online facilitation together on the etherpad at http://pad.p2pu.org/facilitation-dilemmas

3. Deepening Connections (Live Meeting on Thursday) 

Most online learning communities and courses still rely heavily on asynchronous text communication. Because we  do not see or hear each other, it is easy to start feeling isolated. If we want to achieve anything together, we will need  effective strategies that deepen connection and trust. One of the key abilities of a facilitator is to develop strategies for  nurturing trust and building a safe environment in which participants feel confident to communicate.

Task: Imagine that you are a course leader. You have sent an email to a few participants who have been very quiet for  several days. One participant responds by saying:

Last week I participated in the discussion on the different online technologies, but I received almost no responses to  the contributions I made. It felt like the other participants and the facilitator were talking over me and only with each  other. I know I possibly know the least about the topic, but I really hate feeling excluded and am wondering if I want to  continue with the course.

Think about your reply to this email and how you would solve the problem. Are there wider implications for how we can sustain and deepen connection and trust within our learning community?

Discuss your thoughts on how you would handle this situation during the live meeting on Thursday in tokbox. The address for the meeting will be posted here 20 minutes before the meeting starts. Meeting room: http://www.tokbox.com/conf/tvhydepe9jbe1uvp

most content & images from Facilitating Online CC-By-NC-SA

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