Teaching and Organizing a Virtual Learning Environment --> Guide on the Side
The journey of exploring the nuanced facets of online teaching has been enlightening. The core takeaway is the transition from the traditional role of a teacher to a facilitator, which is akin to being a 'guide on the side' rather than a 'sage on the stage'. Here’s a summary of my understanding and how I plan to implement these insights in my virtual classroom:
Identifying Facilitation Methods:
Online Facilitation: It's about steering the learning experience more than dictating it. The role morphs into being an enabler who assists in the learning process, fostering a conducive environment for learners to interact, explore, and learn at their pace.
Student Autonomy: Encouraging students to take charge of their learning is crucial. This can be achieved by creating a framework where they can explore, make mistakes, and learn in a supportive environment.
Different Teaching Approaches: The spectrum of teaching approaches from teacher-centered to student-centered, each with its level of interaction, provides a blueprint. I plan to adopt a blended approach to balance directive teaching with facilitative interactions.
Developing a Facilitation Plan:
Learner-Centeredness: The focus will always be on the learner. This involves creating a partnership with students to solve problems, investigate concepts, and discuss issues. It's about guiding them through assignments as they begin to own their learning journey.
Problem-Based Learning: Introducing real-world problems to instigate curiosity and engagement. This technique will make learning more meaningful and application-based.
Informative Feedback: Providing timely, personalized, and constructive feedback to ensure the learning path is on the right track. Encouraging peer feedback can also foster a sense of community and shared learning.
Evaluating the Facilitation Process:
Engagement Metrics: Observing student engagement, their interaction with the material and with each other, provides valuable insights into the effectiveness of the facilitation process.
Student Performance and Feedback: Evaluating assignments, discussions, and course evaluations will offer a comprehensive understanding of the learning outcomes achieved.
Continuous Reflection: Reflecting on the course design, communication, and facilitation strategies to identify areas of improvement. This includes reviewing student grades, course evaluations, and also my communication and response times.
Reflecting on the Facilitation Process:
Holistic Review: Assessing the course from a bird's eye view to see if the objectives were met, and where the gaps are. This includes reviewing student engagement, communication, and achievement of learning outcomes.
Technology Utilization: Ensuring that technology serves as a tool for enhanced learning and not a hurdle. Being adept with the LMS and other tech tools is essential to guide students smoothly through the course.
Community Building: Facilitating a safe and supportive environment where students can interact, debate, and learn from each other. Encouraging respectful discourse and valuing diverse perspectives will be at the core of this community building.
The 'Guide on the Side' model resonates well with the ethos of online education, where the learning landscape is democratized, and the teacher evolves into a facilitator. This transition is what I aim to achieve, creating a learner-centric environment that not only imparts knowledge but also nurtures curiosity, critical thinking, and a collaborative spirit among students. Through continuous reflection and adaptation, I aspire to refine my facilitation approach to meet the dynamic needs of online education and ensure a fruitful, engaging, and enriching learning experience for all my students.
With the many roles of the instructor it is important that you convey to students all expectations and consequences for not meeting those expectations. To provide timely feedback to encourage learning and keeping them involved in their own learning.
Feedback is extremely important.
All the different ways in which to provide feedback and make sure that support is being provided to the learners.
I must communicate feedback to my students proactively, offering prompt, informative feedback.
Communication is key when teaching a virtual class, clear instruction, expectations, and goals will ensure students have a full understanding of the material. Also being flexible to ensure students are learning properly
Evaluation during the course and at the end is very important.
Understand the role of facilitator, using proper engagement, manage expectations, use clear communication, foster critical thinking and discussions, value student opinions, use proper assessments.
The module and the comments were useful. I'm going to work on these tasks:
Faster feedback, including queries to students who miss deadlines.
More positive feedback.
Greater use of blogs to encourage students to work together.
As a facilitator, I need to evaluate student learning to determine if learning occurred and if the academic, social, and pragmatic needs of the learner were met.
I'm learning information that I find to be extremely helpful when facilitating my online courses.
I think facilitating discussion boards and having students reap the benefits of the medium the hardest.
Feedback from students is absolutely important for the instructor and future students
I thought the basics of this module could be summed up in the statement: "There are three basic approaches to teaching in an online environment. These approaches range from teacher-oriented to student-oriented, from limited interaction among and between students and faculty to high levels of interaction." I teach mostly in a synchrouous online environment. My approach is predominately teacher-oriented.
I try to be careful with feedback. But what if a student ignores it? Some students simply don't or won't take the time to engage in the course. This is one of my challenges.
Student based assessment and feedback will help foster a better learning environment.
