Book Review Day Five

This last chapter in Facilitating online learning: Effective strategies for moderators allowed that facilitators may make mistakes. We may create, unintentionally, the further development of participants’ ideas. The examples from the author’s practice are interesting and entertaining because they are examples of bad practice. Further explanation is given on how the facilitator hindered or derailed the dialogue. It was often tone or voice but the dreaded “sage on the stage” made a frequent appearance in a few different ways to block the cultivate of pragmatic dialogue.

“Hijacking the Dialogue” centers around control according to the authors. Facilitators do this by making the communication between them and the students. This creates a battle for intellectual space. Or they create questions, questions and more questions without relationship to the concepts brought forward with coursework. These questions can override the views raised by the participants. Facilitators can stand in the middle introducing unnecessary praise, promoting personal values and mediating ides through interpreting them through personal experiences (that do not provide direction forward to posts). Facilitators who advocate during posts risk overt opposition or persistent passive resistance. No one likes to be told to “do this”.

Other type of mistake is that of omission in facilitating. If a facilitator is in the “whoosh” mode, they are staying on the sidelines too long. They miss interesting and productive comments as they zip on by. This type of moderator you assist in transforming a reflective dialogue space to a mere social area. The thinking is that if this type of moderator does nothing (wishing or believing) the empty space will be seen as an invitation and the spirit of inquiry will take over in the participants. Collison and the others be that summaries also have the potential to block communication. They remind us that letter form posts should be avoided by the facilitator because it is seen as a social form of communication.

Upon reflection, the information provided by the authors was helpful to practice. They provided motivating breakdowns of specific skills for those who fill the role of facilitators. Clear dos and don’ts were listed with specific examples of how they work or why they don’t. It seemed that some of the concepts were limited by the framework of the courses the authors chose to draw their text from. In these two specific courses the organization of duties for facilitators and moderators is clear. My interest is if they will work in other types of course. It appears from comments from our class that there is carry over but I would like to have seen those examples included in the book.

The final thoughts of the authors of this book are to remind us that change denotes growth. “Changes in methods of dialogue are often accompanied by tension, periods of instability, or even regression. But there are always parallel movements toward greater clarity and focus and increased complexity.” I am assuming that they mean that those are good things and that we will enjoy them.

Book Review Day Four

Understanding the use of tone was the topic of my reading for today. Collison and company remind the facilitator that as we write text we may be smiling and words seem funny as you write but they may not be received with the same tone, except when you add an emoticon or some additional wording that takes the place of visual cues. It is clear that a positive tone helps build community and adds pleasure to the readers of your posts.

Tones are described as nurturing, curious, humorous, analytical, imaginative, informal, neutral, and whimsical. Whimsical, humorous, and imaginative are presented as the most inspired of tones. I am going to attempt to give you an inspired post that is humorous in its tone.

A reminder by the authors is to leave out tones that are sarcastic, threatening, and those that play the devil’s advocate. Variety will add appeal for your readers, and thus make you a more effective moderator.
Beyond voice and voice the final framework for communication online are modes of critical thinking strategies. They are strategies that sharpen the focus of the dialogue and strategies that help participants dig deeper into the dialogue.
There are three sharpening the focus strategies:
Identifying direction
Sorting ideas for relevance
Focusing on key points
There are three deepening the dialogue strategies:
Full-spectrum questioning
Making connections
Honoring multiple perspectives
One of the strengths of this book is the clear examples of terminology and concepts presented in each chapter. Multiple posts are shared from the authors' practice that identifying voice, tone and strategy of the facilitator in posts to their students. The most helpful part of these examples is the explanation of the purpose served when a combination is used. These are new ideas to put in your bag of tricks…methods. By having options—including those you know work for specific results, you can be more effective and efficient.

Book Review Day Three

Today’s readings from chapter 4 and 5 from Facilitating Online Learning: Effective strategies for moderators dealt with Healthy Online Communications and Voice.
The authors gave indicators of what characteristics a course with a healthy state of communication would look like.
Regular posts according to clearly defined goals established in early guidelines.
The following rubric was included as a instructor guide as to what this might look like.

Participants feel an intellectual trust (interesting that this is articulated yet again) among participants and facilitator and can express honest opinions.
Evidence of words of encouragement and acknowledgement posted by the participants, a “spontaneous moderating” by themselves.
When this happens the authors suggest the possibility of having participants take turns facilitating in small groups or the use of other expert facilitators.
Acknowledging the help another student gives encourages the rest of the students to follow suit.
Healthy communities can vent and feel that they are heard.
Participant show concern for and support for each other.
Included in this section were some dos and don’ts on netiquette. I wonder if this was necessary for those who will read this text. The authors caution that “it is important to avoid direct criticism of anyone in the community if your goal is to maintain intellectual trust. Concentrate on ideas” (p. 97). Haven’t you all heard about this occurring in one of our online courses or had it happen to you? Upon reflection those experiences appear to be hard to bounce back from even with our experience in education.
Voice- Six types of “voices” are available, according to this text, for the online facilitator to select from when posting interventions to move discussions forward.
Generative guide, conceptualized facilitator, reflective guide, personal muse, mediator, and role play. They gave concrete example of how these voices could be used with the caution that the goal of the moderator’s communication is not the expression of personal or creative vision: rather it is to clarify and extend the thinking of other people. Then they challenge facilitators to select a voice that may not feel comfortable because there’s a strong tendency to us to use our own experiences and opinions as guides to bring clarity to others. By using different voices, you’ll be reminded to think beyond your own previous patterns.

Book Review Day Two

In my book, Facilitating Online Learning, Collison, Elbaum, Haavind, and Tinker next dealt with the key facilitator roles in the discussion component of online learning. These three roles are: Guide on the side, Instructor or project leader, and group process facilitator.

1. Guide on the Side-(I know that this term brought painful memories to some of you). The authors feel that if you are too available that you have what amounts to unlimited office hours. They suggest a model that is to encourage substantive interactions among the participant by moderating and shaping conversations with targeted inventions but refraining from extensive direct interaction. These figures are similar to the model they use to show the difference.

Interventions of the moderator play a supportive role versus a central role. They suggest that a virtual nod for each comment has the potential to set up a culture where approval or disapproval after each posting is expected. Also, each comment by the facilitator is examined over and over by the participants, it doesn’t go away. As a guide we move participant to a new conceptual level. The authors state that you should avoid publicly praising because it can send a message suggesting participant think they don’t need to do anymore. Before you jump on this they do say that you need to highlight two or three comments that were on track from a number of participants in a discussion and weave them together and use a new question to shift forward. If tensions develop in a discussion you should encourage feedback from within the group to each other and tell them to offer it themselves.
2. The second role is the facilitator as instructor or project leader. Suggestions are offered in was to design a regular manageable feedback loop to you that is private for personal issues, and concerns. Other thread recommended is one that deals with technical issues and this thread should be responded to ASAP. Both of these types of post should be kept separate from concept discussion.
3. The third role is that of leader of the group process. This is when you are responsible for the constructive paths to learning including the following tasks.
• Leading introductory, community-building activities
• Providing virtual hand holding to the digitally challenged
• Acknowledging the diversity of participants’ back grounds and interests
• Infusing personality with tone, graphics, and humor
• Maintaining a nurturing pace of responding
• Keeping up with the pace set
• Organizing posts and discussion threads
• Balancing private email and public discussion
The book gives examples of ways to accomplish these tasks and has some cute cartoons (even about math). They seem to be practical ways to stay organized but a bit redundant with previous information presented.

Book Review

This week I will be reading Facilitating online learning: Effective strategies for moderators. The four authors, Collison, Elbaum, Haavind, and Tinker, are instructional colleagues in two teacher education programs. They wrote this guide book to instruct those who direct discussion in distance learning courses. The backdrop for the examples used in the text is from the instruction of the facilitators of the Virtual High School Cooperative and the International Netcourse Teacher Enhancement Coalition.
In the introduction the authors ask a question I have asked myself “Can you lead virtual community participants to focus and deepen their growth and learning via online dialogue?” They content the skill of the facilitator in doing this it is the yardstick that any netcourse must be measured.
Chapter one discusses the principles that support effective moderating (called being a guide on the side not a sage on the stage). The principles were basic teacher discussion method 101 but they were illustrated with examples from the online environment.
Principle #1: Moderating takes place in both a professional and social context. Think to the adage that participants online also don’t care how much you know until they know how much you care. Building a sense of community among the class into your discussion first and then moving into content is suggested as a way to bring people together in a close-knit trusting unit willing to risk with the content posts.
Principle #2: Guiding vs. Being in charge serves to focus and deepen the dialogue without getting in the way of the individual developing their learning. The text gave great examples that I sure that you all could relate to about the facilitator taking over and the difficulty that students often have risking committing their new found understand to text for all to see.
Principle #3: Online moderation is a craft that has general principles and strategies—that can be learned. This section set the tone for the rest of the book. It’s a “how to do it” methodology that I am excited to find out about.
Chapter two breaks down the types of dialogue that we can expect and identify in discussion held online. They are social, argumentative and pragmatic dialogue. The authors feel that all are to be expected by facilitators and that if properly identified can lead to support of reflective communication.
Social dialogue is personal reference that is necessary to build the online communication but need a time and eventually its own space. They suggest a separate thread being started after an introductory activity to learn about each other. This is a place apart from inquiry or reflection about the course content. I thought this was a great way to give permission to the class to have connections with one another. They called it the ‘water cooler’ thread.
Argumentative dialogue is a ‘display of rhetorical power’ that can become a competition on discussion boards. (?) The authors suggest that as facilitators we can’t become involved in the deciding of winners and losers. The important thing is to suggest examining long-held beliefs or to reflect on assumptions to consider new thinking. The comments facilitators should add need to inquiry based to these posts.
Pragmatic dialogue is reasoned discourse whose “process serves beyond the dialogue itself.” It doesn’t persuade but inquires. Wow, I must agree that this type of post is comes slowly.
This chapter leaves the reader with three goals to; build community, support a culture of respect and cultivate reasoned discourse. I am finding that they are supporting their points with pragmatic methods to accomplish these goals.

Welcome

This is a beginners' blog. I will attempt to reflect and expand my exploration in distance learning as a student and an instructor.