Reflections on Collaborative Communities
Module 1 Reflection - Course Introductions
The new knowledge and skills I gained during Module 1
What hit me the most as I read chapters 1 and 6 and as I participated in this week's discussion topics, is how similar good teaching is whether it is face-to-face or online. One benefit for me in an online course that I did not see directly in chapter one is the opportunity for longer thinking time that an online course offers. I take a while to process, reflect, and make sense of information and struggled participating in face-to-face courses because I could not gather my thoughts quick enough for the rapid-fire questions. I remember one instructor talking to me after passing back a paper and telling me that I should participate more in class discussions because I had a lot to offer based on the paper I had handed in. At that time, I could not identify why I did not participate more in class, but understand it now.
In addition, I was able to reflect on the good practices shared in chapter 6, both as they relate to online teaching and face-to-face teaching. One aspect that I had not thought as deeply about was the importance of facilitator's presence in the discussions, especially in regards to modeling what a good discussion might look like. I have always participated in the ice-breaking activity in my courses, but never really understood how important this part of the course is. Not only do we get a chance to get to know each other on a more personal level, it is also a non-threatening way to learn how to use the discussion tool.
The knowledge and skills will benefit me as an online facilitator by...
As an online facilitator, there are several key ideas I would be sure to incorporate into my class. Most importantly, is to be present throughout the course - in discussions and in providing quick and meaningful feedback. In addition, I will keep in mind the importance of thinking through any obstacles and trying to answer questions before they occur -- being proactive in the design of the course. There are so many places in this course to find the information we need and it is so thorough. Having the time this first week to find all of the information and access each part of the course delivery tool in a meaningful and nonthreatening way will give me the ability to think more deeply on content in the future instead of trying to navigate the system.
Other reflective thoughts...
The readings and discussions this week have made me more aware of what makes a good teacher and has caused me to reflect on what I do when working in each classroom and as I try to train my teachers in the use of technology in their own classrooms.
Module 2 Reflection - Designing Andragogy and Constructivism
The most important thing I learned during Module 2
The most important takeaway I had from Module 2 was not necessarily something I learned, but it was the way I was able to make more sense of social constructivism and how it can apply to my learning as an adult, to my ideas about how I would apply it in online course design, and how I would apply it with my tech training for the teachers and students in my school. One idea that was solidified in my mind was that students need to interact with the material, with other students, and they need to bring to the table their prior experience so that we can better meet their needs. The concept of grouping like-minded people together was kind of new to me also. I always thought it would be nice to be with people who think more like I do and find mixed groups to sometimes end in frustration, but feel like many teachers (at least in the elementary school) insist on mixing personality types together whenever they form a group and I would like to see how it would work if they tried putting students who were similar together.
This learning will benefit me as an online facilitator by...
I see the importance of figuring out who my students are by reading their posts, paying attention to when and how often they post, and getting feedback about their learning styles when assigning students to groups. I am not sure if I would use a predetermined test or create one of my own, but think I would be more likely to use a current test as a starting point and then create one myself. I can see that there would be many different ways to group students and that they would be grouped differently for different tasks.
Other reflective thoughts...
The readings and discussions this week made me think more deeply about learning styles and groupings. My mindset has changed as I was always thinking that we should group by making mixed groupings. As a student I always found this frustrating and so I am not sure why I never thought about making groups of like-minded students once I became an educator. It makes so much sense to me in so many different ways.
Module 3 Reflection - Good Facilitation
The most intriguing thing I learned in Module 3 was I developed a new perspective on argumentative dialogue. I have always avoided replying to people I disagree with in discussions because I did not want to create conflict or ill will. I am still uncertain about how to encourage this kind of dialogue in an online course (or in a face to face situation), but am now open to the possibility and am in the process of wrapping my mind around it. The strategies from the book and from my classmates will help. The most important strategy is to establish norms around this and to monitor discussions closely. Another takeaway for me is the strategies for text-based communication. One strategy that made sense to me was to take responsibility and this is a strategy I think I can also use as a tech coach when teachers get "stuck" on something that I thought was clearly explained.
I will use this newfound knowledge as an online facilitator by taking the time to monitor discussion boards and intervene promptly (either privately or to the group) whenever there is conflict or misunderstanding. I now have some strategies for maintaining a positive relationship with students and colleagues. I also have ideas on establishing norms within a group and would establish norms over time as they are needed instead of creating the norms as a group. I can compare this to technology training and integration. We do not teach technology skills in a vacuum, but teach them as they are needed in the classroom.
Other reflective thoughts...
As I read through chapter four on the many hats of the online facilitator, I realized that there is much more to online instruction than many think and it takes a well-rounded person to do this well. It makes me think of one of my first tech training experiences as a student. We were learning about our new computers and a technical person was running the training. He had a wealth of knowledge about the computers, but he was not an educator so the training was very difficult and not well-planned. As a technology coach and trainer, I always try to remember what it felt like to be learning the tool I am teaching or remember times when I did not understand something easily. I plan my training sessions around this and am more patient with people who do not understand this right away. This module helped me to make that connection to online teaching and the importance of thinking through possible hurdles before they happen.
Module 4 Reflection - Types of Interaction
Aha!
My aha moment has happened slowly over the past four weeks and is related to the "dance" that must be done by the facilitator to promote community and deeper learning. This "aha" was cemented on Friday, when I attended an all-day conference with all of the coaches in our school led by Dr. Fran Prolman. It was very well-timed as we talked about strategies to create a trusting and successful relationship with the teachers that we coach. There was a lot of overlap for me with face-to-face interaction as well as online interaction. She talked about the four C's of collaboration for coaches: consulting, coaching, conferring and calibrating. The new one and most challenging for me is the calibrating part and this is what I see the role of a facilitator is in the online class. Calibrating is looking at where the students/teachers need to be and where they currently are and deciding how to go about successfully (and carefully) moving them up the spectrum. In this course so far, we have looked at several strategies for doing this and how important it is for the facilitator to be present and to push the conversations deeper while also teaching the students how to participate in the discussion. I had not thought very deeply about the importance of the role of the facilitator in this process and now realize just how important and intricate this process can be to navigate as a facilitator. As we discussed establishing relationship within our teams at school, one of the coaches said that the process seemed manipulative and Fran's comment was that she preferred the term strategic and this rang true to me.
Another aha moment I had was gaining a better understanding of the importance of how much work needs to go into the online course before it even starts. Thinking through everything in advance to try to proactively eliminate frustration. In addition, creating the sense of community right from the start and then unveiling the expectation slowly throughout the modules and as needed based on the situation. The sense of community seems more important to me now and I have become more interested in finding ways to get people to know one another better and think this is more of a challenge online.
Module 5 Reflection - The 70/30 Rule
In what ways will the 70/30 rule impact your online facilitation?
I would have to be sure that I was available fully for the week or two prior to the course as well as to the first week of the course. Time would be sent checking to make sure the course was prepared, the links worked and all of the messages and emails were clear. I would be sure to reply promptly and specifically and be extra careful to model in my communications the expectations that I would have for our online communication. I would make sure that I kept track of who was participating in the discussions and be present in all of the threads and make sure each student felt my presence. When a student said something really well, I would be sure to comment on their post or response so students would learn what an exceptional post or response looks like. In addition, I would be quick to contact students who were not participating as expected and would make all-class comments if I saw something done really well or felt that a certain expectation was not being met. After the first week, I would slowly pull away from the discussions, while still making my presence felt.
Other triumphs or challenges?
Knowing what to say in each of the situations is challenging for me. I like having the examples from the book and from other students in the class so that I can look at a variety of ways to respond to different situation and get a better idea. I tend to like to look at a lot of examples before deciding what pieces I will use. My biggest challenge will be to stay positive and not let students notice frustrations I might be feeling. This is a challenge in my real job also and I manage to keep a positive face on while working with the teachers. It is helpful to have a colleague that I can confide in and to have a safe place when I feel frustrated. I am not sure how this would work in an online course. It might be difficult to find a confidant when working online. Another challenge I have is responding to people when I might disagree with what they are saying. I am getting better at it, though, and don't feel like I avoid those posts like I used to. I do still tend to respond to people that I agree with more than those I might not agree with. When we work in our smaller groups, this is harder to do as there are fewer students.
What could have been done to mitigate those challenges?
I think practice is the only way to help to mitigate the challenges. It is good to practice with real-life scenarios and then get feedback from classmates on what was good and what could have improved. I think in almost any new situation it takes practice in order for the wording and comments to feel natural. I felt this way when I started providing positive feedback to students and also when I learned some of the collaborative coaching techniques.
Other reflective thoughts...
Transferring the practice to real-life situations will be difficult and I have to remember not to overthink things, but to also be honest and straightforward with the people I am working with, coaching, or teaching. Much of what I am learning about creating collaborative communities can so easily be transferred to my job as a technology coach and one or my areas that I have wanted to grow is learning how to work with resistors or have difficult conversations with someone I might not agree with. In the past, I have tended to avoid conflict, but have learned that there are ways to approach conflict that can be beneficial to both parties.
Module 6 Reflection - When Everything is Going Well: Facilitation Tips and Tricks
When you read the Time Management Tips for Online Teaching, what were the two most important tips, for your purposes, on the list? In other words, what made you say, "Aha!" and why?
Work smarter, not harder, at grading - I always think about ways that I can streamline any process and for years have been telling my students to work smarter, not harder. This section had some great ideas that I will find very useful. One of the ideas was to keep the comments and to reuse them when possible. When I think about student report cards, the comments that are "canned" and simply explain what the students learned are the ones that I simple skim over. It is hardly worth the instructor's time to even copy and paste them as I don't really spend too much time reading them. The comments that talk about my child specifically, I read very carefully. These are comments the teacher might say about several students and they could be kept in a document and reused. Year to year, you would see similar students pass through your class. These comments are specific and constructive, but might be used with several students. I also liked the idea of spreading out the grading and being sure that projects that require a lot of feedback don't come all at once.
Get organized - The tip that resonated with me here was keeping the files and folders organized so that you don't have to keep searching. I especially liked the idea about keeping a folder for items that have not yet been graded and then transferring these to a different folder once the item has been graded. Creating systems to stay organized are important when there are a lot of details to manage, especially when it is important to follow through on all details. Although email was in a different section, I also liked the idea of responding right away to emails that you can and saving others in a folder or having a system to handle the emails. This is similar to what I would do with the grading - making sure to have a process to follow through with all of the tasks and communication is important.
Other reflective thoughts...
This was a very practical module and I appreciated the chance to move to specific tips and tricks. After all of the reading, it became very clear what a challenging job it is to properly facilitate an online course. The skills an online facilitator must have are very similar to the skills I see as necessary in an instructional coach. The most important skills are being able to positively impact a discussion - simultaneously keeping everyone on task, thinking deeply, questioning each other, and deepening the learning while also efficiently managing all of the other tasks of providing feedback, responding to queries, and making sure instructions and content are clear and meaningful -- no small task!
Module 7 Reflection - Development of Critical Thinking
The most important/interesting/challenging thing I learned in Module Seven is...
There were so many take-aways this week and it was the busiest week of all of the weeks for me, mostly due to the planning of the facilitation. The most challenging thing I learned was how difficult it can be to set up a common time for six people to meet online for a synchronous chat. I had never heard of the doodle site, but found it very useful in this process, so was glad to learn how to use that site and I think it made the process much easier. I learned that you will have very flexible members on a team (or in a class) and some inflexible members. I also learned that trying to coordinate something with a group while also co-facilitating requires a tremendous amount of patience and tact. I have reflected on the use of a synchronous chat and thought about its pros and cons and how it might work in an online course. While it was difficult to set up and manage, having this experience has allowed me to see when and how it might be useful and what the benefits and downsides are. I think I might use it as an optional way to connect with students or as a way to bring people together at the beginning of a course. For me, seeing the faces of my classmates helped me to remember them better and I felt more connected to them after our chat.
Throughout this course, I have seen many similarities in the coaching position and in the position of an instructor/facilitator in an online course and these similarities became very apparent this week. As a coach, I know that when I am trying to work with people to improve their use of technology in instruction I have to take the high road at all times and remain calm, positive and supportive and these are the same skills I am seeing as imperative in an online instructor. My recent interests in my current job have been in cognitive coaching and adaptive schools and the ideas and skills in these "approaches" are very similar to the skills needed in online course instruction/facilitation.
In addition, the readings in chapters seven and eight of Making the Move to eLearning provided me with one of those moments of "just in time" learning. As I reflect on my current position and my future desire to become an online instructor, these chapters solidified my understanding of backwards design, scaffolding learning and instructional activities, and promoting critical thinking. The definition on differentiation and how it was the process of designing learning activities to adapt to the talents and limitations of students was the clearest definition I have seen of this. This concept is something I have been trying to solidify in my mind and this description did that for me. So many teachers struggle with this and it has helped me to clarify the use of technology in the learning process to help with differentiation for our students. Also, thinking thoughts and examples on authentic evidence helped to clarify my thinking around that.
Describe or analyze the experience of both getting and giving peer feedback, and how that informs your methods of facilitation...
I always appreciate peer feedback and have sent out surveys to the teachers I work with each year. Sifting through the feedback can be challenging as I can sometimes tend to focus on the constructive and dismiss all of the positive due to one negative comment. In my years of collecting feedback, I have learned to focus on the positive and use the constructive as a learning experience, but that can be difficult. Most of the time, the constructive feedback is meant to be helpful and I can learn from it. There are times, though, where it is clear that one of the teachers is not happy and I wonder why they would not just tell me directly and where the process has fallen apart. As an online instructor, I would use this feedback to reflect on my practice and try to make the changes. The constructive feedback is often the most helpful for growth, but can sometimes be the hardest to take. In our feedback, one of the comments was that our classmate did not like the protocol that we had used and that it felt artificial. I think this was true, but during the times that we allowed free talk it was difficult to follow the conversation. So, while I appreciated her feedback, I think in this case I might not have changed the protocol. Perhaps the raising hands option in the chat environment would have worked. In either case, her feedback caused me to think about what protocol we followed and try to decide if there could have been a better way. Each year, feedback can help you grow and change as a facilitator.
When giving feedback, I think it is important to be as honest as possible without bringing in any emotions. For me, when I see anger in feedback, I tend to dismiss it more readily than I would if it had been stated in a calm and matter of fact manner. When I sense anger, I try to figure out what was causing the anger, but I find the feedback to be less constructive when there is emotion in it. When I give feedback, I try to stay positive for the most part, while offering one or two points of improvement opportunities.
Other reflective thoughts...
This was a crazy week and the set up for facilitating an online synchronous chat was more time that the actual chat itself. I am not sure I would use this tool in a class. Maybe in an informal way, but not as a whole or small group for the purpose of deepening learning.
Module 8 Reflection - Course Management
Reflect on your overall learning experience within the course.
This is my last course in the series and I took a long break for personal and professional reasons after the first two. In this course, everything has come together for me. This started to happen in the Instructional Design course where I learned all the parts of the design process. Adding the communication piece last helped to make each part of the course design make more sense to me. We also took the instructional design even further in this course when we talked about the ways to design questions and activities to get students to think more deeply. While at some level, I always understood the meaning of the discussion forums, this course helped me to consolidate my thinking around this important tool and create strategies for helping students create deeper meaning through social interaction. For me, this was the biggest aha! in this course - using our community to make the meaning happen in deeper and more meaningful ways, and the importance of the social piece to the learning process.
Where does your progression into online facilitation (or as an online facilitator) go from here?
As my husband moves into administration, our job search is more focused around opportunities for him. I have been lucky in our current location as the perfect job opened up for me just before the start of our first year in Warsaw. In the future, though, this may not happen and I would like to make the transition in some way to an online environment so that I can be more flexible and not have the location drive what I can do professionally. I would like to finish the certification program early next school year and begin to look into opportunities in this area in some form during the next year or so. One option for me might be to look at international school options as these schools begin to look at offering online classes, this would be an area of interest to me also. I am ready for a chance and this type of opportunity is exciting to me.
Other final thoughts...
I have participated in so much professional development in the last two years - two courses from this program, cognitive coaching, adaptive schools, tech integration ideas, Digital Literacy and Media Institute, and other conferences. These learning experiences, combined with my professional learning in the school I have worked in, have combined to create a more solid idea of my role and responsibilities. In the past, I did what I did in regards to coaching and technology integration because it felt right. Now, I have the research and vocabulary to talk about why I do what I do. My philosophy and ideas are more clear and I am more easily able to express my ideas around what I do as well as apply what I have learned to become better at my job.
Thank you, UW-Stout and Dr. Kay for helping to make this learning happen!
The new knowledge and skills I gained during Module 1
What hit me the most as I read chapters 1 and 6 and as I participated in this week's discussion topics, is how similar good teaching is whether it is face-to-face or online. One benefit for me in an online course that I did not see directly in chapter one is the opportunity for longer thinking time that an online course offers. I take a while to process, reflect, and make sense of information and struggled participating in face-to-face courses because I could not gather my thoughts quick enough for the rapid-fire questions. I remember one instructor talking to me after passing back a paper and telling me that I should participate more in class discussions because I had a lot to offer based on the paper I had handed in. At that time, I could not identify why I did not participate more in class, but understand it now.
In addition, I was able to reflect on the good practices shared in chapter 6, both as they relate to online teaching and face-to-face teaching. One aspect that I had not thought as deeply about was the importance of facilitator's presence in the discussions, especially in regards to modeling what a good discussion might look like. I have always participated in the ice-breaking activity in my courses, but never really understood how important this part of the course is. Not only do we get a chance to get to know each other on a more personal level, it is also a non-threatening way to learn how to use the discussion tool.
The knowledge and skills will benefit me as an online facilitator by...
As an online facilitator, there are several key ideas I would be sure to incorporate into my class. Most importantly, is to be present throughout the course - in discussions and in providing quick and meaningful feedback. In addition, I will keep in mind the importance of thinking through any obstacles and trying to answer questions before they occur -- being proactive in the design of the course. There are so many places in this course to find the information we need and it is so thorough. Having the time this first week to find all of the information and access each part of the course delivery tool in a meaningful and nonthreatening way will give me the ability to think more deeply on content in the future instead of trying to navigate the system.
Other reflective thoughts...
The readings and discussions this week have made me more aware of what makes a good teacher and has caused me to reflect on what I do when working in each classroom and as I try to train my teachers in the use of technology in their own classrooms.
Module 2 Reflection - Designing Andragogy and Constructivism
The most important thing I learned during Module 2
The most important takeaway I had from Module 2 was not necessarily something I learned, but it was the way I was able to make more sense of social constructivism and how it can apply to my learning as an adult, to my ideas about how I would apply it in online course design, and how I would apply it with my tech training for the teachers and students in my school. One idea that was solidified in my mind was that students need to interact with the material, with other students, and they need to bring to the table their prior experience so that we can better meet their needs. The concept of grouping like-minded people together was kind of new to me also. I always thought it would be nice to be with people who think more like I do and find mixed groups to sometimes end in frustration, but feel like many teachers (at least in the elementary school) insist on mixing personality types together whenever they form a group and I would like to see how it would work if they tried putting students who were similar together.
This learning will benefit me as an online facilitator by...
I see the importance of figuring out who my students are by reading their posts, paying attention to when and how often they post, and getting feedback about their learning styles when assigning students to groups. I am not sure if I would use a predetermined test or create one of my own, but think I would be more likely to use a current test as a starting point and then create one myself. I can see that there would be many different ways to group students and that they would be grouped differently for different tasks.
Other reflective thoughts...
The readings and discussions this week made me think more deeply about learning styles and groupings. My mindset has changed as I was always thinking that we should group by making mixed groupings. As a student I always found this frustrating and so I am not sure why I never thought about making groups of like-minded students once I became an educator. It makes so much sense to me in so many different ways.
Module 3 Reflection - Good Facilitation
The most intriguing thing I learned in Module 3 was I developed a new perspective on argumentative dialogue. I have always avoided replying to people I disagree with in discussions because I did not want to create conflict or ill will. I am still uncertain about how to encourage this kind of dialogue in an online course (or in a face to face situation), but am now open to the possibility and am in the process of wrapping my mind around it. The strategies from the book and from my classmates will help. The most important strategy is to establish norms around this and to monitor discussions closely. Another takeaway for me is the strategies for text-based communication. One strategy that made sense to me was to take responsibility and this is a strategy I think I can also use as a tech coach when teachers get "stuck" on something that I thought was clearly explained.
I will use this newfound knowledge as an online facilitator by taking the time to monitor discussion boards and intervene promptly (either privately or to the group) whenever there is conflict or misunderstanding. I now have some strategies for maintaining a positive relationship with students and colleagues. I also have ideas on establishing norms within a group and would establish norms over time as they are needed instead of creating the norms as a group. I can compare this to technology training and integration. We do not teach technology skills in a vacuum, but teach them as they are needed in the classroom.
Other reflective thoughts...
As I read through chapter four on the many hats of the online facilitator, I realized that there is much more to online instruction than many think and it takes a well-rounded person to do this well. It makes me think of one of my first tech training experiences as a student. We were learning about our new computers and a technical person was running the training. He had a wealth of knowledge about the computers, but he was not an educator so the training was very difficult and not well-planned. As a technology coach and trainer, I always try to remember what it felt like to be learning the tool I am teaching or remember times when I did not understand something easily. I plan my training sessions around this and am more patient with people who do not understand this right away. This module helped me to make that connection to online teaching and the importance of thinking through possible hurdles before they happen.
Module 4 Reflection - Types of Interaction
Aha!
My aha moment has happened slowly over the past four weeks and is related to the "dance" that must be done by the facilitator to promote community and deeper learning. This "aha" was cemented on Friday, when I attended an all-day conference with all of the coaches in our school led by Dr. Fran Prolman. It was very well-timed as we talked about strategies to create a trusting and successful relationship with the teachers that we coach. There was a lot of overlap for me with face-to-face interaction as well as online interaction. She talked about the four C's of collaboration for coaches: consulting, coaching, conferring and calibrating. The new one and most challenging for me is the calibrating part and this is what I see the role of a facilitator is in the online class. Calibrating is looking at where the students/teachers need to be and where they currently are and deciding how to go about successfully (and carefully) moving them up the spectrum. In this course so far, we have looked at several strategies for doing this and how important it is for the facilitator to be present and to push the conversations deeper while also teaching the students how to participate in the discussion. I had not thought very deeply about the importance of the role of the facilitator in this process and now realize just how important and intricate this process can be to navigate as a facilitator. As we discussed establishing relationship within our teams at school, one of the coaches said that the process seemed manipulative and Fran's comment was that she preferred the term strategic and this rang true to me.
Another aha moment I had was gaining a better understanding of the importance of how much work needs to go into the online course before it even starts. Thinking through everything in advance to try to proactively eliminate frustration. In addition, creating the sense of community right from the start and then unveiling the expectation slowly throughout the modules and as needed based on the situation. The sense of community seems more important to me now and I have become more interested in finding ways to get people to know one another better and think this is more of a challenge online.
Module 5 Reflection - The 70/30 Rule
In what ways will the 70/30 rule impact your online facilitation?
I would have to be sure that I was available fully for the week or two prior to the course as well as to the first week of the course. Time would be sent checking to make sure the course was prepared, the links worked and all of the messages and emails were clear. I would be sure to reply promptly and specifically and be extra careful to model in my communications the expectations that I would have for our online communication. I would make sure that I kept track of who was participating in the discussions and be present in all of the threads and make sure each student felt my presence. When a student said something really well, I would be sure to comment on their post or response so students would learn what an exceptional post or response looks like. In addition, I would be quick to contact students who were not participating as expected and would make all-class comments if I saw something done really well or felt that a certain expectation was not being met. After the first week, I would slowly pull away from the discussions, while still making my presence felt.
Other triumphs or challenges?
Knowing what to say in each of the situations is challenging for me. I like having the examples from the book and from other students in the class so that I can look at a variety of ways to respond to different situation and get a better idea. I tend to like to look at a lot of examples before deciding what pieces I will use. My biggest challenge will be to stay positive and not let students notice frustrations I might be feeling. This is a challenge in my real job also and I manage to keep a positive face on while working with the teachers. It is helpful to have a colleague that I can confide in and to have a safe place when I feel frustrated. I am not sure how this would work in an online course. It might be difficult to find a confidant when working online. Another challenge I have is responding to people when I might disagree with what they are saying. I am getting better at it, though, and don't feel like I avoid those posts like I used to. I do still tend to respond to people that I agree with more than those I might not agree with. When we work in our smaller groups, this is harder to do as there are fewer students.
What could have been done to mitigate those challenges?
I think practice is the only way to help to mitigate the challenges. It is good to practice with real-life scenarios and then get feedback from classmates on what was good and what could have improved. I think in almost any new situation it takes practice in order for the wording and comments to feel natural. I felt this way when I started providing positive feedback to students and also when I learned some of the collaborative coaching techniques.
Other reflective thoughts...
Transferring the practice to real-life situations will be difficult and I have to remember not to overthink things, but to also be honest and straightforward with the people I am working with, coaching, or teaching. Much of what I am learning about creating collaborative communities can so easily be transferred to my job as a technology coach and one or my areas that I have wanted to grow is learning how to work with resistors or have difficult conversations with someone I might not agree with. In the past, I have tended to avoid conflict, but have learned that there are ways to approach conflict that can be beneficial to both parties.
Module 6 Reflection - When Everything is Going Well: Facilitation Tips and Tricks
When you read the Time Management Tips for Online Teaching, what were the two most important tips, for your purposes, on the list? In other words, what made you say, "Aha!" and why?
Work smarter, not harder, at grading - I always think about ways that I can streamline any process and for years have been telling my students to work smarter, not harder. This section had some great ideas that I will find very useful. One of the ideas was to keep the comments and to reuse them when possible. When I think about student report cards, the comments that are "canned" and simply explain what the students learned are the ones that I simple skim over. It is hardly worth the instructor's time to even copy and paste them as I don't really spend too much time reading them. The comments that talk about my child specifically, I read very carefully. These are comments the teacher might say about several students and they could be kept in a document and reused. Year to year, you would see similar students pass through your class. These comments are specific and constructive, but might be used with several students. I also liked the idea of spreading out the grading and being sure that projects that require a lot of feedback don't come all at once.
Get organized - The tip that resonated with me here was keeping the files and folders organized so that you don't have to keep searching. I especially liked the idea about keeping a folder for items that have not yet been graded and then transferring these to a different folder once the item has been graded. Creating systems to stay organized are important when there are a lot of details to manage, especially when it is important to follow through on all details. Although email was in a different section, I also liked the idea of responding right away to emails that you can and saving others in a folder or having a system to handle the emails. This is similar to what I would do with the grading - making sure to have a process to follow through with all of the tasks and communication is important.
Other reflective thoughts...
This was a very practical module and I appreciated the chance to move to specific tips and tricks. After all of the reading, it became very clear what a challenging job it is to properly facilitate an online course. The skills an online facilitator must have are very similar to the skills I see as necessary in an instructional coach. The most important skills are being able to positively impact a discussion - simultaneously keeping everyone on task, thinking deeply, questioning each other, and deepening the learning while also efficiently managing all of the other tasks of providing feedback, responding to queries, and making sure instructions and content are clear and meaningful -- no small task!
Module 7 Reflection - Development of Critical Thinking
The most important/interesting/challenging thing I learned in Module Seven is...
There were so many take-aways this week and it was the busiest week of all of the weeks for me, mostly due to the planning of the facilitation. The most challenging thing I learned was how difficult it can be to set up a common time for six people to meet online for a synchronous chat. I had never heard of the doodle site, but found it very useful in this process, so was glad to learn how to use that site and I think it made the process much easier. I learned that you will have very flexible members on a team (or in a class) and some inflexible members. I also learned that trying to coordinate something with a group while also co-facilitating requires a tremendous amount of patience and tact. I have reflected on the use of a synchronous chat and thought about its pros and cons and how it might work in an online course. While it was difficult to set up and manage, having this experience has allowed me to see when and how it might be useful and what the benefits and downsides are. I think I might use it as an optional way to connect with students or as a way to bring people together at the beginning of a course. For me, seeing the faces of my classmates helped me to remember them better and I felt more connected to them after our chat.
Throughout this course, I have seen many similarities in the coaching position and in the position of an instructor/facilitator in an online course and these similarities became very apparent this week. As a coach, I know that when I am trying to work with people to improve their use of technology in instruction I have to take the high road at all times and remain calm, positive and supportive and these are the same skills I am seeing as imperative in an online instructor. My recent interests in my current job have been in cognitive coaching and adaptive schools and the ideas and skills in these "approaches" are very similar to the skills needed in online course instruction/facilitation.
In addition, the readings in chapters seven and eight of Making the Move to eLearning provided me with one of those moments of "just in time" learning. As I reflect on my current position and my future desire to become an online instructor, these chapters solidified my understanding of backwards design, scaffolding learning and instructional activities, and promoting critical thinking. The definition on differentiation and how it was the process of designing learning activities to adapt to the talents and limitations of students was the clearest definition I have seen of this. This concept is something I have been trying to solidify in my mind and this description did that for me. So many teachers struggle with this and it has helped me to clarify the use of technology in the learning process to help with differentiation for our students. Also, thinking thoughts and examples on authentic evidence helped to clarify my thinking around that.
Describe or analyze the experience of both getting and giving peer feedback, and how that informs your methods of facilitation...
I always appreciate peer feedback and have sent out surveys to the teachers I work with each year. Sifting through the feedback can be challenging as I can sometimes tend to focus on the constructive and dismiss all of the positive due to one negative comment. In my years of collecting feedback, I have learned to focus on the positive and use the constructive as a learning experience, but that can be difficult. Most of the time, the constructive feedback is meant to be helpful and I can learn from it. There are times, though, where it is clear that one of the teachers is not happy and I wonder why they would not just tell me directly and where the process has fallen apart. As an online instructor, I would use this feedback to reflect on my practice and try to make the changes. The constructive feedback is often the most helpful for growth, but can sometimes be the hardest to take. In our feedback, one of the comments was that our classmate did not like the protocol that we had used and that it felt artificial. I think this was true, but during the times that we allowed free talk it was difficult to follow the conversation. So, while I appreciated her feedback, I think in this case I might not have changed the protocol. Perhaps the raising hands option in the chat environment would have worked. In either case, her feedback caused me to think about what protocol we followed and try to decide if there could have been a better way. Each year, feedback can help you grow and change as a facilitator.
When giving feedback, I think it is important to be as honest as possible without bringing in any emotions. For me, when I see anger in feedback, I tend to dismiss it more readily than I would if it had been stated in a calm and matter of fact manner. When I sense anger, I try to figure out what was causing the anger, but I find the feedback to be less constructive when there is emotion in it. When I give feedback, I try to stay positive for the most part, while offering one or two points of improvement opportunities.
Other reflective thoughts...
This was a crazy week and the set up for facilitating an online synchronous chat was more time that the actual chat itself. I am not sure I would use this tool in a class. Maybe in an informal way, but not as a whole or small group for the purpose of deepening learning.
Module 8 Reflection - Course Management
Reflect on your overall learning experience within the course.
This is my last course in the series and I took a long break for personal and professional reasons after the first two. In this course, everything has come together for me. This started to happen in the Instructional Design course where I learned all the parts of the design process. Adding the communication piece last helped to make each part of the course design make more sense to me. We also took the instructional design even further in this course when we talked about the ways to design questions and activities to get students to think more deeply. While at some level, I always understood the meaning of the discussion forums, this course helped me to consolidate my thinking around this important tool and create strategies for helping students create deeper meaning through social interaction. For me, this was the biggest aha! in this course - using our community to make the meaning happen in deeper and more meaningful ways, and the importance of the social piece to the learning process.
Where does your progression into online facilitation (or as an online facilitator) go from here?
As my husband moves into administration, our job search is more focused around opportunities for him. I have been lucky in our current location as the perfect job opened up for me just before the start of our first year in Warsaw. In the future, though, this may not happen and I would like to make the transition in some way to an online environment so that I can be more flexible and not have the location drive what I can do professionally. I would like to finish the certification program early next school year and begin to look into opportunities in this area in some form during the next year or so. One option for me might be to look at international school options as these schools begin to look at offering online classes, this would be an area of interest to me also. I am ready for a chance and this type of opportunity is exciting to me.
Other final thoughts...
I have participated in so much professional development in the last two years - two courses from this program, cognitive coaching, adaptive schools, tech integration ideas, Digital Literacy and Media Institute, and other conferences. These learning experiences, combined with my professional learning in the school I have worked in, have combined to create a more solid idea of my role and responsibilities. In the past, I did what I did in regards to coaching and technology integration because it felt right. Now, I have the research and vocabulary to talk about why I do what I do. My philosophy and ideas are more clear and I am more easily able to express my ideas around what I do as well as apply what I have learned to become better at my job.
Thank you, UW-Stout and Dr. Kay for helping to make this learning happen!
Photo Source: Personal Collection