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Online facilitation seems stranger to me. However, after further thought, I think we are using it in our daily life. Yes, we might not using the PPT, Voice thread etc to provide advises, teaching, instruction to peers, friends, college, sub-ordinate... However, Instagram, WhatsApp, email are many of the platform that we use to communicate daily. I am interested to explore what this lesson will speak when come to online facilitation.

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I see facilitation as a process of learning. Facilitating in an online learning environment is thus similar but in a different environment. Online facilitation, unlike face-to-face facilitation, would not provide immediate feedback. There is also the issue of time lack between when a question is asked and a response given. Managing the time-lag is an area of interest to me. Secondly, I guess the design of online learning modules will have to factor in when and what sort of facilitation should be done for the module as well.

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I think that facilitating in an online environment means helping learners to acquire the knowledge/skills/attitudes by providing the necessary support and guidance - in an online environment - to help them to achieve the learning goals. The support can be in the form of answering questions, clarifying doubts, asking more questions, etc. The online environment poses many challenges but I agree that it also presents many affordances.

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Having a regular online presence and providing feedback or advice to keep the students learning/engaged in their online learning.

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I'm wondering whether the levels of facilitation would differ depending on how we expect the learning to take place? If a course is designed for an individual to pick up knowledge/skills based on the course materials and activities created vs a course which is designed to learn from collaboration and learn from other participants.

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Facilitating in an Online Environment means helping learners progress with their learning as well as maximize their involvement by engaging them through the use of online tools.

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I am wondering about the challenges/opportunities that OF (online facilitation) would bring to helping SEN students and those who are more reticent do well in the module.

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I agree with many of the classmates here on their definitions of online facilitation. To me, online facilitation can be anything as long as it helps learners achieve their learning objectives.

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Facilitation in an online environment is still based on sound pedagogy of student engagement, irregardless of whether face-to-face or online. We still need to know how to stimulate thinking via good questioning skills and how to encourage or motivate students. However, it is more challenging online as students will need to be disciplined to go online regularly on their own and online access is also subjected to network bandwidth problems which may discourage some students and tutors from e-learning. Nevertheless, there are many advantages to online facilitation. All feedback/discussions are logged and can be read by everyone, making it possible for students to learn not only from the tutor but also from each other.

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Facilitation in an online environment to me means the ability to effectively engage as many of the learners as possible in the online space, enabling them to contribute meaningfully to the learning experience for all.

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I am new to this online environment so making reference to classroom facilitation, I would like to think that online facilitation has to do with engaging the participations and making learning exciting and meaningful and yet personalised to the individual. 

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I am new to this online environment so making reference to classroom facilitation, I would like to think that online facilitation has to do with engaging the participations and making learning exciting and meaningful and yet personalised to the individual. 

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I think online facilitation is about how to engage students, help students to learn and manage the learning environment (i.e. "classroom") in the online space. This includes a real-time space (e.g. via video conferencing) or an asynchronous learning space (e.g. through the use of various online learning tools such as blogs, discussion forums, etc.).I think online facilitation is about how to engage students, help students to learn and manage the learning environment (i.e. "classroom") in the online space. This includes a real-time space (e.g. via video conferencing) or an asynchronous learning space (e.g. through the use of various online learning tools such as blogs, discussion forums, etc.).

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Online facilitation for me means a world of opportunities and possibilities to add to the traditional face-to-face teaching methodologies; it means new ways of interaction with students and colleagues, and of knowledge transfer/stimulation. However, I am also with Lionel when he mentions about discipline and self-motivation, particularly when teaching teenagers. To that I would add distractions: we sometimes face low/short attention span in face-to-face facilitation, with temptations via laptop/phone/social media constantly interrupting the student's learning flow. When facilitating online I feel one of the risks might be losing the discipline/respect that face-to-face interaction imposes on the students that, to some extent, can help to hold back their desire to attend to something else different from the learning materials.

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Online facilitation for me means a world of opportunities and possibilities to add to the traditional face-to-face teaching methodologies; it means new ways of interaction with students and colleagues, and of knowledge transfer/stimulation. However, I am also with Lionel when he mentions about discipline and self-motivation, particularly when teaching teenagers. To that I would add distractions: we sometimes face low/short attention span in face-to-face facilitation, with temptations via laptop/phone/social media constantly interrupting the student's learning flow. When facilitating online I feel one of the risks might be losing the discipline/respect that face-to-face interaction imposes on the students that, to some extent, can help to hold back their desire to attend to something else different from the learning materials.

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I think one of the challenge is giving feedback for online facilitation, especially timely feedback.  Technical platform is also important as it should be user-friendly and preferably can capture the flow of discussion and organise thoughts easily.

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I think one of the challenge is giving feedback for online facilitation, especially timely feedback.  Technical platform is also important as it should be user-friendly and preferably can capture the flow of discussion and organise thoughts easily.

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I reflect on my journey in getting to the Polymall and to arrive here in this Padlet dialogue.  Granted that it is my first time with Polymall which means I will need time to figure my way, as well, being an IT naive (not native), I wonder what it is like for students to travel this same journey. By this time, I suspect our students would have travelled to many chat rooms and visited many other sites. I also note that the linear digital conversations in here required us to patiently read through others' boards, make sense of the drift of the dialogue and the connecting thoughts, interpreting the words in the written conversations, etc. before we could continue the conversations with others. I find myself having to browse it quickly, compromise at surface understanding and state my view. Why? I have other online things to do.  I also wonder if it would be appropriate for us to make this parallel that today's students enjoy being the in the virtual sphere for many things (game, video watching, chats, ...) thus it only makes sense for us to teach and learn with them online.

In a way, I am still grappling with online facilitation.

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Providing triger questions and follow-up questions to direct students towards the learning objectives of the topic

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Agree with what many classmates are sharing here ... Like f2f facilitation, it has to do with both the design of learning content, activities and interactions for learner engagement. I think facilitating in an online environment is even more critical ... nudging learner interaction with content, with other online learners in the group, and where relevant, with the wider community, an affordance sometimes easier in an online learning environment than in the f2f medium.

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Facilitating in an online environment means encouraging students to interact with each other and with the content through learning activities by making use of technology.

Like June, I like to learn how to facilitate and promote the formation of online community of learners as I have seen many online activities whereby students are not really engaged and they just participate to fulfill the requirements of the course rather than because they enjoy going through the activities with their peers.

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I like Ruth's definition of online facilitation. Like face to face facilitation, online facilitation is about creating an environment to promote students learning. This will includes encouraging the formation of community of learners, mediating the discussion within the community of learners and providing a summary or closure to each discussion at appropriate junctures. I think good facilitation skills take time to be honed.

I agree with Wilson that online facilitation is more challenging than face to face facilitation. It takes more time to discuss something online compared to face to face. ICT tools could help, but often facilitators have to deal with hiccups and technical breakdowns.

I would like to learn how to facilitate online learning, including how to promote the formation of community of learners through the discussion forum. I find it difficult sometimes because students often treat the discussion forum as a chore, posting just to fulfill the requirement of the course.

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I love the concept of Online learning. The down side I experienced with online learning for teenagers is that most of them are used to face to face lessons. Discipline and self motivation are stronger in adult learners.

This course is about online facilitation - does not mention adults or polytechnic age students. I'm keen to explore both aspects. I believe that online learning would work of most adults, I would love to explore how this would apply to our PET students.

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Related to the difference between andragogy and pedagogy.  Online facilitation offers studenst flexibility to learn at their own pace, options to pick the time and place to learn, and well as the ability to go faster or slower depending on prior knowledge. So for younger students who may lack self-regulation, the flexibility and choice may be counder productive. In addition, younger students may enjoy interactions more as opposed to independent learning. So thse younger students, classroom environment with F2F interactions would be more appropriate.

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Wilson Choo  -  Online Facilitation when compared with classroom (Face to Face)  

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Wilson Choo  -  Online Facilitation when compared with classroom (Face to Face)  

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Students are more accustomed to conventional methods. They prefer to have the 'presence' of the teacher to 'hand hold' / 'spoon feed'.
Online facilitation provides an alternative towards learning. It forces the student to be independent and self-directed learners.
It encourages inquiry and accommodates both fast and slow learning.
But all this will not happen if effective facilitation is not in place.

Online facilitation takes more out of the teacher and is more challenging  than face to face classroom facilitation.
Apart from the myriad of interactive tools, the key function as a facilitator is that learning must occur.

As an online facilitator, I find that more time is utilized towards the design and development. Housekeeping matters such as monitoring of the course and ensuring the students are on schedule.
Schedules cannot be tightly run and organised as students do not respond to them and may miss or even give up if they are not reasonably timed.

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Online Facilitation means that the tutor is creating an environment for students (where ever they may be, what ever their present state of mind is) to be provoked into thinking deeply about the subject matter and to have a sense of openness to air their doubts/concerns/opinions about the matter.

Online facilitation helps to organise the flow of thoughts, highlight key concepts that are mentioned organically, reinforce learning, and to also mediate in highly contentious situations.

Online facilitation is probably more difficult to do than face-to-face as the online facilitator has to overcome the difficulties of being online - technical difficulties, easy absenteeism, bridging cultures, inability to read total body language, etc.

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Personally, facilitating means helping students to learn by providing them with guidelines or area that they need to focus on. It is not one directional where we will deliver all the content and students sit either in front of the computer or in the classroom to receive information. Facilitating is training students to be self directed learners. Online facilitation is replacing the traditional classroom with virtual activities that could trigger the student's interest to learn. There should also be different types of activities to cater to different learning style of students eg. visual learners, audio learners etc.
In short, making use of online learning tools to ensure that learning takes place for all types of learners and to train students to take ownership of their own learning

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Facilitating in an online learning environment - seems like an oxymoron, to me and could mean so many things!
1. Facilitating could be in the interactivity design itself. So, it could be something pre-planned like interspersing of videos and activities. Teacher presence might not be there.
2. Faciliating could involve asynchronous or synchronous teacher presence. Much of the literature says that teacher presence is essential for successful and effective online teaching-learning. How does the institution regard this as time-tabled teaching hours? How long can interest last? I find that I tend to have very, very short attention myself in spite of excellent online facilitation.
3. Facilitating could involve 'management of participation'. Give students marks for participation!

Facilitating could be both a product and a process.

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a)      Facilitating online and face to face facilitating………… It is great that students are able to access the lectures via online before lessons and with the right mind-set and independently they ‘LCNS’……

1.       Learning and engaging

2.       Cultivating and motivate beyond the grades

3.       New perspectives

4.       Succeeding towards Connectives

b)      Face –to-face facilitating, I personally I felt this impacted me more that online teaching (they may not truly understand what was online lecture, its content for those slower students) as we lecturer can have a more intimate connect with the students.

One scenario: a runner and coach or a Pole vaulting athletic. These athletics need their coaches to be beside them and pin out their mistakes, getting direction and instruction. I would think myself as a coach rather than a lecturer. I would hold their hand and we dash together across the finishing line, seeing them grow, gain confident and excel in their studies which is the sweetest reward that we can have.    �

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What Does Facilitate in an Online Learning Environment Mean?

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What Does Facilitate in an Online Learning Environment Mean?

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