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Northern perspectives

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We’ve just launched a unique FLO (Facilitating Learning Online) course – one that has been re-designed to incorporate Northern perspectives and contexts (read more about FLO North). I’m excited to see how our modifications to the original BCcampus OER (the course derives from an open licensed Moodle course called FLO Fundamentals) support the evolving needs of online facilitators and allow space for a strong community perspective and participation from remote places. FLO North is offered by Recreation North, is a partnership of three territorial recreation and parks associations and I’ll be co-facilitating with their Learning Consultant, Caroline Sparks.

We use the term ‘North’ to refer to the diverse peoples and places within the vast geographic areas (48 percent of Canada) of Northwest Territories, Nunavut and Yukon.

see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northern_Canada

We began the course early due to the Labour Day weekend. Early openings are not new for FLO courses as we want to allow time for participants who are new to online instruction, or to Moodle, to get used to our course space and review some basic skills to help them navigate the course resources and participate in upcoming activities more easily. But we’re trying something new (to me) with FLO North and that is adding a pre-course assessment quiz that is based on the FLO rubrics (and only shared with FLO facilitators) and we’re asking people to share Introductions before the official course start (after the long weekend).

Impact of early Intros and pre-assessment quiz

I am interested to see how (or whether) starting with the pre-assessment quiz heightens each participant’s awareness of the two roles they will play during the course and the importance we place on the need to develop empathy for both the participant’s and the facilitator’s perspectives. I’m hoping that the pre-assessment quiz will encourage them to use the FLO Rubrics to monitor and reflect on their own learning and development each week. As with other FLO courses, we include a weekly reflections forum and try to spark critical reflection through sharing a thought question or prompt each week but it has often been a challenge to encourage busy participants to include regular checks of their learning of the basic skills and knowledge identified by the rubrics. We’ve also asked them to complete the same quiz again at the end of the course, and plan to integrate the results with our final assessment and award of a completion Certificate.

I was a little more hesitant about adding the Introductions before (and during) a long weekend as I’ve always thought of this activity as a critical beginning to getting to know the FLO facilitators and other participants through a more personal and interactive activity than we generally have time for during weekly synchronous sessions. I was concerned that there wouldn’t be as much interaction among participants but so far I’ve been pleased to see connections forming. It’s hard to know how much is due to pre-course relationships as participants in RecNorth’s leadership micro-courses or other recreation events or work, but I would definitely try this again in future FLO courses.

As I have time, I’ll continue to post my reflections on our pedagogical intentions and what I’m observing – kind of my own version of weekly reflections within the FLO North course.

Cheers….Sylvia

Launching a “NEW FLO” workshop

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Well…we’re underway – today we launched the April 2016 offering of Facilitating Learning Online (offered through BCcampus). It’s an exciting new approach and some significant changes in content and facilitation – at least that’s what Beth Cougler-Blom, Sylvia Currie, Leonne Beebe and Myra Rhodes will be testing and supporting in the next five weeks!Warm-up

Back in early February, BCCampus and Royal Roads University invited FLO afficionados (Faclitating Learning Online workshop) and FDO grads (Facilitator Development Online) to participate in a two-day Design Sprint at the beautiful RRU campus, tucked into the trees and overlooking the water on the northwest side of Victoria. What a place to disconnect from regular work demands and focus on improvement and innovation! A bit of an overview can be found here: https://proflearn.bccampus.ca/flo-design-sprint/

Sustained by the awesome snacks, lunches and beverages organized by the Professional Learning Team from BCcampus, we did a “deep dive” into the collected FLO feedback and our own experiences of Facilitating Learning Online – the five week workshop that RRU developed in-house and then shared through an OER contract and BCcampus took to the educators of BC and adapted and molded and reshaped since early 2015. We all recognized that we had to address the “overload” issues reported by facilitators and participants – despite the enthusiastic feedback about the transformational learning that occurred for many students, we wanted to make it better and more “do-able” for teachers who needed a chance to practice and develop their skills as online instructors.

So, what are we able to test this time? What’s different?FLO Themes

  • removed the cursory consideration of online design – set aside for future development into a stand-alone (or complementary model) so that people could really focus and learn about issues of online design/development in terms of learner success;
  • agreed on a primary focus/purpose:  to develop a foundation of skills and knowledge about facilitating learning online;
  • reduced workload and start-up anxiety for facilitation teams by scripting examples of instructions and scheduling and ideas for structuring learning activities for peers within FLO;
  • eliminated duelling sessions within a week – reduced weekly facilitated learning activities to three – Week 2,3,4;
  • converted the two weekly mini-sessions to “stream team” activities and added one (workload and time management) – facilitation tasks will be spread out over the five weeks (raises potential questions about “noise” for learners – we’re going slowly with this model);
  • test drive one of the “new” types of facilitating activities – a “stream” team supported by LeonneB, that will encourage and support a specific topic throughout the five weeks of the workshop (in contrast to the “weekly” boundaries around the other facilitated sessions).
  • other changes to reduce confusion and allow participants to focus and build community and practice facilitation techniques and strategies!

Wheww!  We’ve taken on a lot but it should make this an amazing and constructive learning experience for participants – and for all of us. So many possibilities and richness of learning. I’ll be keeping a personal journal and trying to report regularly in these blog posts. We hope to have a lot to debrief and share with our guiding Committee and others.

Stay tuned!

SylviaR