Your Role Facilitating Synchronous Sessions

The basics of managing live synchronous discussions in an online setting are much the same as those in the classroom except there is the added complication (or opportunity) of technology. While technology can offer many interactive features, it’s easy to be misdirected to functions rather than thinking about the learning we want to take place. As facilitators of synchronous online discussions, our role as educators encompasses encouraging student participation, assisting students in meaning-making activities, and engaging them.

All that you know about facilitating face-to-face applies to in the synchronous environment. Paraphrasing and summarizing the group responses, asking good questions, and active listening are all skills that you can bring to your synchronous learning environment. Other key facilitation skills that enhance the online synchronous learning environment are:

1. Welcoming learners
2. Fostering a safe and supportive learning environment
3. Using humour
4. Modelling effective discussion strategies

Some additional challenges of the digital synchronous environment, however, may require you to develop some additional skills.

These include:

• Take leadership and be an active facilitator. Synchronous environments have a tendency to amplify the awkward and frustrating situations when no one is actively stewarding the discussions. Abandoning this role with the expectation that the group will just get on with the discussion is not empowering for the participants. It causes anxiety and frustration when people cannot see each other and are trying to figure out who is going to be in charge. It takes longer and people feel it wastes their time.
  • As the instructor, you do not have to facilitate every discussions. If it is appropriate to the outcomes of your course, enlist students to be moderators and have them take turns.
  • If you are having students meet in their own groups for learning activities, they will be needing to negotiate these roles amongst themselves. Be deliberate and remind them of the need for someone to actively moderate their group’s discussions.
• Use peoples’ names. Ask people to say their names and identify themselves when they speak up in an unstructured discussion, and do this yourself as facilitator as well. For example, say, “This is Bonnie here, the point that both of you have made is relevant….”. And address people by their names as often as you can, not just when addressing a question to them, such as when they enter the room (welcome them), when they’ve come back from a break-out room activity, and when you’ve just responded to one of their questions.
• Draw out participation from all participants by calling on people in a specific order to make sure everyone is included. Keep a list of participants and tick off their names as you go.
• Be okay with silence. Things can move a little slower and the rhythm of an online synchronous conversation requires deliberate attention to get it established amongst the participants. While that happens, be prepared for silent times, when you and your students are waiting for someone to speak when you thought that they were going to speak but then paused. Silences can feel longer than what they are because we don’t have visual clues to let us know that someone is thinking or making a note. We can worry that our audio has stopped working or that there is a technical issue.