Your Role as a Facilitator

1. Moderating discussions that promote learning

Discussions promote learning when:

• Contributions are substantive, based on evidence from course materials and personal experience, rather than based only on opinion.
• They are purposeful, deliberate, and thoroughly exploring aspects of the course and outcomes.
• They reflect critical thinking by the participants: this is apparent, because participants are willing and able to critique their own ideas and the ideas of others.
• They are conducted in a respectful manner, so all participants feel they can participate and be listened to.
• They avoid tangents.
• Participants participate in setting their direction.
• They are clear and focused.

2. Creating a social space

As a moderator, you make a major contribution to moving the discussion forward, encouraging participants to think critically about what they are learning. One caution: avoid stepping from the “guide on the side” role to that of the “sage on the stage.” Impromptu mini-lectures posted in discussion forums will tend to shut down dialogue. Your posts may be relatively infrequent: perhaps you will contribute one posting to every ten put in by the course participants (collectively). When you do make a posting, you will have a purpose in mind. You may want to:

• Showcase the diversity of ideas that have been contributed, to encourage participants to consider if there are other angles they may have missed.
• Pose a question based on divergent contributions that will re-focus discussion and move it to a deeper level.
• Spotlight significant ideas that may have been buried in participant contributions.
• Ask brief questions for clarification.
• Summarize and bring dialogue to a close, indicating the beginning of a new course section.

3. Instructor Participation

There are several reasons for you to participate in class discussions.

• Participation gives you the opportunity to model appropriate discussion for students.
• Your participation underscores the importance of the activity.
• Students may feel that they are performing in a discussion just for evaluation. This sense of being watched and judged by a non-participant can be unnerving, and is lessened if you are a participant.
• Participating gives you a chance to help students deepen the discussion.
• As discussion progresses and students become more active, and more critically reflective, you may need to post less frequently.

4. Providing Asynchronous Informal Feedback

In addition to any formal assessment associated with the discussion forum activity you may or may not have planned, providing informal (e.g. not for marks) feedback in an asynchronous online course becomes a crucial communication channel between you and the distance student. For informal assessment in particular online instructors have limited opportunities to meet and discuss with students where they are at that moment. For that reason, planning how you will be giving feedback and when you will be giving feedback in an asynchronous environment is very important to discuss, and to make transparent to your students in an online course.

• Consider giving feedback between activities, in addition to giving feedback at the completion of tasks, as doing so improves both student motivation and performance.
• Consider using audio or video as modes to provide informal, interim feedback. Many learning management systems have the ability built into them making using this feature convenient. And seeing you and/or hearing you personalizes the feedback to the student and helps you further increase your teaching presence.
• Consider designating a discussion forum for student-generated questions about the current learning underway (that week’s assignment, the projects underway, the weekly readings, etc.). You can make this an open forum so other students respond if they know the answer. But you can also set the discussion forum to post-only and give students a mid-week deadline. You can then follow up on each of the questions via a single video or audio posting.