Welcome to our collection on better teaching and facilitating. We have a whole range of resources to help you in your facilitation and they exist in a few different formats and fall under a few different categories. So, we've created this one-pager to collate them all in one place for you.
Keeping on top of things
These resources are focused on ways you can work smarter (not harder) and how you can spot learners who might need your help.
Tips for facilitating in iQualify and using the Class console
First, check out our Tips for daily and weekly facilitation. This short article gives a brief overview of the sorts of things you should look for each day to get your "reactive" facilitation done. Then, the sorts of things to look at weekly to fill in the bigger picture of how the class is going.
Then check out Actionable analytics - Using the data in Class Console to support engagement for more tips specifically for the Class Console.
Spotting the learners who need your help
Then we have a whole series of blog posts chock full of ideas to leverage the data available to you in the Class console and how to spot (and support) these six online learner personas you might have in your course:
Techno-not-whizz Tia - Who is completely new to online learning and having trouble getting into the course let alone figuring out what to do once she’s in there!
Disengaged Darren - Who started strong, but life got in the way and he hasn't been back.
Struggling Sven - Who attempted a few tasks but isn't sure where he's going wrong.
Rushy Rony - Who is getting through the written content, but skipping all the practice tasks.
Isolated Induja - Who is progressing okay, but not engaging in any of the social aspects of the course.
Bored Billie - Who has lots of prior knowledge and is well ahead of the rest of the class, showing no signs of slowing down.
Decrease your facilitator workload
Then, if you're ready to take a look at how you might do less of this kind of "reactive" facilitation, check out Smarter facilitation interventions to save time and enhance learning for ideas on how you can leverage the "guide on the side" (rather than the "sage on the stage") idea to do less and make sure your learners are the ones working.
Create a facilitation plan
Once you've facilitated a few times, you'll be ready to save time by creating a facilitation plan with common posts or feedback that you use. We've got a blog with ideas and examples, a template to get you started quickly, and even a whole iQualify skills course to help you with the process of creating your own facilitation plan.
Facilitator presence
For many people learning is inherently social. Just look at some well-known online communities (Twitter, Facebook, Linkedin etc.) to see that identity and presence are a big part of them.
Social presence in online learning is about people feeling connected and that they are interacting with real people - you. Here’s how to get started.
Add your avatar to show learners who you are.
Update your bio to tell learners your background and interests.
Become a main facilitator to get your avatar and bio shown on the course overview.
Post a welcome in a talk channel to let learners know you’re here to help.
The online teaching star
In Rewritten by machine and new technology - Why online courses haven’t killed the teaching star we take a look at just a few pieces of pizazz a facilitator brings to an online course and why facilitators continue to be relevant and integral to learning and engagement.
Show the human
There’s no one quite like you. So be sure to show the human behind the facilitator icon, through your writing your bio and giving a human introduction or say hello with a video.
Maintaining presence
One straightforward way to maintain presence is to have regular posts while your course is running. One easy action reaches the whole class. Check out the Section wrappers heading of our blog Creating a facilitation plan for ideas on how to keep the class engaged and on track by introducing and summarising their work for that section/module/week. Or, ask Chat GPT to whip you up some introductory posts based on your course outline/syllabus.
You can also maintain your presence at the individual level by keeping an eye out for learners who might need your help and giving learners feedback on their tasks.
Building an online community
In learning, online communities can motivate learners and improve outcomes. In iQualify these social spaces can take the form of talk channels, in-page discussions (built by the author) or social notes.
But we need to ensure these spaces lead to better learning and aren’t just “noise”.
A model for building an online community
So we've come up with a progression of tiers that increase in complexity and level of interaction with others: Building an online community.
The articles below include example text you could reuse for your own context.
Start with low-stakes
It's best to start with low stakes activities that allow learners to explore and encourage them to have a voice.
Help learners explore the online social space and introduce themselves.
Let them answer a pulse anonymously.
In a talk channel, ask them to share how a concept relates to their experiences.
Support connection and construction
Once learners have dipped their toes in, we want them to actually interact. Read Stop asking learners to post once and reply twice which focuses on getting engagement and conversation in a discussion. And, if you liked that article, sign up to our Designing and facilitating online discussions Skills course. It covers the ideas and techniques in a lot more detail with examples to help.
Summary
That's our current collection of resources to support you in furthering your online facilitation. If you have other ideas for resources, please get in touch. We'd love to help.