Facilitating an online course #BYOD4L
With the short online course Bring Your Own Device for Learning (BYOD4L) starting next week I thought I’d start my own journey off with a short post about the process so far as a facilitator.
Taking part over five days it is certainly short, and there is no requirement or expectation for ‘student’s to engage in all of the five topics; do what you can, and when, seems to be the motto. The plan is a facilitator will engage and interact when requested or when each one feels the community needs direction. We’ll start the conversations and lead each theme but, as the remit of the whole course, the real direction will be steered and directed by the community need and experience.
Several spaces have been created for the course, and can be viewed from a different perspective, nicely summed up by this image that Sue tweeted earlier:
I have removed myself from the Facebook group as I like to keep my Facebook account for friends and family only (apart from the facilitator group, which is where all the planning and work has taken place), but I will be active in both the Google Community and on Twitter (as usual!). Like other members of the facilitation team I’ve created my own hateful YouTube introduction video – I’ve recorded myself and been recorded before, but this time it seemed worse – for the BYOD4L team page on the website. I feel I need to re-record it now as I have a clearer idea of what I am involved in and how I can add to the course (beyond the Open Badges).
Facilitating this course will be different from others I’ve worked on, as this time the facilitators will take a more hands-off and background approach to the learning: we will lead and help, we will engaged and ‘steer’ the conversations, and we will monitor progress. But we will not be prompting and chasing participants, or organising you in anyway. The course is as much for you to figure this out as it is for us to lead you down certain paths.
- This resources is an interesting checklist for anyone looking at engaging facilitators on an online course: A Checklist for Facilitating Online Courses
Like other facilitators I’ll be trying to keep a (running) commentary on the course and experiences, maybe on the blog, maybe a video (!?) log … not sure yet how or what i’ll do but I’ll try and feed back to the participants and to Sue and Chrissi.
So, BYOD4L starts on Monday (January 27th) – come one and all!
Twitter:
Main Hashtag: #BYOD4L
Help Hashtag: #BYOD4LHELP
Chat Hashtag: #BYOD4LCHAT
Links:
BYOD4L Website – http://byod4learning.wordpress.com/
Google Community – https://plus.google.com/u/0/communities/115166756393440336480
Facebook Group – https://www.facebook.com/groups/1385272118361805/
