Online courses, as a first time experience, for some people can be very frustrating. I have had a couple of instances where I and/or the course has tried the patience of a participant. As a result, I have received emails flaming with anger or that have a curt tone of "Okay, here I am, Now teach me."
So what is a facilitator to do. At first, I would become very nervous and worry about what I should say to calm the fears of a first timer or how to deal with the "here I am" participant. At first, I would want to fire back an email that exhibited the same tone that was sent. Knowing from my facilitator training that that was not an acceptable response, I would fret over how to word each response to achieve calm. When I would send a carefully crafted response, I'd hold my breath hoping for the best.
But, after a few times, some patterns began to emerge. I would notice that a certain type of email would net a certain response. I have narrowed down the skill of "taming the beast" in those disgruntled, frustrated participants to two strategies: monitoring my tone and copy and paste.
Maintaining a calm and helpful tone in a reply in spite of the harshness of the question can often soothe frustrations. Using phrases like "I'm sorry if my wording was confusing" even if I know the message was clear and had probably not been read with care, if at all, can avert a potential disaster.
One example of monitoring my tone occurred recently in one course. Donna had warned me about this participant after speaking on the phone with her a multitude of times, just getting her registered. And sure enough, the first email was of the "here I am" variety. Her first reply was brief, to the point, with a bit of cool to it: "I suppose I am completing the first part of the assignment. I am taking the course and am planning to complete it for course credit." No hello, no closing, just her formal name signed at the end. Her responses continued in that tone, very short, to the point and still aloof: "I was under the impression that my session two grade would be changed."
These types of statements continued as she questioned why her grade was not yet recorded or changed in spite of emails where I had detailed that I would update grading by Friday. This tone persisted in response to what I considered very warm, welcoming and informative emails on my part:
"I've also checked readings and responses for Session Two. Again, if you have an 'I', your readings report shows you have read far too few responses to be considered graduate level participation. Please go back and read more responses...I hope this cathes up grading for a little while. Session Three ends tonight and Session Four begins tomorrow. Time is flying."
I had hoped my conversational tone would rub off on her responses. No such luck.
But, as the session moved on, I begin to notice a change. At some point I had begun to respond to her short notes with my own short, abrupt replies. To her hurried, and in my interpretation, harried message: "I have tried to get in touch with you, but have not gotten a response. How do I go back and get feed back? Where is my grade from last week? Could you open my project?" I simply replied, "I responded in the help section where you left me the question."
I continued that type of response that mimicked her brusqueness through the next several exchanges. By the end of the course, I noticed that her emails had begun to soften. She emailed: "Please let me know if I can make up work for week three. I am not really sure what I have not completed. I posted an email and responded to two; I also completed a journal entry." Her sentences were a bit longer and she had begun to use the word "please" more prominently and the phrase "I am not sure..." which suggested a calmer more friendly tone. I want to assume that she saw her tone mirrored in my responses and decided to change her tone. Although she could have just been more comfortable with the online venue, I felt my modeling had some impact on her responses.
Another example of "taming the beast" was concerning the emailer who was incensed that she had an "I" grade for a session. I can't find the exact email, but to paraphrase, "I am a high level graduate of a prestigious NEIGHBORING STATE school and I would not have gotten where I am if I had not done my assigned work. So, I'm sure you are mistaken." That certainly set me back for a second. I wanted to scream back in all caps that had she read her emails she would know exactly why she had received an "I." But, I maintained my cool and quietly copied and pasted the info from the email and put it in a response to her saying, "I am sorry if my wording was confusing to you. If I can answer any questions about the material I will." Her follow up email was rather subdued and apologetic. Using the copy and paste of what she should have read, I didn't have to respond on her level.
In wrapping up this lengthy entry, I'll share a moment when I nearly did "lose it" with one of those angry emails. I can't even remember the topic, but the email was angry, snippy, and accusing me of not making instructions clear. I quickly clicked on reply and fired up a message equal in tone to the one I'd received. I had even resorted to sarcasm and was ready to fire it right back. I pounded the send key... nothing happened. The screen froze and I had to restart the computer. I had been saved by Divine Intervention of the computer gods. But, in case that doesn't work, I would recommend monitoring your tone and using the copy and paste function to combat many of the frustrations of our course participants.
Sunday, August 31, 2008
Saturday, August 30, 2008
Keeping Things Simple
One of the hardest parts of facilitating and taking these online courses is the fact that all parties are working other jobs as well as facilitating and participating. So, time is of the essence for all of us. Through the two years that I have facilitated I have found ways to save time that may or may not always coincide with popular philosophy. But, they work for me, so, I’ll share anyway.
Grading and Monitoring Discussions
Early in my facilitating, I found myself, during the summer, checking the site 4 or 5 times a day and sometimes an hour or two would elapse with my muddling around in the discussion forum or toying with content materials. I realized that when I went back to work in the fall, that wasting that time would have to stop. So, I began to have a set time each day that I would check in on the discussions, a set time to check emails and respond to them, and a set time to have grading updated.
For my own sanity, I set the time of day for checking in so that I would not be interrupting my day with constant checking to see if someone had emailed, or someone had posted a reply to a prompt, or uploaded a revision to the dropbox. Early mornings are a good time for me to check. Others might find very late at night. I noticed one participant was posting at 4:30 a.m. one session.
Then, for the sanity of the participants, as well as myself, I set a date for finalizing grades for each session. I set Friday after the close of each session to have grades posted because I was getting messages on Wednesday mornings asking about “Why don’t I have a grade yet, I did all my work.” I quickly learned to make clear in my welcome messages and on the news pages when I would be posting grades. Then, when an early bird asked about grades, I could redirect them to their email so they could calm down. If I wasn’t able to get the grades in by Friday I would send a group email explaining the delay to keep them at bay. Teachers are very interested in grades, it seems.
Separating Topics in the Discussion Forum
A timesaver for the participants benefit that I evolved to in my facilitating was setting up a Help forum and a forum for them to post additional materials such as handouts or rubrics to go along with any strategies they were talking about in the discussion area. To have someone request more info on how to implement a reading strategy or ask for a handout makes the discussion area heavy and cumbersone for the readers to navigate. So, when a participant began to describe a strategy, I would steer them to the added forum to supply details for everyone by posting a reply to their topic so others would know to look there for it. One session, so many folks were suggesting websites they had used successfully, that I set up a forum specifically to catch those websites all in one place.
By separating these topics, reading the forum became less time consuming and more focused for everyone. Then, the participants had a collection of strategies or websites all in one place to save time re-looking through all the discussion topics to find something they wanted to know more about.
Session Summaries
My first experience with session summaries was when I took the first facilitation course with Kirsten as facilitator. She would create the summaries by copying and pasting best practice comments of the participants. That seemed easy enough, so I borrowed that idea when I began facilitating. I would create a Word document and copy and paste ideas during the week as postings appeared. Then I would save it as Session Summary in Progress. By the end of the session, I would copy and paste my word document into the session summary posting area. That was a real time saver, in the beginning. But, as time passed and the online courses became fuller, copying and pasting from 30 participants over 6 sessions could also be a bit cumbersome.
So I began to streamline a bit. I began to notice that some of the later session topics for the Helping Struggling Readers course caused the participants to respond with key words that kept cropping up throughout the discussion. As I monitored the discussions, I took notes of the key words that kept coming up and listed them with an introduction of how they related to the topic. A sample of one of those summaries about vocabulary instruction follows:
"A list of key words that kept coming up in your significant understandings follows to pull all ideas together.
Motivation
Flexible Instruction
Multiple Strategies
Vocabulary Instruction
Think Aloud
Schema
But, the following quote reminds us that we need to involve students themselves in their instruction by letting them make their own choices as to what helps them the most:
"I will keep all of those 'fix-up' strategies posted in my classroom so students are constantly reminded of them and I will stress the use of them. I will model, model, model all of them and gradually have students work at using them independently."
Responding to the Discussions
Another facilitation strategy that I observed of Kirsten was replying to every single main posting. I thought that was a good way acknowledging that person’s response, so I adopted that same tactic. But, again, as class size grew, it became increasingly harder to respond to that many original postings without sounding repetitive or trite. So, I began to consider how I might revise. I began to still respond to every single person’s post in the orientation session to welcome them to the course and/or ease fears about online learning. Then, I would monitor the sessions by responding with cognitive coaching questions prodding the responder to elaborate or inviting others to add on their personal experiences. I would, also, notice patterns that arose from the discussions and post a related question that seemed to be flowing just beneath the surface. To one discussion about collaborative learning prompts that seemed to be focusing on the negatives of collaboration, I posted:
“Remember to consider the solutions to these very valid obstacles to collaborative learning. By the end of this session let's have a substantial list of ideas for meeting those challenges. Be careful that we don't get caught up in all of the things that can go wrong that we forget to discuss how to overcome them so that students have an opportunity to learn the skill of collaboration that is so important to their future.”
The following response to a participants description of her use of blogging in class opened a lengthy discussion of who or who does not have computer access and how we can deal with that in our classrooms:
“I love your blogging idea. Do you have good luck with students having access to the internet at home? Our teachers seem to think not enough students do have access so they shy away from activities like this. How do you accommodate those who don't have ready access?”
These types of responses kept the conversation going, yet, did not intrude into the collegiality of the participants themselves. They could see and sense my presence as I found logical places to encourage and prod them along. That decreased number of prompts streamlined the facilitation of the course as well as allowed the discussion forum to be more authentically theirs. They did not try to “respond with what the teacher wants” as much as truly share their experiences.
These tips for streamlining the facilitating process can and, I am sure, will be tweaked as I continue to facilitate courses. As you read the examples, feel free to offer some suggestions that will help me finesse the facilitation process.
Grading and Monitoring Discussions
Early in my facilitating, I found myself, during the summer, checking the site 4 or 5 times a day and sometimes an hour or two would elapse with my muddling around in the discussion forum or toying with content materials. I realized that when I went back to work in the fall, that wasting that time would have to stop. So, I began to have a set time each day that I would check in on the discussions, a set time to check emails and respond to them, and a set time to have grading updated.
For my own sanity, I set the time of day for checking in so that I would not be interrupting my day with constant checking to see if someone had emailed, or someone had posted a reply to a prompt, or uploaded a revision to the dropbox. Early mornings are a good time for me to check. Others might find very late at night. I noticed one participant was posting at 4:30 a.m. one session.
Then, for the sanity of the participants, as well as myself, I set a date for finalizing grades for each session. I set Friday after the close of each session to have grades posted because I was getting messages on Wednesday mornings asking about “Why don’t I have a grade yet, I did all my work.” I quickly learned to make clear in my welcome messages and on the news pages when I would be posting grades. Then, when an early bird asked about grades, I could redirect them to their email so they could calm down. If I wasn’t able to get the grades in by Friday I would send a group email explaining the delay to keep them at bay. Teachers are very interested in grades, it seems.
Separating Topics in the Discussion Forum
A timesaver for the participants benefit that I evolved to in my facilitating was setting up a Help forum and a forum for them to post additional materials such as handouts or rubrics to go along with any strategies they were talking about in the discussion area. To have someone request more info on how to implement a reading strategy or ask for a handout makes the discussion area heavy and cumbersone for the readers to navigate. So, when a participant began to describe a strategy, I would steer them to the added forum to supply details for everyone by posting a reply to their topic so others would know to look there for it. One session, so many folks were suggesting websites they had used successfully, that I set up a forum specifically to catch those websites all in one place.
By separating these topics, reading the forum became less time consuming and more focused for everyone. Then, the participants had a collection of strategies or websites all in one place to save time re-looking through all the discussion topics to find something they wanted to know more about.
Session Summaries
My first experience with session summaries was when I took the first facilitation course with Kirsten as facilitator. She would create the summaries by copying and pasting best practice comments of the participants. That seemed easy enough, so I borrowed that idea when I began facilitating. I would create a Word document and copy and paste ideas during the week as postings appeared. Then I would save it as Session Summary in Progress. By the end of the session, I would copy and paste my word document into the session summary posting area. That was a real time saver, in the beginning. But, as time passed and the online courses became fuller, copying and pasting from 30 participants over 6 sessions could also be a bit cumbersome.
So I began to streamline a bit. I began to notice that some of the later session topics for the Helping Struggling Readers course caused the participants to respond with key words that kept cropping up throughout the discussion. As I monitored the discussions, I took notes of the key words that kept coming up and listed them with an introduction of how they related to the topic. A sample of one of those summaries about vocabulary instruction follows:
"A list of key words that kept coming up in your significant understandings follows to pull all ideas together.
Motivation
Flexible Instruction
Multiple Strategies
Vocabulary Instruction
Think Aloud
Schema
But, the following quote reminds us that we need to involve students themselves in their instruction by letting them make their own choices as to what helps them the most:
"I will keep all of those 'fix-up' strategies posted in my classroom so students are constantly reminded of them and I will stress the use of them. I will model, model, model all of them and gradually have students work at using them independently."
Responding to the Discussions
Another facilitation strategy that I observed of Kirsten was replying to every single main posting. I thought that was a good way acknowledging that person’s response, so I adopted that same tactic. But, again, as class size grew, it became increasingly harder to respond to that many original postings without sounding repetitive or trite. So, I began to consider how I might revise. I began to still respond to every single person’s post in the orientation session to welcome them to the course and/or ease fears about online learning. Then, I would monitor the sessions by responding with cognitive coaching questions prodding the responder to elaborate or inviting others to add on their personal experiences. I would, also, notice patterns that arose from the discussions and post a related question that seemed to be flowing just beneath the surface. To one discussion about collaborative learning prompts that seemed to be focusing on the negatives of collaboration, I posted:
“Remember to consider the solutions to these very valid obstacles to collaborative learning. By the end of this session let's have a substantial list of ideas for meeting those challenges. Be careful that we don't get caught up in all of the things that can go wrong that we forget to discuss how to overcome them so that students have an opportunity to learn the skill of collaboration that is so important to their future.”
The following response to a participants description of her use of blogging in class opened a lengthy discussion of who or who does not have computer access and how we can deal with that in our classrooms:
“I love your blogging idea. Do you have good luck with students having access to the internet at home? Our teachers seem to think not enough students do have access so they shy away from activities like this. How do you accommodate those who don't have ready access?”
These types of responses kept the conversation going, yet, did not intrude into the collegiality of the participants themselves. They could see and sense my presence as I found logical places to encourage and prod them along. That decreased number of prompts streamlined the facilitation of the course as well as allowed the discussion forum to be more authentically theirs. They did not try to “respond with what the teacher wants” as much as truly share their experiences.
These tips for streamlining the facilitating process can and, I am sure, will be tweaked as I continue to facilitate courses. As you read the examples, feel free to offer some suggestions that will help me finesse the facilitation process.
Friday, August 29, 2008
Making Things Clear
In “Taming the Beast” I suggested that as facilitators we may not be making ourselves clear even though we think we are. Just like our students who write vaguely, we know what we are talking about and, for a short while, think our readers must too.
But, I learned over the course of facilitating the first session of a course I had helped develop that things might not have been as clear as they could have been. When the mid term check assignment was turned in for the course, I was disappointed in the journals that were being turned in. I spent the greater part of a week “re-teaching” what the journal was supposed to have in it. At the end of that week, I decided that, perhaps, the directions needed some work.
The original directions asked them to keep a reflective journal and submit it after week three:
Old Journal Instructions
The activities in each session will allow you to consider some options for your final project. You will record your thoughts from these activities in a reflective journal which you will submit after Session Three and Session Five as part of the course requirements. You can create your journal as a Microsoft Word document to upload to the facilitator. You may construct the journal in a double entry journal style or in paragraph form. Make sure the journal contains all elements indicated by the rubric for the midterm project.
With these instructions I was getting journals like Sample A. This example does not come close to including details from the 3 course sessions. In this particular session, I sent back at least 80 percent of the journals for revision. Yes, they had a rubric.
The next time I facilitated the course I upgraded the instructions in the course content. I appealed to the English teachers knowlege of using writing to create learning, the 21st Century notions of reflecting on practice and creating a product that has concrete relevance.
New Journal Instructions
As an activity for this course, you will keep a journal that will allow you to consider some options for your final project. In each session you are given a journaling topic to reflect upon. You should consider how the topic you are asked to write about might be implemented in your classroom or into your final lesson project for the course. You should also plan to put at least 2 other ideas about anything else in the session that you think might become part of your final project or classroom next year.
As English teachers, you know that to process information, it is often beneficial to write about it. That is why you are asked to keep this journal. You have an opportunity to process some of the information a bit more thoroughly as you consider what to include in your final project.
You will submit the journal to me after Session Three for a midterm check. You can create your journal as a Microsoft Word document to upload to the facilitator. You may construct the journal in table, a double entry style, or in paragraph form. Whichever format you decide to use, make sure the journal contains all elements as indicated by the rubric for the midterm project.
Although you will only turn in the journal after Session Three, it will offer an end product for you as well. In addition to using it to reflect on ideas for your project, you will also have a nice collection of ideas to take with you at the end of the class about the items in the course that might become part of your classroom activities. So, plan to take notes in your journal throughout the course and consider both how the ideas might be used in your final project and your classroom next year.
With these directions, I was able to send back fewer than 5 journals for revision. Sample B shows the thoroughness of most of these journals. I want to believe that the improved directions gave a sharper focus to the expectations and gave participants a background for the importance of the journal.
This experience drove home for me the necessity of clarifying my thinking. Just because I understand what is expected, I must consider the learning styles of participants to know if they may need more detail to convince them that an activity is worthwhile. I think clarifying the rationale from the English teacher’s perspective made these journals more effective.
But, I learned over the course of facilitating the first session of a course I had helped develop that things might not have been as clear as they could have been. When the mid term check assignment was turned in for the course, I was disappointed in the journals that were being turned in. I spent the greater part of a week “re-teaching” what the journal was supposed to have in it. At the end of that week, I decided that, perhaps, the directions needed some work.
The original directions asked them to keep a reflective journal and submit it after week three:
Old Journal Instructions
The activities in each session will allow you to consider some options for your final project. You will record your thoughts from these activities in a reflective journal which you will submit after Session Three and Session Five as part of the course requirements. You can create your journal as a Microsoft Word document to upload to the facilitator. You may construct the journal in a double entry journal style or in paragraph form. Make sure the journal contains all elements indicated by the rubric for the midterm project.
With these instructions I was getting journals like Sample A. This example does not come close to including details from the 3 course sessions. In this particular session, I sent back at least 80 percent of the journals for revision. Yes, they had a rubric.
The next time I facilitated the course I upgraded the instructions in the course content. I appealed to the English teachers knowlege of using writing to create learning, the 21st Century notions of reflecting on practice and creating a product that has concrete relevance.
New Journal Instructions
As an activity for this course, you will keep a journal that will allow you to consider some options for your final project. In each session you are given a journaling topic to reflect upon. You should consider how the topic you are asked to write about might be implemented in your classroom or into your final lesson project for the course. You should also plan to put at least 2 other ideas about anything else in the session that you think might become part of your final project or classroom next year.
As English teachers, you know that to process information, it is often beneficial to write about it. That is why you are asked to keep this journal. You have an opportunity to process some of the information a bit more thoroughly as you consider what to include in your final project.
You will submit the journal to me after Session Three for a midterm check. You can create your journal as a Microsoft Word document to upload to the facilitator. You may construct the journal in table, a double entry style, or in paragraph form. Whichever format you decide to use, make sure the journal contains all elements as indicated by the rubric for the midterm project.
Although you will only turn in the journal after Session Three, it will offer an end product for you as well. In addition to using it to reflect on ideas for your project, you will also have a nice collection of ideas to take with you at the end of the class about the items in the course that might become part of your classroom activities. So, plan to take notes in your journal throughout the course and consider both how the ideas might be used in your final project and your classroom next year.
With these directions, I was able to send back fewer than 5 journals for revision. Sample B shows the thoroughness of most of these journals. I want to believe that the improved directions gave a sharper focus to the expectations and gave participants a background for the importance of the journal.
This experience drove home for me the necessity of clarifying my thinking. Just because I understand what is expected, I must consider the learning styles of participants to know if they may need more detail to convince them that an activity is worthwhile. I think clarifying the rationale from the English teacher’s perspective made these journals more effective.
Thursday, August 21, 2008
Learning more Web 2.0
Hello All,
This is my first attempt at blogging, so I'm definitely "learning along the way." I chose blogging because I wanted to attempt something new. I am familiar with wikis, so decide to take the blogging route. I chose this particular blogging site on Kathy Shrock's advice. I have found her other technology teaching suggestions to be invaluable, so, decided I couldn't go wrong with blogging. I settled on Blogger.com because I could use my current Google account instead of registering for yet another online tool.
So, my blog will focus on learning...more specifically learning to facilitate online courses. I will trace 3 of the most crucial things I've learned as a facilitator over the past three years as part of this grant. As of yet, I've not settled on those 3, but am churning several around as I read the discussion forum.
I will devote the next few minutes trying to make sure I can successfully direct you to my blog site. So if you end up here, I was a successful learner. I do hope my learning will in some way guide others who want to facilitate online courses. I have found facilitating full of challenges and rewards as I will elaborate on in future blogs.
This is my first attempt at blogging, so I'm definitely "learning along the way." I chose blogging because I wanted to attempt something new. I am familiar with wikis, so decide to take the blogging route. I chose this particular blogging site on Kathy Shrock's advice. I have found her other technology teaching suggestions to be invaluable, so, decided I couldn't go wrong with blogging. I settled on Blogger.com because I could use my current Google account instead of registering for yet another online tool.
So, my blog will focus on learning...more specifically learning to facilitate online courses. I will trace 3 of the most crucial things I've learned as a facilitator over the past three years as part of this grant. As of yet, I've not settled on those 3, but am churning several around as I read the discussion forum.
I will devote the next few minutes trying to make sure I can successfully direct you to my blog site. So if you end up here, I was a successful learner. I do hope my learning will in some way guide others who want to facilitate online courses. I have found facilitating full of challenges and rewards as I will elaborate on in future blogs.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
