Final Reflections

Well, I am towards the end of this class and I must say it has been an interesting and manageable experience. Although I was not excited about the class overall at the beginning, I have to say that I did learn some new areas in IT especially with Online Facilitation. My experience with facilitation was not as involving but it was a huge part of class that kept me interested and motivated although the assignment as an actual facilitator was not. We did have an opportunity to discuss our Facilitator experiences in class and found that some assignments were more involving than other. Although different, I did find that you can learn just as much by observing than being involved. I did understand that because this was a fairly new practice with the IT program, more barriers were involved such as online instructor not wanted interference in a sense, online instructors not understanding the goals of the facilitator, having enough instructors to match the number of facilitators requested and the challenges the students acceptance of a facilitator. In thinking deeper, although I know that the facilitation is new, I might have maybe waited another semester before including to better sell for a lack of words, pilot, test, and develop the concept, meaning and practice to the not only the instructor involved but the students and facilitator just as well. It seems to be a work in progress and experience is the best teacher but I think the overall meaning and expectation are a little grey for most. Again, piloting the program and selling if first might be a little easier.

The overall class did give me details as it related to online practice and facilitation. What I might have changed would be to have a portion of the class required to be online and include the facilitation practice online just as well. I think this would a give a feel for an online experience overall. The class seemed to be a bit long to fit all information necessary and required for this class. The class setting wasn't bad and I can see where the attempt was made to meet all of the objectives, but it did get rather lengthy. The projects were good learning experiences and the instructor was very knowledgeable of the subject. I think that only thing that might have fallen a little short was the reading, but at the same time they we very informative and can be used a collective reference guide.
As this class develops, I can see the IT program getting stronger which is a critical need. I hope is does just that. There is need for change just as there are changes with IT overall. I hope the program continues in its efforts to keep up.

The Team

We were given another assignment in class to work in teams and put together a paper and presentation on our FITs experiences, plans of changes, additions, and modification for an online instructor. I have to say this was somewhat interests because everyone in the group had different experience but seem to have parallel experiences as it relates to the student and somewhat different experiences working the instructor.
Personally, my experience as a Facilitator with the class I was involved in focused on the assignment of Mobile Learning. There were 2 students in the group on being more involved than the other. In a nutshell, the instructor posed questioned for discussion related to this topic requiring feedback amongst each other and what I found, feedback from other peers from other groups. One of the original 2 in my group responded regularly while the other person took a while. I tried my luck to get involved in the discussion by adding a little feedback of the topic and at the same give awareness of my presence and somewhat of an introduction of myself. Although the student knew from the instructor that I would be involved as a Facilitator, I didn't want to interrupt the instructor's overall objects for the student in the class. I didn't want to be a little more involving, therefore I also post question with my discussion to trigger more feedback. There wasn't a response at the beginning literally no feedback at all from on the group member. Eventually, she did post but only discussed feedback from questioned given the instructor. I did a little observing for a while to get a feel of how the tone was being set. I posted another question eventually and directed them directly to the student..Example-”what are your views on this situation John Doe". That actually prompted feedback but nothing more than that. The instructor eventually posted another question not only did my group give immediate feedback but so did other in other groups. I thought that this was pretty interested because it seemed that the students were doing just enough and only what was asked of the instructor. There was no real exciting interactivity for learning besides Collaborative along with visual presentation through PowerPoint. This class actually reminded me of a graduate level class with a very boring theoretical boring type of instructor. My question is where was the interactive learning for this online course? It really didn't seem that the instructor put together the class for online at all. Personally, I think that I would have our facilitation involvement throughout the whole class to aid in a deeper development of the instructor’s online teaching process. We were already in a facilitation class and learning as we were going about specifics of online teaching so why not.
Wow, think I really got off of the subject the Team Project of our FITS assignments.
Well, we have posted our paper and presentation on Blackboard and will be presenting it tonight. Two of the people in the group received feedback and discussion with the instructor while the other did not which includes me. Two of the group member that did get feedback from the instructor was based from asking too many question to their students in the group and let another student know that her involvement was in a since "too" involving. As the facilitation relates to the students all of did receive at some sort of involvement with them.
Our assignment as a team wasn't that difficult or too intense because none of us were that involving with our groups. Individually we gave our interpretation the facilitation process assignment and put it together when we met collectively. Paying more attention to details at toward the submittal on Bb, more discussion and modification were made. In addition and as of today we way and decided that more changes need to made, therefore we will be revising our paper for final submittal after the presentation tonight.
Until then......check in on the next post...