1.1 Thinking about your own experience

In this section you will think about your experience so far and how that will help with your ability to become an online facilitator.

Activity 1

Timing: (Allow 45 minutes)

Thinking back over your experience in online conversations, is there a time when something went wrong? Consider your interactions with others on Facebook or perhaps when you used a messaging tools such as Viber, WhatsApp or Instant Messenger.

Maybe no one responded to a particular message or a person you were communicating in an online group misunderstood a message posted by someone else.

Use the questions and prompts below to review what happened or what you did and consider the impact. You may wish to note down your thoughts in your reflective journal.

Then, thinking about your role as an online facilitator, plan what you would do in the future.

Note this in your journal too.

What?

  • What happened?
  • What did you observe?
  • How did you respond?

So what?

  • What was the immediate impact or effect on you and the others participating in the online conversation?
  • Was there a longer-term (a day or a week) impact or effect, and, if so, what was it?
  • How did you feel?

Now what?

  • If the same situation happened again in the future, what would you do differently?
  • Is there any follow up required (training, guidance, etc.)?

Discussion

If you would like to know more about reflection, the Infed website [Tip: hold Ctrl and click a link to open it in a new tab. (Hide tip)] has some useful sections.

Now continue to Session 2 Preparing to be a facilitator.

Session 1 Building a reflective journal