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 a facilitator.

Activity 1

Timing: (Allow 45 minutes)

Thinking back over your experience in online conversations, is there a time when something went wrong? This could be something such as no one responding to a particular message or a learner misunderstanding a message posted by another learner.

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 learning log.

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

Note this in your log 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 other participants?
  • 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 arose, 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.

1 Building a reflective log

2 Preparing to be a facilitator