Face-to-Face Facilitation Projects

The Face-to-Face Facilitation projects were informative and very useful as an assignment. I learned something new and unique during every presentation – all were interesting and informative. The topics related to learning facilitation and I was able to tie a piece of information provided during the presentation to something read in our books or articles or discussed later in class. I thought this helped to tie everything together – the presentations provided a brief insight into the topics, allowing for in-depth follow-up later through the readings.

For example, the video on blended learning from Week 12 was an excellent compliment to topics first discussed by both Brad and Julie in their F2F projects. Part of the video focused on the experiences immediately after Hurricane Katrina at a local college. Two instructors discussed how the college continued after the devastation and instituted a blended learning environment so that students would not be behind in their studies. Brad’s topic focused on emergency-related plans for exactly these types of situations. The video’s in-depth focus on how a school actually implemented a similar tactic during an emergency situation was very informative on how quickly the schools reacted and therefore succeeded. It was interesting to me because it was something I had never thought of before Brad’s presentation – but what an appropriate use of the technology we available. Julie’s presentation followed up on specific tools (WebEx, etc.) that can be used in similar situations. Again, these tools used in this manner was something new, and although the technologies were probably not designed for this specific use, it appears that they can be extremely useful in disaster situations.

Janee’s topic was also one that I hadn’t really thought about in terms of online learning prior to this class. The specific topic of assessing readiness for online courses was interesting, and I think ultimately very interesting. Some of the individual topics Janee talked about in terms of assessing your own readiness for online learning really hit home – particularly availability to be online and additional flexibility in terms of assignments, projects, etc. I have not taken an online course yet, but from what we’ve talked about during this class, I can see that those attributes are fairly important to your success in an online class.