Your conversation has inspired me to reflect ... and feel that I'd like to repeat those reflections here at a higher level so that as the years go by I can keep them in front of me... (I've just read through some of my old postings... gosh I was naive... but it's a good record too of where I've come from).
Online facilitation (to an extent) requires us to let go, to give more autonomy to our learners, even to be prepared to negotiate the curriculum with them. However! we are (still) trained as teachers to be in control, for our learners to be on task, key performance indicators, expected outcomes, proficiency, assessment, yadda yadda... yet then in an online environment our role is to stand back and let our learners do the learning. I wonder if... (and forgive me if I come across as cynical) this letting go of control is difficult for many teachers. ... Add this to (as Kim Mc observed), that the need to be technologically prepared is (paradoxically) so significant that it's simply too big and we aren't paid enough.
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3 comments:
I hope this 'letting go' is a conversation that the educators on this course follow up because I believe the online environment allows us to do that more easily...something to the networked way of learning, I think. Have a look at the resources and you'll find several references to this including George Siemens' work on connectivism.
BTW, when you refer to the work of another person, it greats to link directly so that people can follow to the original post. To do that...highlight the text you want to link...click onto the 'globe' symbol. When the box that says 'url' comes up, put the url of the original post. Then click 'ok'. Hope that makes sense :)
Katherine
what wonderful post.
This "letting go" is something I exeprience so often in my work as a facilitator of progress towards assessment for a qualification in our CAPLcentre.
those who are dedicated to delivering knowledge/curriculum have real struggles to hear knowledge that isn't what they teach.
I'm not sure that the use of technology will of itself make this less so. We still have Institutional Learning Management Systems- (Blackboard/Moodle etc) that we restrict entry to, and control the use of information deposited there.we shift our classroom behaviour of teacher knows best into a digital form.
I wonder what others think about this?
Willie,
Yes, you're right! I had forgotten that 'gate-keeper' affordance that a LMS provides - understandably so too, within most pedagogical contexts. I've enrolled in this course as a casual participant; I've never heard of such a thing before, of a tertiary provider opening the gate like this... it's brilliant - I love it!
However, my comments in the blog were more from the perspective of the degree of negotiation that the facilitator embarks on with his or her learners, of allowing them to contribute to the agenda, in providing the freedom to decide when they participate, on the way that they choose to engage, on what they see as important to learn... How practical is this? How scary?
I once went to a dance workshop to study a technique called Contact Improvisation (Contact Improv)which is (according to Wikipedia) "a technique in which points of physical contact provide the starting point for exploration through movement improvisation." It was fascinating, and although we were dancing together we didn't know what the end product would be (apart from that it was a 'dance'). Each participant had to develop increasing sensitivity to the other dancers around him or her, to respond in a timely fashion, to know what they other dancers were doing and why... where they were going with the dance, and contribute to the overall end product by being a part of the whole.
We have encountered this concept within the study material this week (um... not the dance metaphor necessarily, but the responsibility of a facilitator). I could almost describe it as such... we are dancing with our learners. A new model of pedagogical approach in that 'I'm no longer the knowledge expert directing things from the front, but rather the facilitator providing the opportunity to participate with us all in this dance.' (But, I am still the knowledge expert, it's just that I don't present my content using that as my underlying pedagogical paradigm)
Yeah - it's all very abstract isn't it?... I don't have as much to say on the practical implications. But... I guess that's what I'm here to learn!
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