Week 1: Orientation

Joerdis Weilandt; Kristi Thomas

Week 1: Orientation

Happy Snowday, everyone!

We welcome you to FLOF 2019 – Facilitating Learning Online. In the next 10 weeks, we will explore theories and strategies relating to teaching online to help you effectively build community, work with diverse online learners, set up teams, resolve conflicts, facilitate learning and assessment activities in your online courses. We designed this course in a way that supports active, engaged, and collaborative learning and we hope that the pace will allow you to focus on the topics at hand.

This week is meant for you to learn more about the course and decide whether you would like to be a part of it. Once we learn who will take the facilitated course versus the unaffiliated course, we will divide you accordingly.

For those of you who are not interested in committing to the faciliated FLOf, you will automatically be enrolled in another Moodle course called FLOf Resources Shell on Monday, October 7th, 2019. There, each module and its materials become available at the same pace as the FLOf facilitated course but without our facilitation and no access to learner-generated content.

By clicking on the image on the top of our Moodle FLOf course you can start the orientationwhere you will need to complete three activities. These will provide you with course-related details and invite you to share your expectations, needs and experience, so that eventually you can make an informed decision as to whether you would like to commit to being a full participant in this course. DUE BY the end of Sunday, 6th of October 2019.

Please do share all course-related questions and comments with all of us in our How do I …? FAQ and OPEN Forum. By default, you all are subscribed to this Forum, so you can keep track and be part of the conversations in it. We are here for you and will try to be available when you need us. This is in accordance with the just-in-time online teaching strategy used to convey instructor presence.

We are so excited to see all of you online this week,

Kristi and Joerdis

Hello again everyone!

We are very happy to see that there are currently 14 participants enrolled in the FLOf course. Many of you have alread started doing the orientation activities, which is great because that way you have shared some information with us about your online teaching backgrounds and development needs.

With regards to the Orientation Activity 1, seven people have already submitted their documents in the Moodle Submission Folder and thereby indicated to committing fully with regards to the weekly time investment, interactive participation and quality of their contributions.

As the intermittend survey results show in Orientation Activity 2, for instance, we know that all seven respondents have had enjoyable and at the same time challenging online learning or teaching experiences in the past. The motivation for participation in FLOf 2019 includes the curiosity to try new things, the need to design online courses, the desire to learn more about online teaching theory and related research as well as a general strong interest in student engagement in online learning environments.

We thank those of you who contributed to our course agreement. You are helping to set the ground rules for this course, in which we as the facilitators pledge to communicate with you clearly and purposefully in due time. We will help you in all ways possible to successfully complete the activities, including support for using the assigned technologies. As you shared with us, you are very aware of your learning responsibilities in our collaborative online space, where all of us have a duty to build a lively and productive community.

Those of you who haven’t yet had the time to do any of the activities, feel invited to complete them

by Sunday, midnight this week. Your responses will allow us to move into Module 1 this coming Monday.

Wishing everyone a productive week,

Joerdis and Kristi

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Please be advised that the university is currently experiencing Moodle issues and IT is working on finding a solution. This may affect your experience to some extent. We will keep you notified of updates.

Dear all,

Just a quick notice concerning the IT issues affecting the functionality of Moodle that Kristi and I mentioned in our mid-week message to you.In the cases Moodle IS NOT working when you are trying to complete the Orientation, you will find alternatives listed as part of the step in the instructions. (see the screenshot below for an example)

You can navigate all 3 activities without actually having to go into Moodle by using your Course Pack Workbook Resource.

We are very sorry for the inconveniences caused and hope IT will soon be able to solve the technical issues causing the faulty behaviour.

Kind regards to all and looking forward to working with you more closely on the building of online communities next week,Joerdis

Wrap up Message Week 1

by Joerdis Weilandt – Monday, 7 October 2019, 10:30 AM

Dear all,

I am very excited to see that altogether ten people took the plunge to commit to sharing and learning their curiosity, experience and expertise with us in the next nine weeks to come.

I added pictures to from online profiles of those of you whom I could find online. If those of you who haven’t yet done so, could kindly add a picture of your into your Moodle profile, we will all be able to connect those faces to the names in the participant list. Watch the tutorial in Moodle if you need help with editing your profile.

FLOf 2019 as Kristi and I designed it will address many of the matters that you mentioned as worthwhile learning (more) about, such as engaging your online students on different levels, the building of a community in your courses, and the working with diverse learners and their diverse needs.

We hope that with our experience in designing and facilitating online courses, we can provide you with illustrative examples and encourage lively academic discussions around the weekly topics. Do always feel invited to ask away. No question should stay unasked if it helps you clarify concepts, use technology, understand the purpose of the set up or do the tasks you are being asked to complete.

We thank you for your sincerely for your contributions to the Course Agreement and hope that all of you will adhere to the terms as you’ve laid them out in our collaborative wiki, which I copied in its latest editing stage below.

Kind regards to all and with that I pass it over to Kristi who will be the lead facilitator in the next 2 weeks.

Joerdis

FLOf 2019 Course Agreement

Course Participation

Students who are enrolled in this course consent to actively and frequently participating in the course discussions and sharing ideas, questions as well as resources with peers and the instructors.
Students should remain active in their learning, and not “lurk“.
Students should help build a sense of community and presence, to avoid feeling isolated in the learning process.

Course Communication

Everyone addresses those spoken or referred to by their desired name and pronoun.
Everyone will have respectful dialogues with instructors and peers.
Experiment/feel comfortable with trying multimodal communication (audio/visual as well as written)

Expectations of course participants

All course participants agree to complete the course to the best of their ability, within the time allotted.
All participants do their best to contribute to the creation of a supportive and collaborative learning environment.
If asked to provide feedback to peers, do so in a constructive manner, providing both positive feedback and suggestions for improvement so that learners can benefit from every perspective.
All participants shall respect others disciplinary differences.
Participants should ask for help when they need it (e.g. if having difficulty using a specific online tool, understanding a concept etc.)
If a student has become less present in the eClassroom, it may not be due to disinterest in the course but unanticipated challenges/demands.

Expectations of the instructors

Clear and concise communication.
Accurate and timely feedback.
Ensuring accessibility, appropriateness and accuracy in course materials.

License

Icon for the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License

FLOf - Facilitating Learning Online Copyright © 2019 by Kristi Thomas and Jördis Weilandt is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License, except where otherwise noted.