Humanize the learning Environment!!!!

Facilitating an online or blended course and facilitating a face to face course IS different. Yes, principles of good teaching apply in both cases but we have to admit that engaging our learners in an online environment requires a different kind of skill. We can all tell when students are bored, de-motivated or just plain confused- face-to-face that is. Can we tell when our online students are lost? It’s very difficult especially if we are using asynchronous methods and teaching at a distance. One of the big issues in facilitation of online and blended learning is preventing feelings of isolation. I know some of you will say that there can be isolation in the face to face environment and this is true, however it is more prevalent in the online environment. We have to admit too that we are social beings and an online environment can be very mechanical or impersonal. As facilitators we therefore need to find ways to humanize the environment, create a social space that is relevant, comfortable and safe for the student. Where they feel they are being heard and where participation becomes almost an addiction. The following have been useful as I have charted the course of facilitating online learning.

• Boettcher, J.V.2011. Ten Best Practices for Teaching Online: Quick Guide for New Online Faculty  http://bit.ly/1GpnCQ7
• Berge, Z. (n.d.) The Role of the Online Instructor/Facilitator ( downloaded from Research Gate)
• Assessing Online Facilitation Instrument  http://www2.humboldt.edu/aof/aof.htm

A higher education revolution

At the recent regional conference Institutionalising Best Practice in Higher Education one of the speakers, Dr Claudia Harvey, called for a revolution in higher education. Her point was that we need to develop a culture of best practice and embed this in everything we do. Another keynote speaker Dan Butin, talked about flipping the university as opposed to flipping the class. What these speakers are suggesting is by no means anything new since we can go back to the work of Paulo Friere whose educational theory is underpinned by a philosophy that the student should be the focus and should be recognised as having the capability to think critically. ."our relationship with the learners demands that we respect them and demands equally that we be aware of the concrete conditions of their world, the conditions that shape them. To try to know the reality that our students live is a task that the educational practice imposes on us: Without this, we have no access ' to the way they think, so only with great difficulty can we perceive what and how they know.

... there are no themes or values of which one cannot speak, no areas in which one must be silent. We can talk about everything, and we can give testimony about everything. "  (page 58)

Freire, P. 1998. Teachers as Cultural Workers - Letters to Those Who Dare Teach, Translated by Donoldo Macedo, Dale Koike, and Alexandre Oliveira, Westview Press, Boulder, CO, 1998.
http://www.newfoundations.com/GALLERY/Freire.html

I think we need to review the work of Friere as we reflect on what is required for this revolution in education.