Assignment #4: Reflections on Learning:Team Facilitation Activities:Post #3

Prompt #3:

- Which of the two activities developed by the other team was the most relevant and meaningful to you, and why?

Two activities developed by Team’s Think Tank were the most relevant and meaningful to me:

- Team Activity – Providing Feedback:

This activity taught me how to provide feedback by using Nicholson's Rubric. I have learned that rubric should be shared with the students before they start to work on the activity; and instructor’s feedback ALWAYS should be non-judgmental, positive, encouraging, and stimulating lifelong learning!

- ZOHO Presentation - Providing Feedback in Online Learning Communities:

This presentation introduced new software (ZOHO), and summarized information on Feedback: Quality Feedback, Why is Feedback Important, Types of Feedback, Role of Feedback in Instruction, Tips on Incorporating Peer Feedback. It is a great reference!

Assignment #4: Reflections on Learning:Team Facilitation Activities:Post #2

Prompt #2:

- To what extent did the activities developed by the other team promote engagement and higher order thinking?
- Were their directions clear?
- Was there anything that you thought could have been improved?

Engagement, associated with higher order thinking, derived from the project design:
our team was offered unique opportunity to learn about the feedback process through the use of educational software programs in collaborative environment.
Trough the provided Threaded Discussion Example we were introduced to the team discussion on how technology changes over time. We have learned about different behavioral roles of team members (Instructor of an online writing clas, Student A, Student B, Student C, & Student D), their different styles of response, and assessed students’ work using Nicholson's Rubric.

The directions were absolutely clear.

I would not suggest improving anything: the Team Activity - Providing Feedback - was designed splendidly! I specifically like optional text: Methods of Feedback available at http://www.bournemouth.ac.uk/eds/documents/feedback_methods.pdf

Thank you, Team ThinkTank!

Assignment #4: Reflections on Learning:Team Facilitation Activities:Post #1

Propmpt #1:
- To what extent did the team faciliation activities you and your team developed promote engagement? Promote higher order thinking? How do you know?

Answer:

- Purpose of the Team facilitation activities is to make learning experience richer by moving away from didactic forms of teaching. Online technologies and community engagement strategies help to promote higher order thinking, and therefore help to promote learning.
The team facilitation activity is a strategy that helped us to be engaged in course content through activity design. Designing this activity encouraged our team to brainstorm ideas, collect information, research and analyze available resources, assess and create solutions.

This activity taught me a valuable lesson:
- If I would design the Team Facilitation Activity in the future, I will be carefully choosing moderating techniques that provide comfortable environment for students’ participation in online communications and activities.
“ Students will not engage fully unless the environment is non-threatening and they feel it is safe to do so” (Ambrose 2001).

Resources:
- Effective Online Facilitation Guide, available at
http://pre2005.flexiblelearning.net.au/guides/facilitation.html;

- What is Facilitation? by James Neill (2004), available at http://wilderdom.com/facilitation/FacilitationWhatIs.html;

- Priest & Gass' (1997) Six Generations of Facilitation, available at http://wilderdom.com/facilitation/PriestGass1997SixGenerationsFacilitation.html