Facilitator Roles

Strategies

Create a comfortable environment.

• Publicly respond to each person’s messages in the beginning of the course. After everyone is comfortable, responses can become more global.
• Show your personality, so people feel like they know you.
• Respond to initial introductions using them as a springboard for discussion.
• Use bios, photos, introductions, emoticons (gestures represented via text), and an informal and friendly tone.

• Phrase responses to encourage further responses from participants, and draw connections between participants’ comments.
• Avoid "over-facilitating", i.e., don’t answer every question and settle every point so there is nothing for anyone else to say. If you respond to one question, push the discussion forward by raising another.

• Email is a good way to respond to individual problems, or to prod people into participating without embarrassing them.
• If participants start saying interesting content-related comments via email, encourage them to post their comments to the discussion to share their ideas with the rest of the group.
• A weekly email sent to the entire group can launch each new session and direct participants to the appropriate part of the web site. (These are handy reminders for people who might otherwise "forget" that a new session is starting.)
• Email is a good way to gather feedback about whether the workshop is meeting participants’ expectations, so that adjustments can be made if necessary. A good time to do this is halfway through the workshop, or if suspicious symptoms arise, such as dramatic absenteeism for a week or more.

• Pay attention to the tone of messages that you post, as a way of setting the workshop tone globally.
• Being respectful, inclusive, and making connections between participants’ comments will model this type of discussion for the participants as well.

• Post "acknowledgement" messages to participants’ comments, even if you don’t have anything fancy to contribute on that point.
• Be aware of time—participants usually don't check the discussions as frequently as facilitators do. Don’t let the lulls last too long though. If you keep the discussion alive, this is an incentive for participants to check more frequently.
• The facilitator, or at least one member of a team of facilitators, must read and contribute to the discussion every other day (minimum).
• Keep the majority of all communication in the public forum. Do not dilute the discussions with too much one-on-one email with participants.

Push people forward on the topic.

• Act as a parabola, reflecting the energy back towards a central focal point.
• Be creative with limited tools for getting people’s attention. Use subtle/humorous messages, or perhaps a humorous graphic/photo. Send personal email if necessary.

• collaborative, consensus-building activities
• discussion summaries
• email messages that provide closure and thanks for previous session, and introduce and provide encouragement for the next
• surveys
• synchronous sessions

• Observe participants’ behavior and responses to assignments, and adjust facilitation strategies and/or curriculum content and presentation as necessary.
• Encourage participants to explicitly reflect on the course experience and provide feedback (either in the online discussions or via email to the facilitator).