Course Overview

The Online Facilitation Course has been designed to be an introductory course for online communicators and educators to develop their online facilitation skills.

Participants in this course often include:

• Facilitators for Further Education programs
• Private Industry Educators and Trainers
• Individuals who wish to explore the power of online communication

This highly interactive program uses a range of online communication methods such as, online discussion boards, telephone conferences, online voice tools, elluminate and SMS technology.

The outcomes of the course include:

• crafting an engaging online discussion task
  
• building a solid online community
• discussion board dynamics
  
• online ice breakers
  
• working with lurkers
  
• dealing with online conflict and more
  
• using voice technologies

The Online Facilitation Course develops the skills and knowledge required to effectively use online technologies to communicate in a meaningful and collaborative way to meet common learning objectives.

Unlike most online courses, the Online Facilitation Course is a continually active and engaging course, with a heavy focus on online communication. Participants of the course are not expected to read through endless text based web pages in a self-paced manner. In fact the Online Facilitation Course is exactly the opposite.

The Online Facilitation Course provides the basic skills and knowledge required to deliver content via discussion, much in the same way a presenter/teacher/facilitator works in a face-to-face environment. Although this online delivery style does allow for a degree of flexibility, the group as a whole moves through the program in a stepped manner.

To ensure the participants of this program are fully supported, each group is capped at approximately 20 students. This allows for the group and individual participants to explore, with the expert facilitators, the areas of online communication interaction, which is of most interest.

During the three week program the group will explore online issues including: - 

• Building An Online Community

  The notion of online community is a rapidly emerging theme in relation to online learning and team building. Explore strategies to building an effective online community to best maximize the power of collaborative learning.

• Lurkers

  Develop strategies to effectively engage all participants within an online community, learn to help the more quiet members of the group feel comfortable enough to more actively participate.

• Online Ice Breakers

  Participate in, and explore the importance of, online icebreaker activities that help to build strong relationships between all members of the online group. This topic also includes strategies to move online introductory discussion forward to purposeful and sustainable online discussion.

• Synchronous Technologies

  Participate in, and learn about, an array of chat classroom management skills, to prevent your online chat activities becoming a textual nightmare. Explore strategies for the effective facilitation of virtual classrooms such as elluminate.

•  Voice Technologies

  Participate in activities using online voice boards and develop an appreciation of how best to use these voice tools. Explore strategies for using online voice tools to improve the online experience for community members. 

• Dealing with online conflict

  Explore the reasons behind online conflict and its implications on the online group members. Develop the basic skills required to address the issues surrounding online conflict.

• Managing discussion boards

  Learn how to manage the 24/7 global nature of discussion board management.

Most importantly the Online Facilitation Course allows participants to view how the two expert online facilitators deliver online content in an engaging and interactive way. Many previous participants have commented on the value of seeing first hand the skills and strategies the facilitators of this program use to ensure that participants gain a valuable and positive online experience.

Click here for further information about this course

Recognition of Prior Learning (RPL)

Many GippsTAFE courses offer Recognition of Prior Learning (RPL). Click to learn more about RPL and how it can benefit you.

How To Apply

Direct to Institute

Assessment

Students are given the opportunity to complete a formal assessment task. Participants who successfully complete this assessment will receive credit for this nationally accredited competency.