Artifacts: MODULE FACILITATION AND REFLECTION 

 

 

• Develops a personal vision of inclusive educational practice

• Describes the relationship between Educational Technology and the broader field of Education

• Critically evaluates theory and practice

 

 

“One must critically master, and reflect upon the material they are facilitating. Through teaching, we teach ourselves.”

 

Purdue's EDCI 672 was a course in Advanced Case Studies, where I was able to effectively apply my instructional design and project management knowledge to a variety of scenarios, in both corporate and academic environments. Our guiding bible was Ertmer and Stepich's (2005) framework of novice vs expert designers. During this course, we were placed into groups, and for one case, tasked with a complete facilitation, from assigned readings to driving the Discussion Board in Blackboard LMS.

 

I believe that through the constructive exercise of facilitation, a facilitator learns to think critically about how to approach a diverse learner audience. While optimally, the target audience resides within a specific academic or corporate audience (i.e. grade/knowledge level). No learner left behind can also mean no learner forges ahead. That’s the beauty of the Vygotsky Zone. I believe that throughout this program, and in particular, facilitating an advanced case study to my graduate class, that I was able to develop a personal vision of and expand the boundaries upon, inclusive educational practice. My takeaway? Multiple paths of learning are indeed inclusive.

 

As a group, we learned through the use of technology, Blackboard, how to creatively organize the case lesson presented, so that it naturally fit into any field of education. Regardless of the subject, there is the need to engage. Engagement can be in the form of gamification, or just in great writing. Reading is equally important, thus through the assignment of objective oriented supplemental materials, a more diverse audience is fortified with relevant knowledge.

 

With constructivism being at the core of case studies and group facilitation, together we critically evaluated theory, practice, and our interaction with fellow students; this time in the role of Instructor. As leader of our four-person group, there were times when project management practices aligned to educational goals. Leading teams through a minefield of scope creep, scheduling constraints, dependencies, and staying in line with the critical path was a great opportunity to apply my PMP, in addition to the valued approaches I learned through Purdue’s Learning Design & Technology program. In this manner, I applied the relationship between Educational Technology and the broader field of Education.

 

The further exercise of reflection upon that facilitation engrained the exercise into a valuable learning memory, to be drawn upon for future facilitations in actual working or academic environments. This is just one of the benefits of a facilitation exercise.

 

The questions for class discussion were also designed to encompass the class as a whole, simply by designing for these objectives. This is the formula we utilized to, as our professor claimed, “raise the bar high” for our classmates to achieve in their turn to facilitate discussions. Whatever challenges and shortcomings we experienced, lessons were learned, serving to fortify my future facilitations, think Critically, Reflectively, and Creatively.

 

Ertmer, P. A., & Stepich, D. A. (2005). Instructional design expertise: How will we know it when we see it. Educational Technology, 45(6), 38–43.