Assessing Online Facilitation: An Instrument to Assess Online Facilitation

http://www.humboldt.edu/aof/index.html

An optional, voluntary aid for individuals seeking an objective self- or peer-assessment of their facilitation of online courses.

An Instrument to Assess Online Facilitation

The "Assessing Online Facilitation" instrument (AOF) is for online course facilitators to objectively evaluate their facilitation for strengths and areas for improvement. Facilitators may choose to offer the AOF to others to guide a peer evaluation of their performance in the online classroom.


The AOF recognizes the different roles of an online facilitator, as outlined by Berge (1995), Hootstein (2002), and others.


•Pedagogical: Guiding student learning with a focus on concepts, principles, and skills.
•Social: Creating a welcoming online community in which learning is promoted.
•Managerial: Handling organizational, procedural, and administrative tasks.
•Technical: Assisting participants to become comfortable with the technologies used to deliver the course.


There are many criteria that influence student satisfaction and learning in any course, including online courses. Recent publications have included criteria specific to online courses. The Project Team identified criteria from many sources and categorized them in the framework of the four roles of an online facilitator.


Criteria were further divided into intervals. Facilitation tasks vary throughout the course (Mandernach, et al 2005). The intervals selected by the Project Team included:
•"Before class begins"
•"During the first week"
•"Throughout the course"
•"During the last week"


Each page of the assessment instrument represents one interval of the course facilitation and contains criteria organized by category type: Pedagogical (P), Social (S), Managerial (M), or Technical (T). The remainder of the page is the Comments area.

Assessing Online Facilitation: An Instrument to Assess Online Facilitation

Magna Online Seminar: Beyond Course Design: Planning for Successful Facilitation

Event Date: 10/20/2010

Time: 8:00 am Central

http://www.magnapubs.com/catalog/course-design/?track=email

Magna Online Seminar: Beyond Course Design: Planning for Successful Facilitation

The Chronicle of Higher Education: Virginia State U. Business School Buys E-Textbooks for Students

http://chronicle.com/blogPost/Virginia-State-U-Business/26410/

August 24, 2010 By Jeff Young
Why do students have to pay for college textbooks? Couldn't the reading material be considered part of the college infrastructure paid for by officials as part of tuition, like classroom buildings and course-management systems?


Virginia State University is experimenting with that idea this fall, with a new effort to give free e-textbooks to students in its business school for eight core courses. The university recently negotiated a deal with upstart publisher Flat World Knowledge that treats buying e-books like buying campuswide software—with the institution paying a small per-student fee. The university plans to formally announce the deal Tuesday.


Student complaints about the high cost of traditional textbooks drove the university to try the giveaway. "For our accounting books senior year, there's nothing under $250," said Mirta Martin, dean of the Virginia State University business school. "What the students were saying is we don't have the money to purchase these books."


Last year Ms. Martin became so frustrated from hearing stories about students who were performing poorly because they could not afford textbooks that she made a pledge that no needy student would go without a book. She asked community officials and others to donate to a fund to pay for books of students who came forward asking for financial help, and last year that project paid for $4,000 worth of books for students. But Ms. Martin felt that philanthropic model was not sustainable, so she began reaching out to publishers to see if the institution could get some sort of bulk rate that would allow the institution to pay for textbooks for all students.


The university found Flat World Knowledge, which offers free e-textbooks to students and makes money by selling study guides and printed versions.


In its standard model, Flat World offers free access to its textbooks only while students are online. If students want to download a copy to their own computers, they must pay $24.95 for a PDF (a print edition costs about $30). But the publisher offered the business school a bulk rate of $20 per student per course, and it will allow students at the school to download not only the digital copies but also the study guide, audio version, or iPad edition (a bundle that would typically cost about $100).


"It's a really significant shift in the business model of the publishing industry," argues Eric Frank, president and co-founder of Flat World Knowledge, who compared the new approach with the way colleges buy software licenses.


Professors at the university spent the last few months frantically reviewing Flat World's available textbooks to see which ones to adopt, as part of a curriculum review that was already under way.


If the experiment goes well, the business school will hope to add more courses next semester. Ms. Martin says her hope is to give away e-books for students in about 30 courses by about 18 months from now.

The Chronicle of Higher Education: Virginia State U. Business School Buys E-Textbooks for Students