FLO (Facilitating Learning Online) – Series at the UofL
The FLO course builds on the fundamental principles of the face-to-face Instructional Skills Workshop (ISW). These principles include:
- participatory and learner-centred — participants form a learning community and support each other’s learning
- a safe, respectful learning environment — you will be encouraged to take risks, be creative, and learn from your mistakes
- feedback-rich — you will be encouraged to give and receive feedback with fellow participants
- reflective practice — you will analyze and critically reflect on the art of facilitation and your facilitation skills
- relevant and meaningful — you will explore the future application and transferability of your learning in this course
FLO is meant to help you enhance skills needed to confidently and effectively facilitate online learning. It is designed to provide you with:
- the experience of being in the students’ shoes;
- the opportunity to think about, practice and develop your online facilitation skills with other new and experienced online facilitators.
We the facilitators support and encourage you to:
- take risks and try new design approaches, structures and activities, scaffolded by FLO facilitators and their peers;
- design authentic, meaningful learning experiences for students; and,
- develop a deeper understanding of your pedagogical preferences and beliefs about learning.
During this online course you will:
- explore learning theories, instructional design approaches, related frameworks, models and quality standards;
- identify a topic and describe the intended learners for your short unit of online learning;
- create a design plan and prototype learning activities for a unit of online learning in your own online course;
- discuss design choices with peers, and give and receive constructive feedback;
- explore “quality” and/or Universal Design of Learning (UDL) principles as design guides;
- share a final plan/learning unit design, and engage others in a “walk-through” of a prototype learning experience;
Feedback from past FLO participants indicates that this hands-on practice was key to their enjoyment of the course and the synthesis of their learning. We hope the same holds true for you.
The first run of a facilitated FLO-Design online course took place from March 18 – April 28, 2019. Future iterations can be offered depending on interest.
Credit notice: The FLOd 2019 is inspired by FLO courses created by SCOPE – BC Campus Learning and Teaching, which we retrieved on February 2nd, 2019 from the Self-Serve Open Educational Resources.
