There are several ways in which this course impacted my conceptions of the role of a facilitator of online learning. Looking back, I think my preconceptions framed the role of the facilitators as those who works by themselves, in relative isolation. I think this preconception comes from my experience as a teacher in high school and college settings where much of the planning is done individually. But it is clear to me that given the technical and managerial complexity of facilitating online learning instructors need to work collaboratively with other. Online instructors need to work within their organization/institution to gain to the resources and support that they need. Given the nature of online learning the technical requirements of facilitating an online experience often require a fairly high level of support. For example, at my own institution we recently transitioned from Blackboard to Moodle as the primary course management system. For all instructors this required close consultation with personnel from the technology services department. New training modules needed to be developed and many instructors needed to have access to individual consultations and debugging/ problem solving as they developed competence in the new course management system. Online instructors required even more support from technology services since their courses rely so heavily on technological components. In general it seems that online instructors need to work closely with support personnel in their organization to have necessary support and resources in technical areas that might be outside of their area of expertise.
Another preconception that was altered in this course has to do with the significance of developing community and teaming strategies. I had envisioned online learning has taken place primarily in individual interactions between students and the instructor. That is, most of the learning experiences in online environments that I had envisioned involved students completing work as a "independent study" and receiving feedback from the instructor but not necessarily engaging in much interaction with other students in the course. Several readings and class discussions have made me more aware of the significant role that the instructor has in building community and ways of developing ongoing and meaningful interaction among the students. In fact, the conduct of this course that relied heavily on student exchanges in the discussion board demonstrated how community can be built around student exchanges with each other. That can be important as students build knowledge and learn to become more attuned to each other's contributions. I think that as students become more familiar with each other and trust develops they become better able to challenge each other's ideas and help each other think in analytically deeper ways. I have also noticed that dynamic happening more and more in this course and expect that it will continue in future courses. In general, it seems to me a significant aspect of online learning involves the collaborative generation of knowledge that occurs when the facilitator designs many opportunities for students to collaborate and develop a healthy learning community.
