Online Education
Program in teaching and learning online

Online learning today takes place in a culturally diverse space where different styles of communication and interaction can be confusing. Join other facilitators from the global south and north in learning to facilitate online courses while successfully navigating cultural differences.

This course is part of professional training program of the Centre for Intercultural Communication of the University of British Columbia. It was produced as a North-South collaboration activity that promotes the project “Cooperation, Knowledge and Development” with the financial support of the International Development Research Centre (IDRC-Canada).

Goal

The goal of the course, Facilitating Online Courses Across Cultures, is to provide participants with the knowledge and skills to effectively facilitate an online course [with the Centre for Intercultural Communication].

Specific objectives

• Understand the online learning environment of the course.
• Understand the role of the facilitator in online courses.
• Be exposed to different kinds of online facilitation styles.
• Practice facilitating a portion of an online course.
• Become familiar with the discussion based nature of online courses.

Contents

Module 1 - Navigating the Online Environment

This module will help participants become familiar with the online environment on which the course is based. In particular, it will include information such as the IT skills and computer requirements needed to facilitate an online course as well as the key features that will be used in an online course.

Module 2 - Facilitating an Online Course

• Role of an online facilitator
• Learning styles
• Exchanging knowledge across cultures
• Facilitation styles

Module 3 - Providing feedback to student assignments

During this module, participants will have the chance to look at a sample assignment (from the course, CIS501: Foundations of Intercultural Studies) and feedback given by various facilitators. They will share their opinions on the kind of feedback provided in a way to understand the role of the facilitator.

Module 4 - Providing feedback to student assignments (contd.)

In this module, participants will be provided with a sample student assignment and will have the opportunity to give feedback to the assignment and discuss this feedback with the rest of the participants.

Module 5 - Gleaning lessons learned

This module will provide participants with the opportunity to reflect on what they have done and learned in the previous modules.

For more information:
http://cic.cstudies.ubc.ca/FacilitatingOnlineAcrossCultures/index.html