Free online course for people wanting to know more about how to facilitate online

It's that time of year when the free, online course "Facilitating Online" starts again. Anyone who wants to join as an informal learner, doing the course for fun, is very welcome. All you have to do is add your name to the participants page and follow the course schedule. If you cannot work out how to add your name to the wiki, please follow the instructions here.

Course blog
The course also has a blog which we will use for class communications, weekly instructions and summaries of the week's events.

Who will the course appeal to?
The course is aimed at:

• teachers who want to know how to facilitate online learning,
• non-profit organisations who want to know how to facilitate online networks and and communities, events and campaigns,
• businesses who want to know how to make the best use of online communication tools for meetings, conferences, seminars and workshops.

What does the course cover?
The online course has three phases which will allow you to dip in and out of the course according to your particular learning needs, starting July 19th, 2010.

• In Phase One (July 19th-August 22nd), we will be looking at the theory of online facilitation and some case studies.
• In Phase Two (August 23rd-October 17th) we will work through the process of developing an online event with hands-on experience of using online communication tools.
• Phase Three (October 18th-November 19th) will be devoted to facilitating and evaluating your own online event which will be part of the mini-conference.

What do I do if I want to become an enrolled student?
If you wish to receive full feedback and assessment services, you will need to enrol as a formal participant into this course (fees apply). For more information about enrolling as a formal participant please contact the course administrator at Otago Polytechnic, Catherine Lindsay.

Feedback about the course schedule
I am still putting the course schedule together however some of the topics and week's activities are available to look at. I would be interested in feedback on what I have put together so far. What I am particularly interested to know is:

• what do you think of the amount of resources I have posted?
• what you think of the number and depth of activities I have asked participants to do on a weekly basis?

Please feel free to contact me if you want any further information.