Teaching and facilitation in the online setting
Online teaching should not be downgraded to “facilitation.”
(Bayne, Sian, et al. The Manifesto for Teaching Online) is one of the statements from the Manifesto. But is facilitation really a downgrading of teaching?
Used correctly and in some settings, I think facilitation is completely appropriate for a teacher but maybe the negativity partly lies in the term “facilitation”. Looking at the way that “facilitation” is described in Feenberg & Xin (2010) as mentioned in the Manifesto (p32) this comes across as very old fashioned now. Ten year is a long time in a technological sense whether comparing mobile phones or teaching methods. According to Feenberg & Xin then, facilitation is the best way to cope with a bad deal; meaning online teaching. Online teaching, the article explains, can be made bearable only when the teacher manages to successfully navigate the four different categories: the pedagogical, social, managerial & technical parts that are necessary to make online teaching successful. Online education has moved on quite a bit from this perspective in the last 10 years, I believe, maybe especially over the last year when the push to teaching online was compulsory for many. Although many might have moved on from this point of view of facilitation, the negative association with the word has possibly lingered.
When we talk about the “Learnification” (Biesta 2012) of education, found on page 32 of the Manifesto: the idea that learners are autonomous and arrive knowing what they need to be able to learn. This downgrades the role of the teacher to a supporter along the way of the individual learner, rather than an expert needing to teach. In this context, the idea of a facilitator is someone who is less of a teacher and more of a helper to the student who already knows how and what to learn. Although on the whole this concept seems rather offensive to teachers and education in general, I do think that a distinction should be made between Undergraduate and Postgraduate students. The teacher in a Postgraduate setting does surely work with students who have at least an idea of how they learn and what they wish to know. A Postgraduate student is one who has continued studying by choice and will, more than an undergraduate student, be a “self-determining individual learner.” Bayne, Sian, et al. The Manifesto for Teaching Online (p 32). For these students (specifically,) a discussion session facilitated by an expert teacher can be incredibly useful. The teacher can still use her expertise by guiding a discussion and inserting knowledge during a discussion about material the students were asked to study in asynchronous sessions.
In conclusion, the term facilitation has been used as a term for teaching in the online environment with the negative sense of digital teaching being second best to face to face teaching. Although we have mostly moved on from this idea of online teaching as an inferior way of education, I believe the term facilitation is embedded in this idea and therefore has a negative association for many. Facilitation itself can be a useful tool for teaching, if used in the right circumstances. The time might be right to make facilitation a positive term again.
Yep, Feenburg and Xin’s article is a very clear articulation of a deficit model of online teaching and learning. It would be good to read more about what you think has changed in terms of the four categories of online teaching as the navigation of assemblages of the pedagogical, social, managerial (meaning, I think, the organisational context) and technological? This chapter of the manifesto argues for the continuing position of the teacher and teaching in a purpose-driven educational context (so doesn’t necessarily apply to, for example, non-formal learning). So this may include sessions that are facilitated rather than taught, or where there are peer-led activities, but these are part of a wider, purposive educational agenda. What Biesta, using the term ‘learnification’, is concerned with is the dominance of discourses of ‘learning’ in education policy and practices. He argues that the emphasis on ‘learning’ hides the other purposes of education and so makes them unquestioned and unquestionable. He sees the purpose of education as three-fold: (i) qualification – development of credentialed skills and knowledge; (ii) socialisation – the development of membership of, and identification with, prevailing social and cultural norms and practices; and (iii) subjectification – development of the student as an autonomous and responsible agent. How these purposes are achieved is the art and artistry of teaching and I think your point about how teaching methods may differ between under and post-graduates is a good one.
Thank you for your response and for clarifying Biesta’s ‘learnification’. With regards to your question I think the first two, the pedagogical and social categories of digital learning are still relevant, as they are for traditional teaching. I think the other two; managerial and the technological are somewhat different now, for most teachers. The managerial or organizational role will still be applicable to some, but I think most teachers these days will have an administrator who can at least help with this, although the assessment part of course will still come down to the individual teachers. As for the technological, again I think there is much more support now, for most but unfortunately not all teachers in the guise of a moderator who sits in during a teaching session to help with the tech problems.