My Facilitation Experience...

Asynchronous vs. Synchronous

Beginning with the Asynchronous communication; this technique was not knew to me, but I must say made me a little nervous since it was my first time actually facilitating a class on my own on live Wimba. I expected to be nervous and scared! I feared I would mess up or not keep the class on track or interested. After my first and second experience I can say that my experience where very pleasant, I enjoyed them and cannot wait to beginning teaching on my own, full time!
Wimba live takes a lot of prep work, research and good information to be shared with the class. As well as experience in using power point. I enjoyed doing the ppt presentations and sharing my findings with my peers.

My Asynchronous experience recommendation for others, who will be facilitating with wimba is to try every tool to see what works best for your section. I had tested many of the tools before hand yet there was one tool that I was afraid to use in fear of reveling my entire desktop to the class.It turned out that was not the case. So asking about the particular tools in advance if you are not sure is a good idea. Other than that, my experiences with Asynchronous Wimba was great!!!

With the synchronous facilitation I spent a lot of time on the pc answering and posting comments and offering feedback. And as it turned out, unit 12 had a lot of topics to cover, so it took me much time to cover all the questions posted. Facilitating synchronous was very relaxed in my case, but it definitely did keep me on my toes in terms of fear of not responding effectively so I was online often. Fortunately, I was able to do my job as a facilitator, and as far as I know completed with the proper procedures and or techniques.

This is my first experience with online synchronous facilitating and I enjoyed it greatly! To me, I felt the synchronous discussion post facilitation was easier in terms of preparation than that of the asynchronous wimba. Closing comments: I expected that my facilitating experience was going to be much more frightening and time consuming than it actually was. I enjoyed facilitating and was very relaxed, which surprised me! I enjoyed the interaction and comments and experiences offered by my peers. The peer evaluations where also helpful in pin pointing the good and suggestions which can help you improve for future facilitation experiences. The entire facilitation process needed organization, time management, and proper feedback response in order to keep the course properly flowing. So facilitating takes a lot of time.

I was not surprised about the experice expcept for the fact that my nervse did not get the better of my while I was facilitating which was great, I was very comfortable. The only techniques I applyed as the weeks progressed is try to spend more time online in order to complete the job,
I found that underestimating time can get you in a uncomfortable situation because life situations come up and if you prepare some things ahead it will hopefully not throw you off too much.

This experience has definitely changed my perspective on facilitation. After facilitating on my own, I now cannot wait to teach on my own!! I really enjoyed it! I am happy that I was given the opportunity and twice was even better! All in all, the online facilitating experience was enjoyable, and has me looking forward to teaching online in due time. This has been a memorable and exciting journey which has made me excited to what facilitating online really means, I look forward to the opportunity! NEZ