Online Facilitator's Training

We will kick off with a definition of of the term Facilitation from Wikipedia:
"Facilitation is any activity that makes tasks for others easy, or tasks that are assisted... A person who takes on such a role is called a facilitator. Kaner defines facilitator as follows: "A facilitator is an individual who enables groups and organizations to work more effectively; to collaborate and achieve synergy. She or he is a “content-neutral” party who by not taking sides or expressing or advocating a point of view during the meeting, can advocate for fair, open, and inclusive procedures to accomplish the group’s work. A facilitator can also be learning or a dialogue guide to assist a group in thinking deeply about its assumptions, beliefs, and values and about its systemic processes and context"(Kaner: 2007: xv)
Ref: Wikipedia (2014)

Facilitation in the context of learning, therefore, is different from traditional teaching where the teacher disseminates knowledge and the students are encouraged to internalise the information or skills... to have a view or understanding that is the same as the teacher's. A facilitator is a neutral player in the learning process, not the 'authority' and will guide and encourage others to seek out understanding rather than teach.
Online courses are ideal environments to facilitate student-centered education. The students are isolated, even remote and therefore need to be a lot more independent than traditional students if they are going to succeed in their studies. It makes sense then that we should facilitate the course in such a way to encourage self-learning but also use the online community to support each other through collaboration, cooperation and opportunities to interact online.
This online course can only introduce you to skills and know-how required to facilitate the KICTCFT course effectively. True expertise comes from experience and practice but at least we can flag what is important and focus attention on these issues. Each of the topic blocks in this online course try to focus on a particular facilitation strategy.