Pedagogical:
"Based on my experience of online learning and facilitation, I’m not sure I agree with the comments be objective and don’t expect too much. Being aware of the situation and needs of individual participants and open to responding to participant contributions is, to me, more subjective"
Social:
"Great to 'meet' you and welcome to Facilitating Online Learning Experiences. That's great that you are already working as a Project Coordinator developing learning packages. This course and the next one - Instructional Design for E-Learning - should stand you in good stead for what you are doing. In the meantime, take the time to enjoy your own learning. I loved the course when I did it and found it helped enormously to be on the receiving end of the learning for a change.Sing out if you need any help at any time."
Managerial:
"I've recently updated the marking schedules for Assessments 1-3 to include more detail on the breakdown of marks for the various task components. If you have downloaded and/or printed the marking schedules, please replace them with the current versions."
Technical:
"This is still a bit of a mystery.I've deactivated the original assessment 1 submission boxes, and set up new ones. Could you please let me know if you can now see them?"
Perhaps the most important aspect that this model of facilitation is missing is that of assessor. Although this may come under Barge's "pedagogical" role, but it seems as if this was not the intention in the original article. Of course, the article was written more for computer conferencing than eLearning. These days, most eLearning is not only carried out on-line but it also leads to the awarding of a qualification. As such, there is a strong call for facilitators who are not only experienced in grading but also versed in new assessment designs, which reflect the changing face of learning.
Similarly, I don't feel that Berge captures the role of "technologist" very well. There has been explicit discussion in the course so far over the learning tools we have been using - blogs or journals / discussion boards or wikis - with the facilitators both knowing the strengths and weaknesses of the tools and being able to succinctly explain why these tools were chosen. Berge's description of the technical role is more about using tools rather than the disposition to find out what tools are about and thinking about how they may be used in an eLearning context.
The main problem I have with Berge's classification is that the four roles are simply too broad. Although they may be useful "containers" to put discussion about eFacilitation in, their breadth makes them not particularly useful. However, the benefit of the model is not so much its use in discussing roles but rather in discussing fields of roles. That is, Berge's model provides the scaffolding on which we may hand eFacilitation roles.
