Week 14: Reflect on different kinds of online communities

Requirements for this week:
You should now have more understanding about the difference between a community, a group and a team. Also how the roles of a teacher, moderator and facilitator differ and the diverse range of skills each role needs. Spend this week reflecting on what you have learned so far about different online communities and the roles and skills required of an effective facilitator.

Community, group and team

Community is a general term for people gathered together around common purpose, goal or interests. According to wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Groups_of_people), the definition of a group is stated as following:

“In sociology, a group can be defined as two or more humans that interact with one another, accept expectations and obligations as members of the group, and share a common identity. “

I believe members in a group may develop more closed relationship by having common interest, heading to same goals and more important, by interaction between group members. As Kay indicated, a group could be formed within online community. With the group for this course group members did develop a closer relationship compared with those outside the group. As Nellium, Minhajj and I formed the team for the practice of facilitating online session, I feel in the team, each of members need to do their job properly and collaborate with other team members working towards a specific goal. Maybe in a team they have a same goal, specific task to complete, so members need to plan, organize, share and exchange information together, working together to achieve their goals. From my experience of facilitating online session, I feel the interaction and relationship between team members is more active and stronger.

Teacher, facilitator, moderator

It was a challenging topic for me before we start the practical facilitating. I am happy after that, through practice I learned more about these three roles.

We are familiar with teacher’s role. Teacher is the one delivers information, gives instructions and provides demonstration to students. Like my guest speakers I invited to my session, they prepare their speeches and deliver information on the topic to our attendance. My role as a facilitator is asking questions, directing the discussion and activities. I tried to encourage attendants to think and discuss more about the topic and by applying facilitating skills guiding attendants approaching the solutions. In my online session Nellium worked as a moderator. She stepped back and helped with technical issues, handling with speech control. She started the session, monitored the whole procedure and ended the session at the end.