Andrew’s posterous

I've been struggling to put into words what I personally believe facilitation is and what makes a good facilitator. I've finally found a good definition which resonates with my internal feelings of why I was successful at teaching in a blended course recently. Via the wikipedia entry for "experiential learning":

An experiential facilitator is one who is passionate about his/her work and is able to immerse participants totally in the experience, allowing them to learn from their peers and the learning atmosphere created. These facilitators stimulate the imagination, keeping participants hooked on the experience.

And:

An excellent facilitator believes in the creed, "You teach some by what you say, teach more by what you do, but most of all, you teach most by who you are."

Now off to read some more...

Over the last few weeks I have been involved in both a course about
online communities and also involved in the ongoing New South Wales wide
project "EnRoLE" about role-playing and simulation (which inherently
involve community), as well as a within department look at communities
of practice and how they influence what we do within our "Learning and
Teaching" department.

To be honest all these viewpoints had me *very* perplexed so I decided
to put a few minutes into creating a mind map about "community" to make
sense of the landscape. This can be viewed here:

http://www.mindmeister.com/maps/show_public/9150136

I'm not sure if it useful for others (as it is my personal
conceptualization) - one of the issues with mind-mapping when it is not
done as a group activity.

Hopefully the blogosphere may find it useful...

I'm presently having a great deal of fun exploring communities of
practice and experiential learning...

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Andrew Chambers