Maryannes Plan - Final

Hello Kerry et al
Here is my plan: Please comment on it and tell me what you may think.

Facilitation Plan

Identification and timing
Facilitator’s Name: Maryanne Wright
Class Identifier: Facilitating e-learning communities
Start Time: 9:00 am
Start Date: Monday 16th October, 2006
Finish Time: 6:00pm
Finish Date: Sunday 22nd October, 2006

Reason for the meeting
What makes good emoticons?
Establish ten emoticons that will be used in our group to show the reader our emotions.

Medium used
For this activity I will be using asynchronous discussion areas, emit black board.
Some of the benefits of using this are:

1. Group members can discuss at different times of the day and night.
2. It is not dependant on everyone being on line at once.
3. A thread can be added to and re added to.
4. Topics can be re-visited.
5. Fostering a community spirit.
6. Supporting a collaborative environment.
7. Comments are able to be modified
8. Reflection is an important part of constructive discussion and by having discussion forums available all week, the reflection process is maintained.
9. Time to research the exercise.
10. I will be able to answer questions in my available times.
    

Description of the group

The group I will be facilitating will be ‘Limbs Jones’ group. ‘Limbs Jones’ comprises fifteen members but not all are active.
The group formed on 24th July 2006 and the gender is predominately female. The group’s ages range from mid twenties to mid fifties. The members of the group are in various locations around New Zealand and abroad. This can cause a slight delay in response as there is a significant time difference.

All members are working towards developing online courses for their respective employment. Most members of the group are tutors/educators, or in some way connected to education or training.

The learning styles are mixed but there is a lean towards the visual learner.
Some members have previously met on other on-line courses and face to face. I don’t think these members have any advantage, as the community is a different body from the last. It has its own chemistry and uniqueness due the cohort of members that are participating.

The group are approximately two-thirds way through their course - Facilitating E-Learning Communities and have formed a dynamic community.
They have formed, exchanged information in a collaborative community and are in development stage.

The topic I have chosen to facilitate is:
What makes good emoticons/How useful are they/ and do they assist in personalising on-line communication?
How many emoticons would the group need to effectively show a non ambiguous emotion?

Aim:
- To discuss the usefulness of emoticons.
- To research emoticons and to come up with a set of standard emoticons that the group would use.

Objectives:
By the end of the lesson learners should be able to:
Identify and justify emoticons’ usefulness.
Choose ten emoticons that would be suitable for the group to use.

Planned facilitation of the meeting
Sparks / Initial ideas / Discussion starters: (Post on Monday)
Hi, welcome to my planned discussion topic. In week four discussion, we delved into typographical symbols and emoticons. This stirred me to delve further into emotional responses. A lot of responses we give can be misconstrued unless the message and response is clearly written. I personally do not like ? or !!!, I find these rude. I find a little smiley face very clear in its intention. This week we are researching the usefulness of emoticons. Some threads to ponder and answer are:

1. Are they useful at all?
2. How useful are they for our group?
3. What emoticon/(s) adequately show the reader feelings that need to be communicated?
   As a group, can we come up with a set of 10 standard emoticons that we would use?
   

According to Karen Swan, in her article about developing social presence in online course discussions, she discusses the importance of using affective indicators to communicate. She recommends that we respond with clarity and immediacy to develop a social presence. She discusses the importance of using interactive and affective indicators.
(For those of you who would like to read the book I got this from: Learning and Teaching with Technology – Principles and practices. Edited by Som Naidu. Kogan Page U.S.A. Chapter 10)

First facilitator message: (Post for Monday)
- In this activity, I would like you to search some sites that display emoticons. To make this standard, in case of differing computer capabilities, I would like you to look at emoticons that are non moving and non morphing.
Once you have looked at these sites, I would like you to pick out what you think are the top 20 emoticons you would use. Then put these you’re your photo-bucket. This may take a couple of days to gather information. I have posted a few links for you to try. If you know of more, please share them on the discussion board.

http://www-2.cs.cmu.edu/~sef/sefSmiley.htm History of smiley
http://www.businessweek.com/bwdaily/dnflash/apr2001/nf20010423_785.htm (business week on line link
http://www.drbbs.com/jsw/jargon/jargon_20.html new hackers dictionary
http://palimpsest.stanford.edu/byform/mailing-lists/exlibris/1992/10/msg00041.html list of typed smileys
http://www.charm.net/~kmarsh/smiley.html List of smileys
http://hometown.aol.com/bearpage/smileys.htm Basic, emotional, widely used and unusual smileys.
http://www.windweaver.com/emoticon.htm Recommended emoticons and smileys for email communication
http://www.smileycentral.com/ More smileys
http://www.websmileys.com/ More smileys
http://paul.merton.ox.ac.uk/ascii/smileys.html unnoficial dict

Second facilitator message including facilitation techniques to be used: (Post for Tuesday)
- Hello All. This activity is to bring back to the entire group your picks.
This must be in a fixed format, using photo-bucket software.

You need to justify why these are your selections. This will be posted in the discussion board. We are going to look at every ones choices and reasons why.

Third facilitator message including facilitation techniques to be used: (Post for Wednesday)
Hello All. As a group we need to decide on the most suitable emoticons to use.

I am going to post all the emoticons you have chosen into a file and post it on this discussion board so we can see who has chosen what. It will be interesting to see what you think the top ones are.


Fourth facilitator message: (Post for Thursday)
Hello All. Just to remind every one that we will vote via the discussion board at 12 noon on Friday. I will display the lists and would like you to post your vote for the top 10 emoticons we will use. Rank the emoticons from one to ten, one being the first and ten being the last. Justify your choices.

Summarising message main points to be covered :
Finally how useful do you think emoticons really are?
Here are your results. (I would summarise by posting using photo-bucket the top ten emoticons the group had voted on and the reasons why each emoticon was chosen. This would be ranked 1 -10)

Closing message:
I would thank every one for participating. I hope you have had some fun along the way and finally here are your choices. (display)
Last question “How useful are they?”

How often will you facilitate?
I plan to host five major postings and to look in three times per day.