Facilitating Asynchronous Discussions

Activities of a Facilitator. Most of the present literature on facilitation in computer- supported settings addresses the practitioners in the field. These publications deal with the tasks and responsibilities of a facilitator in computer-supported situations that are on the one hand similar to activities well known from face-to-face situations.

Generally speaking, these tasks are the initiation of discussions, the guidance of the discussion process (includes asking appropriate questions to push students to think deeply on the learning content), and the stimulation of summary generation by the learners.

On the other hand, it is stated that it is necessary to develop new strategies when facilitating computer- supported communication processes. One of the lesser known studies concerning these strategies was done by Friedrich et al.. They compared two different methods to initiate an asynchronous discussion. One method relied on a neutral opening statement, whereas the other made use of problem-centric, curiosity-arousing wording when initially characterizing the discussions’ objective.

They confirmed the assumption that the latter type of discussion initiation results in an increased number of contributions from discussion participants. Furthermore it was found that the fewer statements facilitators contribute to the discussion, the greater the number of participant statements.

This background leads to the necessity for research on two levels. What are the main facilitation activities and how are they supporter with technical functionalities. The following results from a study are presented that address both levels. Details of the study can be found in Ref. 22. In this study, a group of students had the task to discuss and write their final project documentation.

To gain experience with the task of a facilitator, a professionally trained facilitator planned interventions in cooperation with the researcher. These interventions, resp. facilitation strategies, vary in the degree of content-related responsibility of the facilitator.

Open Questions without any Instructions.At the beginning of the study, the facilitator asked open questions as it is similarly the case with traditional facilitation in face-to- face groups. This implies in particular that the students had to decide by themselves which functionalities they used and when they answered the question. It leads to low participation. In the first group interview, the students reported their uncertainty about when and in which form the answers were required.

Furthermore, they described obscurities concerning the (subjective) cognition of the progress in a discussion thread, especially whether a discussion was finished. Following these answers, explicit deadlines were demanded. Furthermore, it was unclear for the students how the future development of a discussion thread will look like, especially how and when it will come to an end. With respect to this open-endedness, the students’ preference for explicit deadlines became apparent in their answers.

Instruction, Deadline, and Finalizing Conclusion (One Step More Responsibility for the Facilitator).In a second step, the facilitator used more instructional contributions that included deadlines. This strategy led to higher participation levels in the discussion. The analysis reveals for the first time that students worked in a rhythm similar to that given by the facilitator. On deadline days, more contributions were added.

As known from traditional facilitation methods, the facilitator gave a summary after the deadline and asked for additional comments. Reaction to this query was reduced. In the following group, interview students complained that with such questions the discussion was not terminated.

This is the first difference compared with face-to-face settings, in which closing queries are a widely accepted technique. Students believed that every discussion participant in computer-supported asynchronous settings has the opportunity to contribute because of the longer period of time. Therefore, no additional comments should be requested in the asynchronous settings compared with the face-to-face situations.

Reviewing the content and results of the discussion, it must be stated that the initial aim of generating a collaboratively developed table of contents accepted for the joint documentation of group work by all group members was not achieved in the computer-supported discussion. Students reported different problems in the group interview.

The first issue was the starting point of students’ participation in the discussion; the temptation to wait to see what others were going to add was great. A second problem concerned concurrency and easy negotiation of opinions, which proved to be unmanageable in the system; a simple agreement like head nodding in face-to-face situations seemed to be impossible in the computer-supported asynchronous setting.

To conclude, it was clear that although participation was high discussions were not terminated in the computer- supported discussion. Students felt termination or finalizing should be done by the facilitator.

Conclusions with Decisions by the Facilitator (Full Responsibility of the Facilitator).In a third step, the facilitator intervened more than during previous steps. She did not only formulate more instructions that included deadlines but terminated discussions. If some topics did not come to an end by the deadline, the facilitator decided to stop and proposed a solution. This is a second aspect in computer-supported asynchronous facilitation that differs from that in a face-to-face situation where the facilitator is mostly not responsible for the content of the discussion or of the group result.

A high level of participation was recorded in this step; once again the participation was highest on deadline days and more detailed some minutes before the deadline. Apparently, the students followed the rhythm set by the facilitator. The discussion in this step led to the aim of coordinating tasks for writing the group’s documentation. In the group interview, the students confirmed that the progress of the process was achieved by the facilitators’ intervention.

In the summarizing subsection of this chapter, these findings regarding the activities of a facilitator are related to the findings regarding the computer support of a facilitator.