The teacher-centered model that has dominated instruction for centuries is slowly giving way to a learner-centered model with instructors in the roles of facilitators or "guides on the side
The essential quality of learner-centeredness is most relevant when learners are personally challenged with a problem to solve, a project to complete, or a dilemma to resolve.
Learners can practice what experts in their discipline do each day, with facilitators helping them revise and try again.
Facilitators-as-instructors provide informative feedback that offers learners guidance about how they might improve their performance. Both what facilitators say and how they say it has an impact on learners.
This reinforces what we read in earlier articles for this lesson.
If praise is given, facilitators must communicate why performance is positive.
Facilitators must establish peer feedback as an expectation in delineated guidelines posted at the beginning of a course (though those guidelines may be discussed and negotiated by all learners).
they guide a developing sense of community within and between small groups.
suggests learning communities
Encouraging and ensuring a high degree of interactivity and participation is one of the most important facilitation skills according to e-learning experts
-they should guide learners in working together to become more skilled in such collaborative skills as scheduling, project management, time management, consensus building, and leadership.