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I was excited and honoured to be invited by BC Campus to be a graphic facilitator at their Open Educational Resources Forum (#OERforum) last week. When they first asked for me to be a graphic facilitator, of course I immediately said yes but I also felt a bit of trepidation as I have never done graphic facilitation before.

This is a facilitated course that will run for 6 weeks, initially from 19 March - 23 April 2013. Webinars are held Tuesday morning (Americas)/ late afternoon (Europe, Africa). There is an optional weekly lab session on Fridays at the same time of day. To sign up, click 'Start Course' at bottom left.

"Prior Learning Assessment, or PLA, is a little-discussed strategy to facilitate time-to-degree, particularly for non-traditional students. The concept is to set up the structure and processes to evaluate corporate training from employment, military training, civic responsibilities, travel, and independent study and award academic credit from these out-of-the-classroom learning situations. As the higher education population diversifies with much higher percentages of working adults, PLA can be an important factor in reducing total cost and time-to-degree."

"We present the concept of quad-blogging, and its potential for facilitating and enhancing peer-to-peer learning in higher education, specifically in a massive open online course (MOOC) by increasing peer engagement, promoting the practice of blogging and fostering the formation of professional learning networks through social media."

While the participants in each conversation deserve the most credit for jumping into play as a pathway for transforming professional practice, the aforementioned facilitators helped scaffold dynamic settings for learning during our time together which felt both entirely awesome and all too short. In response to both on-site and online feedback, I wanted to share some notes on practice before too much time goes by.

"I made a series of posters that I often hang around the room when I facilitate workshops. It's fun for participants to get up and scan them at break time. Each poster features a quote about education or technology. Part of the quote or its author is missing and has been replaced with a QR code."

This is a unique transition course designed to facilitate students' integration into the learning community of the University. The course enhances student's skills for academic success, develops understanding of university culture, increases understanding of self, and fosters educational engagement.

"Google Docs is an online suite of digital tools that provides teachers with some powerful features to help students develop 21st century writing skills. Since Docs are collaborative and available 24/7, the tool is well-suited for facilitating digital writing workshops that combine peer editing with cooperative grouping and small group fine-tuned writing instruction."

This OCL4Ed micro Open Online Course (mOOC) will be facilitated by the UNESCO OER Chair network in support of capability development for the UNESCO 2012 Paris OER Declaration (See video from Abel Caine, Programme Specialist for OER at UNESCO.). The OCL4Ed 13.09 course is sponsored by the OER Foundation and the Commonwealth of Learning.

" instead of professors and students, there's facilitators and participants, instead of one-directional lectures, you have discussions, and instead of tests and quizzes you create projects and artifacts. If it all sounds too squishy and feel-good, make no mistake, this is serious learning, tackling the amazingly heady topic of feminism and technology and created by bona fide, longtime professors in their fields. It's rigorous, complex and in San Antonio, you don't need to be a college student (past or present) or even own a computer to access it. That's the new international network FemTechNet in a nutshell, one of those ideas that seems to have suddenly arrived fully formed, like Athena springing out of Zeus' head. Obviously a lot more work went into it than that, but the actual creation timeline for the Network took a little more than a year-and-a-half according to co-creators Anne Balsamo and Alexandra Juhasz, Dean of the New School's Media Studies program and professor of media studies at Pitzer College, respectively."

MeTL is a collaborative software program that allows teachers to interact more fully with their students by: inking, typing and drawing setting quizzes facilitating group work developing mind maps, diagrams, formulae and equations live with your class submitting and receiving anonymous feedback having a conversation with your students revisiting your conversations at any time.

During last month's round of School of Open courses, I helped out with a facilitated version of the Open Science course supported by Creative Commons, the Open Knowledge Foundation, and PLOS. On four Tuesdays in August, Billy Meinke hosted online discussions with a handful of well-known members of the open science community while participants from around the world completed course modules and blogged about their experiences. Here's how things went down.

"The Tools - Is it engaging? Authentic? Relevant? Did it facilitate critical reflective behavior?"

"There is strong, if not overwhelming evidence that behaviour patterns of students, educators, employees and professionals are moving towards the use of social tools for learning, working and teaching. Collaborating seamlessly face-to-face and at a distance, bringing the human element to virtual interactions, and personalized learning will prevail in 2014; each facilitated by technology. But it's not going to be about the technology, it will be about making connections by voice and/or visual, contributing to new knowledge, and learning with and from others-all mediated through social media. It will be the behaviours of students, lifelong learners and educators-their use of technology, specifically social media applications that will influence education in the upcoming year."

"University teaching and learning have transcended the physical boundaries of the classroom. UTK instructors and students can now connect and engage in learning through a variety of Internet-enabled technologies. Interest is growing in pedagogically sound online courses. An online course is delivered via the Internet and is comprised of instructional materials designed and developed to be student-centered and uses a variety of tools and techniques to facilitate communication and convey the subject matter. OIT has developed the Online Instructor Toolkit to assist instructors in preparing and teaching their online courses."

"How much time does it take to teach an online course? Does teaching online take more or less time than teaching face-to-face? How much time does it take instructors to develop an online course?"

"In a paper released on Monday, Christine Greenhow, an assistant professor of education at Michigan State University, argues that using informal social-media settings to carry on debates about science can help students refine their argumentative skills, increase their scientific literacy, and supplement learning in the classroom. Past studies have shown that informal settings, like conversations with friends, can facilitate learning, but according to Ms. Greenhow, very little has been studied about informal online contexts and social networks, like Facebook applications."

"There are two moments when instructors become most powerful in the learning process: 1) when they place themselves as obstacles in the learning network and block the natural flow of learner connections; 2) when they get out of the way and facilitate an optimized learning flow and maximize each learner's ability to create new connections in her/his network."

" SOLUTIONS FOR EDUCATION AND LEARNING MANAGEMENT SYSTEMS (LMS) The Biomids Biometric solutions address needs in online education and other forms of corporate training and professional development, often facilitated through Learning Management Systems (LMS). They confirm the identity of participants (Authentication) and deter and detect cheating on remotely administered tests and assessments (Proctoring) through the use of advanced biometric technologies. The Biomids Authenticator and Proctor - Is a fully automated Authentication and Proctoring system, available in both web-based and download versions, that provides highly effective, convenient and cost-effective means of ensuring testing validity. Authenticates participants at the beginning and throughout the test/assessment (Persistent Authentication). Validates test results confirming that the participant has completed the assessment without unauthorized assistance through the use of video capture and website monitoring (Proctoring). Try a free 30-day trial download demo: The following video explains how the Biomids Authenticator and Proctor works in the case of test proctoring in online education. The Biomids Authenticator and Proctor is one of the most effective, convenient and economical proctoring systems available in the market today: * Low fixed cost - Allows frequent use for both Authentication and Proctoring. * Assured authentication - Utilizes powerful advanced facial recognition technology. * High integrity - Persistent Authentication throughout the test/assessment period. * Convenience - No need to schedule a human proctor - test taking anytime, anywhere. * Dashboard - Concise results uploaded to instructor or designated staff."

"Privatization of online higher education is on the rise. For-profit online education corporations like Academic Partnerships, Kaplan, Wiley, Pearson, and Blackboard contract with public and private nonprofit institutions to provide digital platforms for educational content, recruit students, manage enrollment, facilitate the development of course materials, and more. While the use of digital platforms and online teaching tools can enrich higher education, elements of contracting with for-profit online education corporations can present problems in areas of interest to faculty, particularly academic freedom and shared governance. Check out our resources, surveys, and social media shareables below and learn how you can get involved in making sure that higher education serves the common good, not private profit."