Facilitation : The Role of the Instructor

Facilitation in a POGIL-style course involves instructors guiding students to develop process skills and conceptual understanding while they work in self-managed teams on specially designed activities. In a POGIL classroom, written activities provide content focus, whereas instructor facilitation creates opportunities to improve students' abilities to learn by developing the process skills necessary for learning. Effective facilitation is planned for and improved upon with practice and critical reflection. Preparing a facilitation plan for each class session helps instructors identify the necessary process skills that students must have to learn content and function within a group, anticipate what evidence they would observe if students were utilizing those skills, and make plans for effective intervention to improve those skills. By creating a plan, instructors also have a record of what was planned for and what actually happened in class and can reconcile the two to provide direction for future efforts. The plan also serves to document one's growth as an instructor in active learning approaches and guides the selection of facilitation tools and group interventions to improve student learning.