Facilitating Virtual Learning Communities

This practical resource offers a variety of facilitation moves and choices that one should consider when leading a virtual learning community.

Do you facilitate a virtual learning community? Would you like to learn strategies and moves that ensure your participants have a valuable and meaningful experience?

Protocols have been used in education circles for over 30 years to enhance both teacher and student learning. They provide a structure to have conversations around texts, student work, teacher work, dilemmas, equity, and community. Current tools like Zoom, Google Meet, and Microsoft Teams allow learning communities to easily meet online. However, it is important to create a culture of community, keep participants engaged, and facilitate group learning in these virtual environments. This book explores these topics, highlighting the voices of facilitators from around the United States who are doing this work in a variety of settings, including K–12, universities, and state agencies. In addition, readers will find more than 30 different protocols that have been modified specifically so that they can be used in a virtual learning community setting.

Book Features:

• Brings together in one place virtual learning communities, facilitation strategies, and the use of protocols in today’s synchronous, video-based environments.
• Explores the differences between facilitating learning communities online and facilitating them face-to-face.
• Offers a variety of facilitation moves and choices that one should consider when leading a virtual learning community.
• Builds on the work of The Facilitator’s Book of Questions, The Power of Protocols, and Going Online with Protocols.

Julie A. Moore is an associate professor in the School of Instructional Technology and Innovation at Kennesaw State University. Natalie J. Berger is chief operating officer of New Hampshire’s Virtual Learning Academy Charter School.

“The authors offer specific, practical guidance on how to adapt protocols and facilitate them in ways that leverage the unique opportunities afforded by virtual spaces and mitigate the challenges. In the process, they help turn the vision of thriving virtual learning communities into vibrant reality.”
—From the Foreword by Tina Blythe, director of learning and outreach, Project Zero, Harvard Graduate School of Education

"This much-needed book is both comprehensive and focused, seamlessly blending four essential topics: facilitation, effective use of protocols, building and sustaining learning communities, and virtual collaboration. While many books address these areas individually, this is the first to weave them together so thoughtfully. The authors' masterful integration offers practical tips and inspiring reminders of what is possible, leaving readers empowered and ready to act."
—Gene Thompson-Grove, consultant, facilitator, coach, Transformational Learning for Equity