Hi all, I'm looking for some advice. We currently offer a train the train program that has a core component around effective facilitation skills. We are looking to offer the course in an e-learning/distance format to eliminate the travel costs. We struggle, however, with how to effectively reinforce the faciliation components. In our class now we do this through role playing. We videotape and provide coaching. Any ideas? Thanks!

I think you may be struggling because I believe that attempting to teach people facilitation skills in that medium is like trying to fit a square peg in a round hole that is 5 sizes to small.

Here are a few musings:

• You will likely want participants to watch some part of the time and participate some of the time. Therefore you will need a platform that supports two-way video.
  
• If you would normally tape participants, is that when they do something on their own (e.g. present some sort of "lectureish" content), or working with a group? Tha latter is much harder over the web if everyone is in a different location.
  
• How often does this program run? If it only runs once in a while, it might be that the delivery platform and the re-purposing of the notes will cost more than the travel.
  
• You might be able to do something with a good videoconference setup: reasonable cameras and a room or rooms that can all be shown on some sort of large screens in each room, including where the primary facilitator is.
  

If you could tell us more about the length of the course, class size, available facilities, and so forth, we might be able to provide more info.

FF, I would hope that the course participants will be expected to facilitate events in a format similar to the one in which they are participating. That is, if they are participating in a distance-delivered facilitation course, they would be facilitating distance-delivered courses.

I don't think it matters. Square peg. Round hole.

I do agree, though, that if the delivery mode in which these facilitators are to work will be distance (and there are many possibilities for what that actually means -- telephone? online? video online? etc...), it will be important to have practice activities to reflect that.