Teacher as a facilitator

First of all it is important to understand the term facilitates that define to promote, to help or to make a work easy. Let’s relate this term between teacher and students which is called Teacher centered learning. The teacher will be there to promote learning, to help students, to develop more and more by learning, by providing them a practical environment to interact with in order to bring learning and further development.

 In the past the learning systems was teacher-centered learning. This breaks the liveliness and students creativity in the classroom. Actually I have experienced in this technique.  Teacher-centered learning must be balanced with student-centered learning. But student-centered learning would be more effective for the active students to carry on the work flow to succeed by using the guidance of teacher. Teachers only act as a facilitator, motivator and inspiration for students.

When a teacher is part of the student learning environment, teacher is participating in the process of providing instructions / providing certain guidance in order to bring out the learning of students. Traditional class followed through lectures by teacher. The teacher presents information in an oral presentation while students listen, take notes occasionally. Then teacher asks questions. This method leaves little space for discussion hands-on work.

 In this way teacher plays a major role in students learning environment where the student learning is not going to improve at least a decimal point. But as the teacher is researching and gathering information his knowledge improves a lot where as students get grades usually based on written exams by hearting the taught information. But in this occasion if a student fail to memorize a single section of the topic he is unsuccessful in the life.

 Because of this the student centered learning environment was built and here the student has to research and find information and to present to the teacher. This method of teaching spread to online environment where video lectures and PowerPoint presentations are used.

A teacher leads the class in discussions based on the material covered in student centered process. Facilitators rarely lecture; instead, they lead the class to discuss the material and share personal ideas by mapping the real-world examples. This approach allows students to apply the information to their own situations, making the learning more meaningful to them.

While both approaches are effective, online learning is well suitable to a facilitator approach to teaching because of the delivery system. Because information is online, classes cannot be delivered in person, it is usually delivered through reading assignments, posting discussion questions and various electronic presentations.