Quality facilitators improve their performance through behaviors that can be classified and quantified. By encoding these behaviors into a profile, by integrating them into a facilitation rubric, and by regularly assessing facilitation using these tools, participants and facilitators can develop a shared vision of facilitator performance criteria for many different contexts. In formulating these criteria, special attention was given to classroom teaching, committee meetings, and faculty development workshops.

Need for a Facilitator Profile

Many facilitators have little or no training for this important work. Often the facilitation they have experienced during both their educational and professional careers has been mediocre. Lacking good models, it is difficult for them to become quality facilitators. This module, together with others in this chapter, attempts to remedy this situation. Research and experience have shown that in order to improve performance, it is essential to have clear criteria against which to measure it. Without these criteria, facilitators have no way to assess their progress (4.1.1 Overview of Assessment). An effective way to identify performance criteria is to list the behaviors one would expect to find in a quality performer. This collection of behaviors organized by activity components is known as a “profile.”

Organization of the Profile

Six key facilitation areas were used to construct a profile for a quality facilitator (3.2.3 Facilitation Methodology). These areas are preparation, needs assessment, setup, facilitating experience, closure, and follow-through. The profile was developed by isolating a few behaviors possessed by a quality facilitator in each area (Table 1). To determine the most important behaviors in each area, it was necessary to review the essential elements of facilitation (3.2.1 Overview of Facilitation), the research on process educators over the last ten years, and the experience of observing quality facilitators in action. The profile provides a goal for facilitators to strive to attain, and a snapshot of performance at the highest level, but the rubric described in the next section (Table 2) should be of greater help during their gradual improvement process.

Facilitation Rubric

Once the performance criteria have been encapsulated in the profile, it is important to prepare a tool to measure where a facilitator is currently positioned along the continuum leading to the goal identified by the profile. The rubric outlined in Table 2 provides a basis for ranking a facilitation performance based on its quality (1.5.5 Identifying Performance Measures for a Program). A rubric classifies different levels of performance, giving the participant behaviors commonly found at each level (1.4.2 Fundamentals of Rubrics). The five levels of facilitator performance are ranger, manager, director, coach, and change agent. A ranger does little preparation when pursuing the goal and attempts to meet crises as they arise. A manager prepares carefully to present information needed to attain the goal to the participants but does little to assess whether or not the information is being well utilized. A director engages others to achieve the goal by setting up a sequence of milestones and making sure the participants meet these milestones. The focus is not on individual or team growth but bringing the project to a successful conclusion through active participation. A coach focuses on the growth of each participant as the goal is attained, while a change agent (quality facilitator) melds the individuals into effective teams, changing the system on the way to the goal, and making sure that team members become interdependent (Johnson, Johnson, & Smith, 1991) and individually accountable for team success.

To use the rubric, a facilitator looks at the paragraph attached to each level and tries to find the set of behaviors that best define his or her approach. Even though facilitators will possess some of the qualities from higher levels, they should place themselves at the level whose description best describes their strengths. With the help of a mentor, facilitators should identify the specific steps needed to achieve the next level, modifying their behavior so that it conforms to the higher levels of the rubric as quickly as possible. Each level has behaviors pertaining to the six areas from the profile of a quality facilitator.

A professional growth plan provides a step-by-step model for improvement. There are several tools developed to help faculty members identify their goals when constructing professional growth plans. One of the most helpful is the “Teaching Goals Inventory and Self-Scoreable Worksheet” (Angelo & Cross, 1993). It is also important to engage in regular self-assessment to ensure continued performance at each level, no backtracking. For example, many facilitators possess all the director qualities, but will allow teams to “remain at task beyond peak performance.”

Efficacy of the Profile in Different Faculty Facilitator Contexts

Faculty are expected to be able to facilitate in a number of different contexts. The most common are classroom teaching, committee meeting, and faculty development activities. It is helpful to think about how to use the profile and its accompanying rubric to improve the quality of facilitation in each of these contexts.

Since the facilitation of student learning is the most important responsibility of a faculty member (Millis & Cottrell, 1998), it is important to examine the application of the profile to classroom teaching. The organization of the profile follows closely the essential steps in the facilitation of a classroom activity. The behaviors in the profile, if carefully followed, will ensure that faculty will help students enhance their learning before, during, and after the activity.

A faculty member also has certain service responsibilities that almost always include committee work. When given an opportunity to facilitate a committee meeting, he or she can build a good reputation as an effective leader by following the profile. Careful perusal of the profile confirms that its organization is just as appropriate for a committee meeting as for a classroom activity. Some of the behaviors need to be interpreted differently in this new context, however. The behaviors in the preparation, needs assessment, and follow-up sections are the same. The setup section recommends establishing teams. The committee as a whole could be one team, or, as the meeting progresses, the facilitator may break off subcommittees or teams to be responsible for parts of the work. If the facilitator feels comfortable with assigning roles to the committee members, the active use of a reflector can alleviate the need for the facilitator to directly challenge participants or to intervene on process issues in both the facilitating experience and closure sections. In the context of a committee meeting, the facilitator senses when enough discussion has occurred so that the committee can act on the issue; he or she “cuts off activity at the top of production curve.”

Finally, faculty often engage in professional development alone and in departmental or larger groups. At times, they will be called upon to facilitate these activities. At other times, they will be asked for feedback on the facilitation. In both cases, the profile is helpful, and the behaviors outlined therein are all pertinent, although it is much more challenging to facilitate activities that involve faculty than to facilitate those involving students. Faculty are more likely than students to resist behavioral change, so it is recommended that faculty strive to become quality facilitators of student activities before attempting the leadership of professional development processes.

Concluding Thoughts

The profile of a quality facilitator provides a tool for assessing facilitation skills and also a goal for improving them. Using this profile and its accompanying rubric productively will be a challenge, however. An inexperienced facilitator should find a mentor who is willing to serve as a peer coach and provide assessment feedback. Such a mentor can also help the faculty member develop and follow his or her professional development plan. A mentor should pick three to five key metrics for each level and help the facilitator move quickly through the lower three levels. Eighty percent of the mentoring effort should focus on the coach and change agent levels. Also, a research effort is needed to clearly specify what it means to achieve each level and to address the concepts of delegation, multitasking, and risk management in the rubric. Finally, every facilitator, no matter how skilled, will benefit from using the profile and rubric to measure his or her skills.

References

Angelo, T. A., & Cross, K. P. (1993). Classroom assessment techniques: A handbook for college teachers. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

Johnson, D. W., Johnson, R. T., & Smith, K. A. (1991). Active learning: Cooperation in the college classroom. Edina, MN: Interaction.

Millis, B. J., & Cottell, P. G. (1998). Cooperative learning for higher education faculty. Phoenix, AZ: Oryx Press.

Peters, T. J., & Waterman, R. H. (1982). In search of excellence: Lessons from America’s best-run companies. New York: HarperCollins.

Wiggins, G. P., & McTighe, J. (2005). Understanding by design (2nd expanded edition). Baltimore: Association for Supervision & Curriculum Development.

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Table 1  Profile of a Quality Facilitator