Course Facilitation:  Discussion Prompts, Extenders and Redirects

As an effective course facilitator, the ability to create initial prompts that ‘hook’ the learner is important.  In creating the prompt, the facilitator creates interest in the reader and asks the learner to think about the resources they have reviewed.  Once the students have begun to express their ideas  an extender may be needed to help deepen the conversation.  Finally, if the discussion veers off the intended path, for instance in the first example where students might have moved into a chat about the show Nurse Jackie, the facilitator must create a question to redirect the discussion back to the main topic. Here are some of prompts, extenders, and redirects that I have written for the course under development.