Diana Mark, CA, received the Kouri Berezan Heinrichs Outstanding Facilitator Award earlier this year. The award is presented annually to facilitators from across the CASB region who demonstrate special contributions to students’ learning. This year’s recipients are facilitators from Alberta, British Columbia, and Saskatchewan.
Diana Mark, CA, decided that she wanted to facilitate in the CASB program while she was a student in Module 3. So, after she qualified in 2007, she started online facilitating, and now regularly facilitates the online portion of the same module that inspired her. In 2010 she started facilitating face-to-face sessions, too.
One of the things that motivated Diana to facilitate was the feedback that she received as a student: She was frustrated by how little of it she received on revisions. Now, as an online facilitator, she approaches feedback as an opportunity to “guide students without giving away the answer.” While completing revisions might feel painful for students, and reviewing them means more work for her, Diana knows from experience that without revisions or guided feedback, she wouldn’t be helping her students learn.
Diana also focuses on trying to connect with her students. “If I see a student is struggling, I’ll send an email to find out if they need help or if everything is okay.” Perhaps because of this attention to connecting with her students, Diana takes their success personally and is “heartbroken when someone doesn’t pass.”
Another experience that shapes Diana’s approach to facilitating was having to wait for facilitators to respond to her questions. “I remember that when I was a student, waiting for responses was frustrating, so I try to check my email messages several times a day. That said, if students only ask questions shortly before the deadlines on Friday or Sunday night, there is not much I can do.”
Diana’s focus on communicating and connecting with her students was recognized this year with her nomination for the Outstanding Facilitator Award. Congratulations!