The Flinders Facilitation Framework is a set of practical strategies and facilitation actions with supporting templates that integrate with existing student-centred practices.
The Flinders Facilitation Framework enables teaching academics to apply consistent, evidence informed facilitation practices that enhance the quality of teaching and the student learning experience across all delivery modes, including the facilitated, asynchronous Flinders Online.
Teaching staff can apply the Framework to create dynamic, responsive, and relational learning environments through intentional, data‑informed facilitation practices that enhance teacher presence and drive stronger student engagement, satisfaction and retention.
The templates allow academics to design a student journey and plan their facilitation actions, progress monitoring and pacing interventions with a focus on times where connection, communication and scaffolding can have the greatest impact.
The Framework can be applied across delivery modes and aligns with the Agenda 2035.
Components of the Framework
Contemporary higher education continues to evolve with students expecting more than well designed content. They are seeking meaningful connection and a sense of belonging.
Purposeful facilitation plays a key role in supporting engagement, satisfaction, retention and overall success. While curriculum components of assessment, content and learning activities are important, the role of the academic/teacher is essential to provide an environment that sparks curiosity, builds confidence and a sense of belonging.
- A clear student learning journey and intentional teacher presence combined with social presence creates the foundation for a positive and connected student experience.
- Planned facilitation actions, coupled with progress monitoring and pacing interventions can be aggregated into a suite of practices to support every student to succeed.
The Flinders Facilitation Framework (FFF) was developed in response to academic staff seeking a clear, evidence-based set of strategies that can be easily applied. Grounded in the work of Stone (2022), Garrison (2016), Salmon (2013) and Redmond, McKay, Abawi, Brown and Henderson (2018). The framework integrates essential elements of teaching presence, cognitive presence, and social presence, engagement frameworks while being inclusive and recognising equity groups to provide a range of strategies and facilitation actions to support impactful learning environments.
These resources pair with a collection of practical strategies, facilitation actions and communication templates. They are designed to be customisable and flexible to match your teaching style and be adapted the disciplinary context and student cohort.
Facilitation can be unique to the discipline, topic, student and academic, so the Framework is designed to flexible in how you use them.
The aim of having a collection of practical strategies and facilitation actions is to share ideas and practices to inform your facilitation. It is likely that from this collection, you will take and adapt them to your own ways of working, disciplinary context and student cohort. There is no ‘one-size-fits-all’ in the collection, rather examples of what others have done.
The strategies, facilitation actions and templates can be adapted to your practice.
While there are commonalities in our topic delivery – many topics have a delivery pattern that is unique to them and each topic is based on its disciplinary context, student cohort and of course, the preference and ways of teaching of the educator (Teaching academic/Topic Coordinator/tutor).
The aim of the templates is to provide you will a simple way to visualise and map then track your planned facilitation actions. You are able to pick and choose the parts of these templates that will best support your facilitation.
Before you start you will need to consider your teaching period.
To allow flexibility, the teaching period has been simplified to: Week 0, Week 1, Pre-census, During the teaching period, before assessments and the end of the teaching period.
The templates are flexible to accommodate weeks, modules, blocks or the specific way your topic is structured.
The student journey can be visualised in the following way.
We are still refining the Framework and will be looking at adding case studies and examples.
If you have any feedback or suggestions, please get in touch with a Learning Designer or email lti@flinders.edu.au
Sturt Rd, Bedford Park
South Australia 5042
Follow Flinders
