I have been thinking about difference between online and face-to-face (f2f) facilitation and have been comparing it with the differences between online, phone and f2f communication, drawing on my counselling experience.  When working f2f, all the channels of communication are available - visual ( body language, expressions etc), auditory (tone, rhythm, breathing  etc), verbal content, and other (such as olfactory and the ‘atmosphere’). Phone communication ( and hence facilitation) affords verbal content, plus auditory information. The visual is not available, so one’s auditory channel has to work extra hard.  E-mail communication (and text) limits information to purely verbal text content, so less and different information is transmitted and received. However, asynchronous text communication, whilst removing the visual cues, has the advantage over synchronous communication of allowing time for considered responses.

In f2f facilitation, key factors that encourage participants engaging in productive learning include safety, respect, honesty, active inquiry, suspended judgement, clarity of purpose, active listening, empathy, openness, inclusion and using evidence (Dalton and Anderson, unpublished material). I imagine that these factors can be adapted to the online environment, taking into account the different limitations that working virtually imposes.