Originally Published in September 2002

The need for E-moderators in Singapore

By Gilly Salmon

There are few published reports of structured approaches to developing teachers and lecturers for new online roles. However, both campus and distance learning institutions can offer some experiences in developing lecturing staff to moderate and teach with low cost text based online conferencing and Virtual Learning Environments (VLEs), such as Blackboard. This role is known as e-moderating.

The term ‘moderator’ has grown up with the use of online text based discussion and group work, in teaching and learning contexts. In 2000, I first used the term ‘e-moderating’ to capture the wide variety of roles and skills that the online teacher, lecturer or trainer needs to acquire. Supporting learning online through synchronous and asynchronous conferencing (bulletin boards, forums) requires e-moderators to have a wider range of expertise compared to working with face to face learning groups.

Hence the role of the lecturer or teacher needs to change to include e-moderating to match the development and potential of new online environments

Staff development is often asserted as a key issue in the success of the move of anything from a project, a course or a whole institution to an online environment.

Learners need E-moderators

Successful and productive e-moderating is a key feature of positive, scalable and affordable e-learning projects and processes. Regardless of the sophistication of the technology, online learners do not wish to do without their human supporters. How many people, for example, have been heard to say, “I’m great at art because of my inspirational computer?” Not any that I’ve met, on or off line! Instead learners talk of challenge and support by their teachers, or of contact with the thoughts and the work of others. Most people also mention the fun and companionship of working and learning together. Such benefits do not have to be abandoned if developing online learning results in a cohort of trained e-moderators to support the online learners.

Many words have been written about new technologies and their potential, but not much about what the human supporters of the learning actually do online. The greatest impact of all on the quality of the students’ learning resides in the way a technology is used and not in the characteristics of the medium itself (Inglis, Ling et al. 2000). Although increasing numbers of learners are working online, few lecturers have themselves learnt this way.

Therefore, e-moderating is not a set of skills most of us have acquired vicariously through observing teachers whilst we were learning. Many lecturers naturally believe that learning to e-moderate is mostly to do with learning new software or computing skills. This is not the case. Furthermore, successful e-moderating cannot be achieved by doing what lecturers always did in the classroom. As yet there are few online mentors to guide us through step by step nor is there time for long-term apprenticeships. It follows that e-moderators must seek training to stay up with the times (and with the Internet generation of learners of course).

I use the term online to mean teaching and learning which takes place over a computer network of some kind (e.g. an Intranet or the Internet) and in which interaction between people is an important form of support for the learning process. This rules out learning which is purely ‘resource-based’ e.g. learning using some web-based courseware without recourse to any kind of human interaction.

To date, text-based asynchronous computer mediated conferencing or forums have been the most extensively used for teaching and learning in post secondary education, on and off campus and hence I concentrate especially on the roles of e-moderators in asynchronous networked learning environments. A good example of an environment is the one chosen by Ngee Ann- that of Blackboard. So we have the technology! What next?

E-moderating draws on aspects of both face-to-face teaching and traditional print-based distance teaching. However, it also calls for the introduction of a range of new understandings and techniques that are specific to online delivery. The key factor in e-moderating is that the e-moderator operates for part of the time in the electronic environment along with his or her students or learners.

Competencies and Skills for E-Moderators

Following a workshop with colleagues from around the world, we attempted to describe these new roles.

(Goodyear, Salmon et al. 2001)

1. Process facilitator – facilitating the range of online activities that
are supportive of student learning.

2. Adviser/counsellor – working on an individual/private basis, offering advice or counselling learners to help them get the most out of their engagement in a course.

3. Assessor – concerned with providing grades, feedback, validation of learners’ work, etc.

4. Researcher – concerned with engagement in production of new knowledge of relevance to the content areas being taught.

5. Content facilitator – concerned directly with facilitating the learners’ growing understanding of course content.

6. Technologist – concerned with making or helping make technological choices that improve the environment available to learners.

7. Designer – concerned with designing worthwhile on-line learning tasks (both ‘pre-course’ and ‘in course’).

8. Manager/administrator – concerned with issues of learner registration, security, record keeping, etc.

Of these, the most difficult to grasp and achieve are the process roles, e.g. 1 to 5. These are those that I call e-moderating.

Even if teachers have an excellent record in conventional settings it is difficult to predict who will do well in online teaching. Currently, few universities and colleges offer much in the way of training for e-moderating skills and the best methods are yet to be identified (Kearsley 2000). However, the acquisition of e-moderating skills cannot be achieved vicariously by lecturers observing other online teachers or by looking at exemplary Web sites. From the US Surry and Land (Surry and Land 2000) suggest that enabling lecturers to use technology in their teaching, means providing training that is motivating, attention gaining, relevant and confidence building. A tall order indeed!

In 2001, I undertook a survey of staff developers known to be active in supporting lecturing staff to work online. This survey showed that most colleges offered no training in e-moderating. A few include e-moderating workshops in more formal induction or lecturing training. A few offer informal voluntary staff development workshops. A few offer an external programme and/or payment for lecturers to take part in online training. The commonest way is to offer specialist workshops, sometimes inviting speakers from outside the university or college. However this approach typically attracts an already interested audience and is not always followed up.

Issues for E-moderators

A number of issues come up time and time again for e-moderating. Understanding these may make the difference between a happy and successful e-moderating experience and a miserable one.

Time

Most surveys show that workload and the use of time worries lecturers most about teaching online (Cravener 1999). You will find the concept of time is emotive and value-laden for both e-moderators and participants. The key issue is that the advantages of ‘any time/any place’ learning and teaching mean that time is not bounded and contained as it is when attending a lecture or a face-to-face training session. Although a face-to-face meeting may last 2 hours, it has a clear start and finish time and is rarely interrupted by anything else. The participants are either there or they are not, and if they are, they cannot be doing much else. Online teaching is not like that. It has a reputation for ‘eating time’. Genuine fears and concerns do exist, and must be addressed.

It is important to specify the amount of time to be committed and what you expect e-moderators and participants to do and by when, and not to leave this open-ended. Online novice learners and e-moderators will need much longer to do everything than experienced participants. When choosing media and activities, make sure the time online is used for what it is good for, rather than to force-fit activities into online conferences, bulletin boards or forums. At the same time, reduce off line activities for participants by as much as you are providing online activities for them, so that looking after both sets does not overwhelm e-moderators.

Ask e-moderators to do one or two important online activities in a time-bounded way, within a time limit, until they gain experience in managing their own online time. Most enthusiastic new e-moderators are unrealistic both about how much time they will need and the different patterns of working that are required. Develop a process of working together in e-moderating teams and in providing cover and breaks from online commitments.

Asynchronicity and complexity

Coming to grips with the nature of asynchronicity can prove very demanding for lecturers new to working online because of the complexity of conferences and forums. There is no quick and easy way around this problem. They really do need to experience it for themselves. For instance, participants ‘post’ contributions to one conference then immediately read messages from others, or vice versa. A participant might read all his or her unread messages in several conferences and then post several responses and perhaps post some topics to start a new theme. In any conference, this reading and posting of messages by a number of individuals can make the sequencing difficult to follow.

Since all the texts are available for any participant (or researcher) to view online, the sequencing of messages, when viewed after a discussion is completed, looks rather more ordered than during the build-up. Yet trying to understand them afterwards is rather like following the moves of a chess or bridge game, after it is over. When participants start using online conferences, bulletin boards or forums, this apparent confusion causes a wide range of responses. The twists of time and complexity can elicit quite uncomfortable, confused reactions from participants and severe anxiety in a few.

Although many people are now familiar with email they are not used to the complexity of online conferences, bulletin boards or forums. The main difference between many-to-many conferencing is the huge range of potential posting times and variety of response and counter response.

Participation

What is the right number of participants in a computer conference for it to be successful? Is there a critical mass, in the physical sciences sense, so that with too few participants success eludes even the best e-moderator? The right kind of number for any conference depends fundamentally on its purpose. The purpose depends on what level of the 5 stage model the online activitiy is aimed at.

If too many postings occur from students without acknowledgement or summarising by the e-moderator, lurking develops quickly. It is common then for novice e-moderators to spend huge effort and time in trying to encourage contribution, only to find themselves largely logging on to read their own messages. If e-moderators are too rigorous, they soon burn out!

Six participants and an e-moderator, for example, may lead to all contributing and a collaborative outcome for an online activity. Or one thousand participants could pose questions to an online expert, and all read the answers. They might then join in smaller groups – perhaps of 20 each – to put their own views.

Generally we suggest that good structure, pacing and clear expectations of participants are provided, not for the conference as a whole but for each for each online activity. The e-moderator should summarise after 10-20 messages.

The future for E-moderators

I guess I’ve made it sound difficult and demanding- well it is but it’s worth it. The joys of working productively with student groups come with experience, and successful e-moderators are going to be in much demand for the future

References

Cravener, P. A., 1999. Faculty experiences with providing online courses: thorn among the roles. Computers in Nursing 17 (1):pp. 42-47.

Goodyear, P., G. Salmon and C. Steeples, 2001. Competencies for online teaching. Education Training & Development 49 (1):pp. 65-72.

Inglis, A., P. Ling and V. Joosten, 2000. Delivering Digitally. London & Sterling, Kogan Page.

Kearsley, G., 2000. Online education: learning and teaching in cyberspace. Belmot, CA, Wadsworth/Thomson Learning.

Surry, D. and S. M. Land , 2000. Strategies for Motivating Higher Education Faculty to Use Technology. Innovation in Education and Training International 37 (2):pp. 145-153.

Dr Gilly Salmon is a full time academic in the Centre for Innovation, Knowledge and Enterprise at the Open University Business School and Visiting Professor at Glasgow Caledonian Business School. She has extensive experience of working with students, tutors and trainers through online learning and has been teaching on line since 1989. She is the author of the widely respected book E-moderating: the key to teaching and learning online. Her new book E-tivities was published in September 2002.