Facilitating Online Learning: Effective Strategies for Moderators

by George Collison, Bonnie Elbaum, Sarah Haavind

Instructors new to the online teaching and training environment, as well as experienced online educators, will discover the groundbreaking skills and techniques needed to be a successful online instructor. Discover how to effectively facilitate dialogue and build a community of learners as well as hurdle common roadblocks. Learn how to create a learning community where the instructor moves from center stage to a collaborative learning environment.

Genres: Education

Paperback

First published January 1, 2000

Reviews

[Kimberli Wray · Rating 4 out of 5]

As an online instructor, one of the main issues I encounter is how to facilitate an environment that fosters rich discussion between participants. Facilitating Online Learning: Effective Strategies for Moderators, Collison, Elbaum, Haavind, and Tinker (2000) discusses the importance of, not only good course design but also how facilitation of an online discussion can create an exceptional online course. Facilitating Online Learning: Effective Strategies for Moderators provides instructors with best practice tools in facilitating their online course.
The framework for Facilitating Online Learning: Effective Strategies for Moderators derives from The Concord Consortium Educational Technology Lab. The goal of the Consortium is to engage an educational pledge of technology. The setting for the book comes from two projects: The Virtual High School ® Cooperative and the International Netcourse Teacher Enhancement Coalition.
In the early chapters, the authors introduce fundamental principles that support effective moderating. The principles developed from the work they performed within these two projects. The first principle demonstrates that moderating can occur in both a social and a professional situation online. The project showed that it is not necessary to be in a face-to-face classroom to form professional relationships or friendships. If an instructor is skilled at creating the right environment these types of relationships are formed. The second principle is to guide on the side. Utilizing this principle allows the participants to take charge of their learning. A moderator that uses this principle allows the participants to engage in a deeper dialogue with one another.
The authors then identify discussion and objective patterns for culture within an online course. They suggest developing goals that include creating a community environment that has respect and deliberate conversation. The authors discuss the key roles the facilitator needs to play. Moderators have three main roles they should play. The three major roles of moderators are guide-on-the-side, instructor/project leader, and group process facilitator. The authors say the guide-on-the-side approach allows the moderator to assist participants in constructing their own patterns of dialogue. Additionally, this approach allows the participants to shape the culture of the environment more so than the moderator. The second role suggests the instructor design a feedback loop to support dividing content from process issues and making sure they are supporting student-to-student support within the online classroom. The last role is to act as a group process facilitator. This role is leading activities that allow participants to get to know each other, activities, helping struggling online students and organizing discussions.
"Healthy Online Communication” is the chapter that appealed to me the most. This chapter offers a blueprint on how to sustain the functionality of an online learning environment through communication. There are multiple ideas on how an instructor can create, maintain and then evaluate the communication experience in a course. There are multiple components to a "healthy" online environment. One component that stood out was student-to-student collaboration and teaching is visible and voluntary moderating is occurring among the students. Another component that will be extremely useful in moderating my courses is making sure my online classes are meeting the needs of my students. Students need to feel they can express their opinions in a safe environment.
Next, the authors offer facilitators of online courses advanced strategies to ensure that critical thinking and conversations occur in their online course discussions. The authors demonstrate voice, tone, and critical thinking strategies to focus ongoing discussions. Voice can give the facilitator options for reaching effective interactions in the discussion. Tone is used to offer compassion to participants that may be struggling with content. Nurturing, curious, analytical, neutral and whimsical tones are addressed. The authors provide readers with critical thinking strategies to help focus the online discussions. Facilitators are instructed to promote questioning, give participants the ability to make connections and allow for a range or perspective.
Finally, the authors conclude with common barriers facilitators might face and how the facilitator can get a discussion back on track. The authors identify two ways that facilitators may interfere with the online dialog. The first is allowing the facilitator to take over the discussion. This comes from wanting to control and be overly active in the online conversation. The second main roadblock is to sit on the side and allow productive conversations to slip by you. Facilitators should be sure to highlight conversation patterns.
Facilitating Online Learning: Effective Strategies for Moderators offers its audience the tools on how to communicate effectively in an online class. This book is a great tool for instructors who need to develop the learning possibilities of their course. I look forward to applying these principles to my online classes.

[Rich Farrell · Rating 3 out of 5]

While this book feels a little dated at times, it raises some interesting philosophical questions about remote learning and what facilitating those courses should look like. I appreciate the authors’ methods of showing clips of discussions from their classes and explaining what it shows it about the facilitators’ choices. This isn’t a practical guide that will help anyone create a working remote learning class in our present day, but it does present some interesting questions to reflect on.

[Paul Signorelli · Rating 5 out of 5]

The table of contents says it all: principles that support effective moderating, key facilitator roles, healthy online communities, critical thinking strategies, and much more of use to anyone involved in training, teaching, and/or learning. The book is well written, well organized, and extremely useful; it also sets high expectations for learners and will make them less tolerant of much of what they find in classrooms and workshops today.

[Jennifer Dines · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book was a helpful introduction to crafting posts that facilitate online learning. It was a required text for the Boston Public Schools Online Mentorship program, which uses the EdModo platform. This book teaches you how to use appropriate voice, tone, and strategies for sustained engagement in online coursework. It was a great asset to the course and something I will refer back to as I mentor novice teachers in the fall.

[Vickie · Rating 4 out of 5]

I felt this had some good stratgies for new instructors of online courses.