Moderating Online
October 1997
Presented to the Online Educa, Berlin
Gilly Salmon & Ken Giles
Abstract
There is a long history in the Open University and the Open University Business School of a broadly social constructivist approach to distance education, with an emphasis on a facilitative pedagogical style and the encouragement of dialogue between tutor and student, albeit at a distance. This paper explores the implications of such an approach in the context of the incorporation of the new Information & Communication Technologies and specifically Computer Mediated Conferencing into the distance learning media mix. To what extent will teachers in distance education be readily able to carry over their accustomed approaches into a new setting and to what extent will they need to change? What support is needed to help them to translate good tutoring into good computer conference moderating? Illustration is provided from work in which the authors have been involved to translate good tutoring into the new context.
Introduction
Our background is in the UK Open University (OU), a Higher Education multi-media distance learning institution where we are concerned with the professional development of managers. The Open University Business School (OUBS) in which we work has introduced computer mediated communication (CMC) into the media mix. Our specific concern in this paper is with the skills that are needed to tutor on line through computer mediated conferences - the transfer of approaches from the traditional distance learning context of written and face to face facilitation and the development of new skills required for a new medium.
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The evolution of distance education
Distance education by traditional correspondence media has a long history of development and has it own set of literature and concepts. In terms of new media, in the American literature, distance learning is often taken to mean synchronous classroom teaching albeit at a geographical distance such as through the use of video conferencing, and/or the provision of multimedia resources such as on line case studies. In Europe it typically implies a more complex "package" of resources and mediation, and there is a greater tradition of computer- mediated communication in distance learning provision in parts of Europe with many Universities making extensive use of e- mail. In Australia and New Zealand, there's a strong tradition of serving the needs of very remote students, both by broadcast media and more recently by computer mediation.

The key difference between conventional and distance education is that the learner is separate from the teacher by distance Error! Reference source not found.. Garrison categorised the evolution of distance education into three generations:

  • print and mail systems (correspondence study)
  • broadcast media including television
  • microcomputers and digitalisation
  • Error! Reference source not found.
Computer-mediated conferencing can be considered to be a significant part of the third generation. As each generation emerges features of the previous remain, though for any one course or programme the proportions of time that a student spends working with a specific component may vary. No matter what proportion of the media mix CMC occupies in any one system, we would argue that successful exploitation of computer-mediated conferencing for learning needs to address student competence in the use of the technology, the design of a purposeful learning task and the teaching techniques. This paper focuses on the latter - the role of tutor. The term "moderator", however, is often used to signify the somewhat wider role of tutoring on line. 

A student-centred approach to learning
The OU and its offspring the OUBS have been concerned from the beginning to avoid an essentially "banking" concept of education or "jug and mug" approach, and to put the student more firmly in the frame as an active learner and meaning-maker who comes to the learning on the course with an existing store of knowledge. Besides a multi-media approach and a concern to make written texts as interactive as the medium allows, much emphasis is placed on the development of the part time tutoring and counselling force who are the students’ immediate contact beyond the learning materials. Carl Rogers’ learner-centred approach to learning is common currency among those responsible for developing the tutors and counsellors. The watchword is the facilitation of learning, whether in the face-to-face situation or through the medium of correspondence tuition, and there is an emphasis on dialogue with the student, albeit at a distance.

The OUBS's tutor staff development pack B532 Tutoring with the Open Business School exemplifies this approach. For example, section 7 of Book 1, Exploring Learning and Teaching, emphasises (pp. 27-30) that effective learning requires:

  • motivation
  • mutual respect
  • collaboration
  • participation
  • methods appropriate to the learners
  • realism
  • direction which includes participants' objectives
  • feedback on performance
  • critical reflection
  • self direction
  • care
There is an emphasis on knowing and respecting students, creating an atmosphere of openness, helping students to explore ideas and different interpretations, encouraging ownership of the learning and linking it to previous learning - in effect, a constructivist approach. Our concern in this paper is with the transfer of this approach into teaching with and through the new media - the translation of the good tutor into the good tutor on line, or in effect the good conference facilitator or moderator. The list above provides us with the overarching ethos, whatever the mediating media.

Mason, in describing her extensive experience in large scale conference moderation asserts that

"excellence in tutoring on-line is fundamentally no different from the excellence in other forms of teaching: enthusiasm and involvement; intellectual perception and insight; ability to model an understanding of the subject matter.". If such is to be encouraged in the new context - CMC - then can we assume a straight carry-over? Rowntree warns against a taken-for-granted belief that "people who can teach face-to-face can surely be expected to teach on-line" (p212) without further training - and this would indeed be to go against the expressed beliefs of the OU, exemplified in its investment in the training and development of tutors.

The 3rd generation teaching context
Paulsen has written comprehensively about the techniques needed for facilitating effective conferencing themselves drawn from good face to face practice in adult education. Other writers have also placed emphasis on the role of the moderator as discussion leader and group facilitator. There is a prior stage, however, during which tutors - as future moderators - need to become both familiar with the new medium and convinced of its potential educational value and of their competence to use it effectively in interacting with students. What is needed first of all is "a comprehensive learning program designed to ensure at least minimum competency of learner-interface interaction". Competency needs to extend beyond the more obvious communication protocols into feeling comfortable with a new means of communication. If "...teaching and learning is mainly accomplished in and through talk" and "(t)alk is central to education and central to the accomplishment of educational events" p362, then the "talk" that informs learning via computer conferencing is potentially culturally strange. "CMC is unique in that it is perhaps the only medium...(where) its users change the very nature of communication" p47. Users (in this case, tutors) are faced with the need to compose and communicate in writing in new ways via a keyboard - "saywriting".

Laurillard describes teaching as "mediated learning" p.4 . She emphasises the importance of finding out what students bring to learning and of the complexity of the process of knowledge construction for the individual. She then reviews traditional methods of developing a teaching strategy and comes down firmly in favour of "phenomenography" first described by Marton. This methodology explores the concepts of reality that students have already acquired and focuses on the forms of interaction between tutor, students and the learning resources containing the "content". This puts the essential focus onto how the teacher should set up the interaction (rather than how the teacher should teach) and also links directly to the role of dialogue in learning. This links to the approach of constructivism in teaching. "A challenging learning environment is central within the constructivist approach and meaningful talk is the medium of intellectual development. The management of such a learning environment, however, demands thoughtful preparatory structure and contingent skill. It is a complex organisational task..." (p366) We can draw a parallel here with good moderating.

During face to face group work, the facilitator may offer only little and sequential support to students. While the students work at the task, the instructor looks at the activity or interacts with only one group at a time. In this sense, the instructor's work is not apparent - its done before the class and often after it during assessment . However, on line, since its possible to visit and take part in all groups, and the tutors contribution is much more apparent.

A key feature of on line learning is that it is collaborative. Therefore, after students and tutors are comfortable with the software and the social environment on line, the role of the moderator is that of enabling effective and purposeful collaboration. "The learning becomes not merely active (as is often claimed for well designed distance learning) but interactive"p.207. Furthermore the interaction and the process of learning about how to undertake the interaction is in itself collaborative. Increasingly thinkers and practitioners in the field of the exploitation of NCT in teaching are leaning towards this broad constructivist approach..

We, therefore started with the premise that it is the teachers’ task to construct the conditions of the learner’s interaction such their experience enables them to learn. This translates into a major challenge in the OUBS context. For example in 1997, 3836 MBA students and 300 tutors are actively working on line through a closed computer conferencing system, using FirstClass software.

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Training to teach on line

We are currently involved in training OUBS tutors to teach and learn on on-line to support the media mix on the 10 large scale MBA courses which are offered throughout Western Europe. To date, around 300 tutors have undertaken on line tutor training and development which includes moving through familiarisation to competency in the use of the software, skills of working and interacting on line, and skills of moderating on line for different purposes and at the different stages of student awareness and competence. We have written elsewhere of the development of the model of learning through CMC which underpins the training programme and of the experience of developing and running it. We believed that the tutors needed to be exposed, in a real but risk-free on line environment, both to the software and to the way learning can be developed on line,before they themselves assumed the role of moderator. In the description below, the term "learner" refers to the individual new to the CMC context (in our case a tutor without previous experience of CMC), and the term "moderator" to the more experienced on line worker, offering support and conference facilitation, but also acting as a role model


At Stage one (Access and Motivation), the learners need to be able to set up the system and gain access. The role of the moderator at this stage is to ensure they are welcomed and motivated and point to sources of help in gaining access to the system. Responses by the moderator at this stage are largely to the individual and may be through e-mail rather than the conferencing environment.

At Stage two (On line socialisation), the learner starts to appreciate both the social environment of the conference, and learning how to take part in it. At this stage, the moderator needs to be the "bridge builder" to ensure that the learner makes the successful transition between operating in a familiar text or face to face learning world to the new environment of learning on line. As the learner is still finding his or her way around, responses by the moderator are still largely individual but may be in conferences and therefore public. However the learner may still need individual e-mails for support and direction.

At Stage Three (Information giving and receiving), the learner starts to appreciate the huge range of information available on line, and his or her ability to contribute. Here the moderator acts as research leader and supporter in assisting the learner in identifying and finding the information he or she really wants. Moderators' responses can often be in the conferences and to the whole group.

At Stage Four (Knowledge Construction) the interaction and knowledge construction stage begins. At this stage, moderators and students work together to generate and make new meanings through their collaboration. The moderator does less but more carefully- providing stimulus and facilitating the process of interaction. The role is clearly that of facilitation and many of the standard face to face group facilitation skills can be employed. See Appendix 2 for example.

At Stage Five (Development) , the learner is moving towards becoming independent on line and the role of the moderator is that of providing encouragement and access if necessary to facilities to encourage the individual to continue his or her self development through the medium. The moderator progressively withdraws as the learner becomes more self-directed.

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The Users' Views of Moderating On Line
The following advice is derived from content analysis of trainee moderators' "reflections" during their on line training over winter 1996/7. The training was based on the 5 stage model outlined in figure 1 and used FirstClass™ software. As learners move through the processes, either structured or accidental, from novice to competent CMC user, we see a key role for moderators at each stage:

Stage 1 Access - a typical comment from learners at this stage is:
"In spite of the apparent simplicity and "intuitive" approach of FirstClass, it is still software and something that requires painstaking accuracy, which may not be immediately obvious"

Moderators can:

  • Give Instructions and tips, or point to people who can, on the use of all aspects of the software needed
  • Give support for learners, acknowledging high levels of anxiety and lack of confidence in some learners
  • Encourage learners to keep practising and log on regularly
  • Provide considerable structure to the training conferences
Stage 2 Socialisation - a typical comment from learners at this stage is:
"being able to meet and develop relationships with fellow students and tutors (moderators) on-line should provide opportunity for support when the inevitable 'dark-days' arrive"
Moderators can:
  • demonstrate the importance of learners "signing" their preferred names and providing resumes (brief CV’s provided by each participant) on line
  • encourage awareness of style e.g. the importance of how messages "come across"
  • maintain patience and encourage learners to practise, reinforce and develop systematic ways of working on line
  • provide links from other experiences e.g. e-mail to encourage transferability of learners' skills
  • start to help learners to know what they want on line and to be selective in terms of with which messages they engage.
Stage 3 Information Sharing - a typical comment from learners at this stage is:

"I have some ideas on how to go about doing it and if all fails at least I can frame a sensible question and get help from someone out there"

Moderators will need to:

  • deal with participants who are not taking part (but merely browsing) or, as learners' confidence on line grows, with those who are dominating discussions
  • acknowledge and deal with different learning styles and frame a variety of responses to learners to encourage and support
  • encourage enjoyment
  • work constantly to summarise information being exchanged and clarify its relevance to the overall learning programme
Stage 4 Knowledge Construction - a typical comment from learners at this stage is:
"I think that this medium has a lot to offer, and it seems fair to me that I should put in as much as I hope to take out"
  • moderating skills here are of key importance, using techniques, encouraging interaction and making links with overall learning (explored further below)
  • "standing back" on line and allowing students to enable their own interaction and knowledge generation without interference from the tutor (see Appendix 2 for example)
Stage 5. Development- and the value of students as moderators

The development of metacognitive knowledge and skills has positive long term effects on learning, particularly at University level .The original development of the 5 stage model demonstrated that, as learners gradually increased in confidence, there was generally less intervention by moderators and yet, apparently, more learning occurring from the students groups. In the OUBS, we deploy student or alumni as moderators if they have the skills both technical and facilitative - interest, experience and available time. Their physical locations are irrelevant, thus widening the scope of availability by a hundredfold. Small teams of moderators have proved effective particularly for such conferences as student induction and the non course-related general interest conferences. Other commentators have described the high and effective educational value of students as moderators. Appendix 2 also gives examples of facilitation and moderation by students in a conference.

Knowledge construction on line - the importance of skilled and sensitive moderation at Stage 4
Effective construction of context-relevant knowledge and the practical embedding of it in experience is critically important to management learning. However, we have found to date that the kinds of collaborative interaction that leads to these desirable activities, are difficult to construct on line. We are currently exploring further our understandings of the kind of moderating and supporting skills that are needed to promote this, by research into the nature of on line interaction and through special moderators’ conferences to share and promote good practice.

In theory, at least, CMC enables:

"Dyads and groups can work together to solve problems, argue about interpretations, negotiate meaning, or engage in other educational activities including coaching, modelling, and scaffolding of performance. While conferencing, the learner is electronically engaged in discussion and interaction with peers and experts in a process of social negotiation. Knowledge construction occurs when students explore issues, take positions, discuss their positions in an argumentative format and reflect on and re-evaluate their positions." (p16)

As Rowntree puts it in writing about the learning community that grows when an on-line course gels:

"In such a learning community, students are liable to learn as much from one another as from course material or from the interjections of a tutor. What they learn, of course, is not so much product (e.g., information) as process - in particular the creative cognitive process of offering up ideas, having them criticised or expanded on, and getting the chance to reshape them (or abandon them) in the light of peer discussion. The learning becomes not merely active...but also interactive (emphasis in original). The learners have someone available from whom they can get an individual response to their queries or new idea and from whom they can get a challenging alternative perspective. In return, they can contribute likewise to other colleagues' learning (and themselves learn in the process of doing so)" p.207).

We consider that at this stage of CMC use, students’ individual thinking is developing as well as interactive skills which contribute to individual and collective knowledge generation.

We can see this demonstrated in the following ways:

creative and cognitive active thinking

  1. offering up ideas or resources and inviting critique of them
  2. asking challenging questions
  3. articulating, explaining and supporting positions on issues
  4. exploring and supporting issues by adding explanations and examples
  5. reflecting and re-evaluating one's personal position

    interactive thinking
  6. critiquing, challenging, discussing and expanding others' ideas
  7. negotiating interpretations, definitions and meanings
  8. summarising and modelling previous contributions
  9. proposing actions based on developed ideas
The moderator often needs to stimulate the debate, perhaps by offering ideas, asking challenging questions or offering resources. He or she may well then be involved in the "meaning negotiation" phrase of the interactions but this may not occur until many messages later in the interaction. The moderator will need to undertake summarising and modelling activity - but this should be undertaken as inclusive of all contributions, rather than by merely offering the "right answer (8 above). Appendix 2 provides an example of an interaction where all nine of these activities took place during a course-related discussion about organisational strategy. In this case it is difficult to tell who the tutor is since he neither initiates nor summarises the discussion, but facilitates it (The designated tutor was HB). Although these students were following the same distance learning course - a second year MBA module - they had never met, nor were they likely to meet. This interchange took place in a sub conference of one of 24 industry-based conferences that were arranged during the period May- July 1997, involving around 1,000 students and culminating in individual written assignments.
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Monitoring the Moderators
The Open University has always had policies and extensive systems to monitor tutor performance, provide feedback and offer development where necessary. Until recently, this has taken the form of visits to face to face tutorials, day schools and residential schools by full time academic staff, and the systematic and very large scale monitoring of correspondence tuition, based partly on a peer review system. Drawing on the experience and procedures set up for these, we initiated a system of monitoring of on line MBA tutors from February 1996. This involved a series of virtual "visits" to each on line conference by selected peer/colleague tutors who then provided an on line report on his or her view of the conference and commentary on what he or she considered good practice by the moderators. These reports were available as feedback to the tutors concerned as well as to others responsible for aiding their development.

From the 1996 Monitors' Reports, at this early stage of our development of educational conferencing the key principles identified tended to be mostly those related to what came to be known as "housekeeping":

  • the need for moderators to visit often and to notify students if they are likely to be off line for more than a week or so (lack of appearance on line mystifies and disturbs other users)
  • the key importance of teams of moderators working together to ensure regular responses to students and maintenance of conferences.
  • the critical importance of "layout" of conferences on screen, easy navigation around them, and the quick closing and deleting or archiving of inactive conferences to keep the screen as clear as possible
  • the importance of allowing interesting and relevant topics to "emerge" from students at various time, of creating sub conferences to support them, and deleting or archiving dormant conferences to make virtual space for them
  • the need for deleting or "archiving" messages so that no more than around 20 messages are active at any one time, thereby avoiding overload when students visit a conference after a few days' absence

    • the importance of integrating the computer mediated conferencing with the processes of teaching and learning going on off line
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Conclusion
We conclude from our growing experience of training tutors to become good moderators that a structured and deliberate training programme is a necessary foundation upon which to build successful learning outcomes in educational conferencing, and that during this training it is important to offer trainee moderators an opportunity to grasp the stages of a learner's experience of CMC if they are to understand the learner's perspective. Good face to face experience may provide the raw material for novice on line moderators to build on. But they need to understand through experience which techniques will transfer and how they can be deployed, as well as aspects of on line conference design and particularly knowledge of how to undertake the delicate but important role of facilitating active knowledge construction between collaborative groups of students on line.
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Appendix 1 - Key processes
From the 1997 On Line tutors training - moderating skills conference:
These messages are used as stimulus for discussion between the trainee tutors participating.

These are the sorts of things you will have to do in conference moderation:

  • compose appropriate, warm and welcoming opening messages
  • coax reluctant participants to contribute
  • nurture and keep the interaction going/flowing
  • gently encourage good CMC practice
  • summarise, archive and move the interaction on
  • nip the occasional on-screen spat in the bud before it leads to "flaming".
From the conference on welcome and team building skills:
This is your chance to get some practice in composing an opening message to students. Here's what you should do:

You should first of all look at the two examples of opening messages that have been posted by "OUBS Convenor". They are headed " Welcome to my B123 students" and "Welcome to B124". You'll be in pretty much the same situation as new students in reacting to what you read! So what would you think of the two messages as openers if you were a B123 or a B124 student? How effective do you think they are as openers? Are there any improvements/changes you'd like to suggest to make them more effective? Now open the "B123/B124 discuss" conference (Two faces icon) and read any existing messages that may have been posted about the B123/B124 openers by previous readers , and then send a message to the latter conference to add any comments of your own to the discussion.

Next, think of a conference you may have to moderate in the course you'll be involved in. Compose a warm pening message to intended participants, assuming for present purposes that you have not met them face to face beforehand. Finally, post your opener to the "My opener" conference (Smiley icon) and then check back later for, and respond to, reactions from fellow participants. They will read and react to your message with fresh eyes, just as your students will in due course.

MESSAGE 1:
Here's an example of a possible opener. What do you think of it? Ken
>>Hi, Everyone. Welcome to the B123 course conference. So come on - put some messages up about the course! Fred<<

MESSAGE 2:

>>Hallo there. I'm Chris. I'm moderating this conference. I want lots of contributions from you starting with Book 1. Remember to say who you are. Don't send messages here that properly belong in someone's private e-mail box. Don't write long messages and please watch the tone. (I shall delete anything that I think sexist or offensive to Equal Opportunities.) I shall expect you to login every day to read messages! Chris<<

from the conference on facilitation:

One of the skills of keeping things going is "weaving" - keeping reaction moving along, summarising, archiving and nurturing reluctant participants. Here's an example:

>>Well done, everyone so far. I'm pleased to see that most people have managed an active contribution. For those of you who are just lurking, come on in, the water's warm. Your contributions will be very welcome!

>>To sum up so far, then, we seem to be more or less agreed that................Is that a fair sum
mary?

>>So I now propose to archive the discussion to date, together with my summary, so that you can go back to it for revision purposes if you wish. What I'd now like to propose, if you agree, is to move the debate on by asking for comments on the Book X summary (page...). Does this summary square with your experience? Any thoughts/comments? Who'd like to kick off?

>>Some interesting thoughts still coming though here, but I think we perhaps need to move on. So that the discussion of this topic can continue for those who wish, I've opened a new conference for you, called XXXX (....icon)....

How would you approach the task of keeping the interaction going? What about when the discussion seems to be going off track? Or indeed seems to be flagging? What do you think about/would you do about non-participants and lurkers? Post your reactions/comments/examples to these and other aspects of the weaver's art in the "Weave thoughts" conference (Magic wand icon) and come in again to see responses.

All message from OUBS Associate Lecturers Training 1997, moderator Ken Giles.

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