Book review
Facilitating Online Learning - Effective Strategies for Moderators
Atwood Publishing, October 2000
Authors: George Collison, Bonnie Elbaum, Sarah Haavind, Robert Tinker
Review by Donald Clark - CEO Epic Group plc
There seems to be no settled lexicon for this
particular subject area. We speak of online tutoring, e-tutoring,
e-coaching, e-mentoring, online facilitation, counsellors,
moderators… and I'm sure there's an even larger vocabulary.
However, the term this book settles on is 'moderator'.
The authors are all experienced online moderators
and draw on this experience to provide a practical guide that
includes:
- Principles that support effective moderation
- Negotiating space: forms of dialogue and goals of moderating
- Key facilitator roles
- Healthy online communities
- Voices
- Tones
- Critical thinking strategies
- Roadblocks and getting back on track
We need to be clear at the outset that their
philosophy of moderation is straight out of the Carl Rogers
(http://www.infed.org/thinkers/et-rogers.htm)
counselling tradition, where interventions always keep the
moderator away from centre-stage. At times this is more psychiatrist's
couch than 'real-world'.
You are advised, for example, not to praise
students directly, or summarise, as this puts you, as a moderator,
at the centre of the power relationship.
If you can ignore this rather impractical advice,
then the book really is worth reading. I prefer the more practical
approach that the Open University recommends, where the tutor
intervenes sensibly, with regular summaries: not every learner
appreciates the long-windedness of the Socratic method.
The authors are also clear about their preference
for 'scheduled asynchronous' collaboration, as opposed to synchronous
events. In this they concur with Pratt and Palloff's 'Building
Communities in Cyberspace' in recommending the considered contributions
over time that result from asynchronous contacts as opposed to the
instant reactions of the synchronous model. On this I too agree.
What does come across from this book is real
experience and a passion for the subject. If you are, or plan
to be, an online moderator, the book gives you a wealth of
strategies, tactics and tips on all aspects of handling learners
online. If anything, they can be a little too prescriptive
about the dos and don'ts, but 'you pays your money and you
takes your choice'. Most of what is said here is grounded
in real practice and therefore makes good sense.
In separating voices, tones and critical thinking
strategies, the authors open up for the would-be moderator
a range of possibilities that would take a long time to gather
from experience. Each piece of advice is also illustrated
by a real piece of dialogue. This is useful as the advice
can be a little abstract.
The book's three big-ticket claims are:
- Moderating has a social and professional dimension
- Better a 'guide on the side', than a 'sage on the stage'
- Online moderation is a craft that can be learned
On a detailed level this is backed up with three
forms of dialogue; social, argumentative and pragmatic.
In examining the success factors in facilitation,
and behaviours that lead towards healthy online communities,
the book provides plenty of practical detail. The idea of
voices and tones is both interesting and useful. I was less
enamoured with the critical thinking strategies: the authors
have definite views about good and bad strategies that seem
at times a little narrow - however, warnings at the end on
'roadblocks' and avoiding the trap of being a 'question mill'
are sound.
To summarise. Although a little narrow and prescriptive
in its insistence on non-interventionist counselling techniques,
this book redeems itself with more than enough good practical
advice to satisfy the prospective moderator. Finally, the
book also has one good joke:
"My teacher knows nothing about geometry: she wrote
a2+b2=c2 for right-angled triangles and asked us to prove it!"
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