About

eModeration Station

Tools, Techniques, Tips and Tweets for online moderators

Are you an educator? Do you work online? Then this is the blog for you!

I’m Nicky Hockly, the Director of Pedagogy of an online training and development organisation called The Consultants-E. I’ve been moderating online for what feels like a very long time (but is in fact only since 1997). Those were the early days of VLEs (Virtual Learning Environments), and I cut my teeth on WebCT, writing materials for and tutoring on an online MA programme.

I learned the hard way. I’m an educator, a face-to-face language teacher and teacher trainer. I knew next to nothing about technology back in 1997. Apart from a technician in a grubby T-shirt and a piece of pizza in one hand telling (far too fast) – not showing me or letting me try out – how Web CT worked from an admin perspective, I had absolutely no training in online facilitation skills at all.

In I was thrown. I suddenly found myself running a full MA programme online, with real students, and it was sink or swim. I don’t think I exactly swam gold medal style crawl, but I managed to keep my head above water although it cost me a lot of sleepless nights. The course had no face-to-face component at all. As a face-to-face trainer, I knew it was important to get the group to gel online, and I had to help the students also find their way around Web CT — all at a distance. Where to start? What to do? How to design interactive and meaningful tasks for the students? How to make the whole experience enjoyable for them and for me? How to keep them on board for – two whole years!! I really didn’t know. Nevertheless, for six months I survived, and group seemed to be coming along fine. Then things changed.

I took a six-week fully online course as a participant myself, run by a university in the UK. Astounding! A revelation! As a learner on a well-designed online course, I learned more in six weeks than I had learned in six months. I learned not only important things about task design, but more importantly I had the experience of being an online learner myself. That was a real eye opener. Although I consider myself an independent and self motivated learner, I suddenly started to realise just how important tutor support is online, how a fast response time is important, how being heard and responded to by tutor and peers is vital, how tasks can be made meaningful and collaborative. And praise! I needed praise from my online tutor! Lots of it!

After my online experience as participant, I changed a few things about the way I was working myself as an online facilitator. I also realised that it would be immensely helpful to be in contact with other online facilitators, to be able to exchange ideas and tips. But in those days online facilitators were few and far between. I didn’t find many.

Things have changed. VLEs are two a penny, and a large number of further education institutions offer online and blended learning across a range of degrees, diplomas and the like. There are many more e-moderators, or online facilitators around. I personally work closely with 9 on a daily basis in our own team. Unfortunately what still seems to be the same, is that face-to-face teachers who are expected to move into online learning are given very little training in facilitation skills or online course design. Sure they learn how to use the VLE, but what about designing online tasks? What about promoting collaborative work online? How to get a group to gel and work together on collective projects online? What about groups who never meet f2f? What about keeping up learner motivation online on longer courses? These questions are often not even asked.

And that’s why I decided to start this blog. Because even though it is now 2009, there are still plenty of teachers out there being asked to provide learners with online and blended learning, but who are given no support. They may have technical support with the VLE, but they often have no pedagogical support at all.

My hope is that this blog will provide teachers with support in the form of tools, techniques and tips for online (or e-) moderation. Although my own field is in online English language teacher training, I hope that some of the ideas in this blog will be generic enough (but practical enough) to be of help to online tutors all over the world and in many disciplines. And I hope to hear from you about your own online facilitation experiences, and look forward to reading your tips and techniques here as well!

Nicky Hockly – November 2009