Book Review

This week I will be reading Facilitating online learning: Effective strategies for moderators. The four authors, Collison, Elbaum, Haavind, and Tinker, are instructional colleagues in two teacher education programs. They wrote this guide book to instruct those who direct discussion in distance learning courses. The backdrop for the examples used in the text is from the instruction of the facilitators of the Virtual High School Cooperative and the International Netcourse Teacher Enhancement Coalition.
In the introduction the authors ask a question I have asked myself “Can you lead virtual community participants to focus and deepen their growth and learning via online dialogue?” They content the skill of the facilitator in doing this it is the yardstick that any netcourse must be measured.
Chapter one discusses the principles that support effective moderating (called being a guide on the side not a sage on the stage). The principles were basic teacher discussion method 101 but they were illustrated with examples from the online environment.
Principle #1: Moderating takes place in both a professional and social context. Think to the adage that participants online also don’t care how much you know until they know how much you care. Building a sense of community among the class into your discussion first and then moving into content is suggested as a way to bring people together in a close-knit trusting unit willing to risk with the content posts.
Principle #2: Guiding vs. Being in charge serves to focus and deepen the dialogue without getting in the way of the individual developing their learning. The text gave great examples that I sure that you all could relate to about the facilitator taking over and the difficulty that students often have risking committing their new found understand to text for all to see.
Principle #3: Online moderation is a craft that has general principles and strategies—that can be learned. This section set the tone for the rest of the book. It’s a “how to do it” methodology that I am excited to find out about.
Chapter two breaks down the types of dialogue that we can expect and identify in discussion held online. They are social, argumentative and pragmatic dialogue. The authors feel that all are to be expected by facilitators and that if properly identified can lead to support of reflective communication.
Social dialogue is personal reference that is necessary to build the online communication but need a time and eventually its own space. They suggest a separate thread being started after an introductory activity to learn about each other. This is a place apart from inquiry or reflection about the course content. I thought this was a great way to give permission to the class to have connections with one another. They called it the ‘water cooler’ thread.
Argumentative dialogue is a ‘display of rhetorical power’ that can become a competition on discussion boards. (?) The authors suggest that as facilitators we can’t become involved in the deciding of winners and losers. The important thing is to suggest examining long-held beliefs or to reflect on assumptions to consider new thinking. The comments facilitators should add need to inquiry based to these posts.
Pragmatic dialogue is reasoned discourse whose “process serves beyond the dialogue itself.” It doesn’t persuade but inquires. Wow, I must agree that this type of post is comes slowly.
This chapter leaves the reader with three goals to; build community, support a culture of respect and cultivate reasoned discourse. I am finding that they are supporting their points with pragmatic methods to accomplish these goals.