General Strategies

• Prepare a one-page technical help sheet to distribute to your students. Include things like the course URL, your email address, where to get an email account, operating hours of the computing labs, location of campus labs, support numbers, etc.
• Set rules and standards for good "netiquette" within the discussion forums. Encourage communication among the participants of the class about the online learning experience.
• Establish clear norms for participation and procedures for grading online work, which give credit for good participation.
• Set clear expectations for the learners of the course in terms of participation, assignments, readings, and out-of-class work.

Facilitation Strategies

• Not all students are comfortable with technology. Therefore, it becomes necessary to create assignments early in the course that will help facilitate a student's comfort level. For example: have learners edit their homepage, scan a photo and insert it into their homepage, send an email, post to a discussion forum, participate in a chat, etc. Get them actively involved in using the technology.
  
• Create a discussion forum that allows students to openly discuss topics of interest to them. For example encourage them to discuss things like popular music, bands, and movies online. Allow them the freedom to participate and encourage them to do so. This has two side effects: one, it necessitates that they use the computer to participate and two, it encourages them to meet one another online.
  
• Be an active facilitator of the discussion forum. Plan on adding one new topic to the discussion board each week. To achieve maximum participation, present topics that require responses from students that are concise, critical, and substantiated by facts. Monitor and respond to student threads and encourage students to do the same.
  
• Create assignments, activities, or projects that permit students to "actively construct" knowledge when interacting with the information from the course. Create discussion threads that incorporate hypothetical scenarios, case studies, or theoretical conflicts to fuel discussions.
  
• If you choose to hold "Virtual Office Hours" be sure to be online and available at the announced time. Not showing up for "Virtual Office Hours" is no different than not showing up for established office hours and/or class.
  
• Develop a timeline for adding content to the course. You want to engage learners with one chapter at a time. If too much information is available, the students will not focus on the chapter, unit, or module at hand.
  
• When using a computer to learn, learning itself becomes an active process of seeking out information and constructing that information into an internal representation of that information/knowledge. Try and balance the amount of guidance provided while permitting students the flexibility to explore and navigate your materials freely to construct their own meaningful knowledge.
  
• Evaluation is an extremely important component of the development and delivery of any online course. It is important that you take the time to prepare thorough surveys or questionnaires to gauge students' reaction to learning in an online environment. Descriptions of their experiences will help you shape the next online course that you create.

Communication Strategies

• Be responsive to questions posted online or in class. Especially at the beginning of an online course or activity, ensure that every comment has a response in a discussion forum or virtual chat. If no one else replies, either respond by message or by mentioning the author's comment in one of yours.
• For the discussion forum component of the course, send email messages to those who are falling behind, or who are reading but not writing.
• When student's log into their online course they can't help but see the announcements you post. Use the Announcements section of Blackboard to notify them of changes to the content, timelines, deadlines, and any item that was mentioned in class.
• Encourage meta-communication about the process of online discussions and offer suggestions for improving the experience for all the participants.

External Resources

Qualities and skills needed to be an e-moderator

• In search of the perfect e-tutor interesting article by Clive Shepherd on what makes a good online tutor, including exploring the qualities needed for being an online tutor.
  
• The Role of the Online Instructor/Facilitator by Zane L. Berge, Ph.D. This article has lots of info on the role of the online tutor/emoderator with hints for pedagogical, social, managerial and technical aspects of e-moderating - an ‘oldie’ but a ‘goodie’.

Becoming a discussion facilitator – background reading

• Learnativity short extract providing an explanation of the terms pedagogy and andragogy.
• The Centre for Online Learning and Pedagogy at New York University provides a fabulous, interactive exploration of pedagogical concepts and theories in alphabetical or graphical form.
• Educational benefits of online learning a Blackboard tip sheet. We liked the positive argument although no negatives are presented!
• Online Tutoring e-Book which is part of the Online Tutoring Skills (OTiS) Project website. It’s a little dated now (2000) but it offers an overview of building a learning community and the skills needed by an e-moderator. The chapters can be downloaded as PDF files.

‘How to’ specifics and samples for discussion facilitators

• How to guides of all shapes and sizes are list here, from ‘Netiquette and Chatiquette’ to ‘How to manage online teacher workload effectively’. Information is generally sources/provided by practitioners from the Australian Flexible Learning Community.
• RDN Virtual Training Suite UK provides approximately 60, free, self-paced, online tutorials on a range of subjects from engineering and maths to further education. Targeted to the vocational sector, we liked the Business Studies tutorial, which covers effective searching on the web.
• Online Community Toolkit on Nancy White’s site contains heaps of great tips for facilitators. We especially liked the Online Community Builder's Purpose Checklist and the FaciliTips: Quick Tips for Online Facilitation
• eLearning Centre is Jane Knight’s up to date, comprehensive site with topical items. We liked the e-Tutors Centre, the Delivering e-Learning resources, the elearning quick Guides, the Live Help desk feature and the rest! There’s something for all sectors here.
• Maricopa Center for Learning & Instruction Teaching and learning on the web has over 787 examples of how the web is being used as a medium for learning from small activities to full courses. Just search for your interest area.
• Growing Knowledge: How to Support Collaborative Learning & e-Discussions in Forum Systems by Eva Fårheus from Stockholm. The question, how to "grow knowledge on-line" was analyzed in an e-discussion before an international conference as well as in the physical meeting of the participants. This site captures the discussion, provides tips for teachers and suggested forum functions to support teachers.
• A Brief Summary of the Best Practices in Teaching Compiled by Tom Drummond it is based on f2f teaching but is still relevant to the online world. We liked the discussion about how to ask questions which foster engagement and confidence.

Improving the ‘look’ of your postings

• Mindmapper software provides a free trial download of this program to create your own mind maps (with different colors, shapes, hyperlinks, images, etc.). There’s also a great ‘one minute walk through’ explanation of how to create mind maps. There is a cost for the full version.
  

 

Talking to other discussion facilitators – discussion communities/listservs

• Online Facilitation Listserv Nancy White’s listserv for online facilitators and emoderators.
• Virtual Learning Space – Robert Gordon and Aberdeen University site, you need to register (it’s worth it) for access to resources and online discussions around online learning.
  
• The Commonwealth of Learning has a ‘sharing our services’ database to connect educators with organizations in developing Commonwealth countries.