While researching for my Literature Review, I came across a copy of the Learning and Teaching Scotland  online magazine. The Connected 10 Magazine had a special feature which brought together 5 articles each focusing on different aspects of online communities. I had come across of the authors in a previous Chartered Teacher module entitled ‘Introducing E-Learning, E-Teaching and E-Assessment’.

The first one is an article by Dr Gilly Salmon.

With colleagues, she has researched the key success factors in enabling happy and successful online communities of practice and has built a model of what to expect.

Here’s her description of the model:

The model has five stages, each of which acts as a ‘scaffold’ to the next. Individual access and the ability of participants to use the online environment are essential prerequisites for participation at stage one, at the base of the flights of steps. Stage two involves individual participants establishing their online identities and then finding others with whom to interact, a form of ‘online socialisation’. At stage three, participants give information and receive information freely. The success of communication depends on the establishment of common understandings at stages one and two. Up to and including stage three, a form of cooperation occurs, i.e. support for each person’s goals. At stage four, group discussions occur and the interaction becomes more collaborative and the knowledge generated more applied and constructed. Interaction for online knowledge construction gets to the heart of what most participants consider important. They feel intuitively that knowledge is not just about data or information but is much richer and broader and is linked with personal experience in complex ways. At stage five, participants look for more benefits from the system to help them achieve personal goals, explore how to integrate online working into other forms of learning and reflect on the learning processes.

During the Chartered Teacher module, we were asked to evaluate where our own schools were on the model.

Now, if I apply the same thinking and place our class online community on the model, we’re probably at stage 3? …… I’m referring to those pupils who choose to be actively involved in blogging.

Dr Salmon goes on to say that:

We find that everyone needs human support to take part successfully in online communities. I give the name ‘e-moderator’ to this person since, although some of the skills are the same as those of group facilitators, there are some new ones too. The e-moderator’s role in such rich and interactive environments is both rewarding and demanding!

E-moderators need to give very explicit attention to enabling and promoting all aspects of online socialisation. To succeed in fully engaging the participants and promoting their active involvement, imaginative and creative images will be needed! Energies can to be harnessed towards the shared enterprise and purposefulness of the learning community. In a sense, e-moderators create a special little cultural experience belonging to this group at this time through discussion and negotiation.

For the past 10 weeks or so, there’s been a 4th year B’ed student in class. Miss Law has had a lot of responsibility for the class (a fine job has been done, too!), and I’ve taken more of a ‘back seat’. On reflection, I think I’ve subconsciously become an e-moderator!

• I’ve tried to make sure that there have been lots of posts made on Our class blog, and that many of these posts have linked to the children’s posts.
• I also created My ‘Learnerblog’ in an attempt to show by example ….. I find this difficult 🙂
• Recently, I also made use of a new edublogs facility by trialing our forums section of the blog  …… I even got permission to become a supporter so that we can have more than one forum (I’ll find the time soon to get round to actually using this great facility!)
• Miss Law’s contributions to our blogging community have helped as well … the children are very sad that she’s leaving soon, but are very aware that they’ll be able to keep in touch through their blogs.
• I’ve also made more of an effort to catch some time with the children to point out the great contributions to their wikis. I need to spend more time helping them to organise their front pages …. it’s not immediadely obvious how much work is in there! The writing that has been done recently, has been by the children in their spare time at home. For example, check out Bethany’s great story here  and Maryam’s playscript

   The second article in the Connected magazine was by Linda Lafferty and is entitled Everything in Moderation     . Linda was my online tutor for a number of my Chartered Teacher modules …. and I can vouch for her great ability to moderate online (and I suspect that everyone on the course would echo that!).

Linda wrote:

To develop an online community requires a more student-centred approach with the tutor transforming into a facilitator from ‘sage on the stage’ to ‘guide on the side’.

It is my belief that potential moderators should be introduced to the subtleties of online facilitation from the perspective of first becoming an online learner, thus enabling them to actually feel and experience the myriad of online processes which provide them with the whole picture. How else can you develop and properly hone the almost ‘sixth sense’ you need to be able to read your participants’ requirements online – tuning in to the subtleties and nuances and reading what is not being said?

She goes on to say:

As every online event and community is unique, you never moderate the same things in the same way – it really does put the fun back into teaching and learning and keeps you on your ‘virtual toes’.

Yes …… it does!!!!!!! 🙂

…. And now I understand what Ewan meant when he commented way back when I started this blog. He said:

The notion of work patterns seems to correlate to the traditional classroom’s ‘routines’. If an online community is going to be successful people always need a reason to go back to it. This is where routines and regular ’special events’ help people have that kick into action in those parts of the course where motivation begins to flag. Is this what your tutor means?

After contemplating some advice, I replied to his comment. I said:

…. I’m interested in Ewan’s notion that ’special events’ should be provided to motivate pupils to return to the ‘online environment’ – I’d thought of taking a ‘back seat’ now that the class have their own spaces and just watch to see what happens?

Recent events have made me think again ….. constantly reflecting 🙂