Facilitating Online Learning : Effective Strategies for Moderators

Instructors new to the online teaching and training environment, as well as experienced online educators, will discover the groundbreaking skills and techniques needed to be a successful online instructor. Discover how to effectively facilitate dialogue and build a community of learners as well as hurdle common roadblocks. Learn how to create a learning community where the instructor moves from center stage to a collaborative learning environment.

George Collison, PhD, is the academic director of the INTEC (International Netcourse Teacher Enhancement Coalition) Project, a suite of professional development netcourses that support teachers who are bringing inquiry-based approaches into their mathematics or science classrooms. Dr. Collison first articulated the vision for INTEC, and he trained INTEC moderators to implement our successful approach to facilitating online learning communities.

Bonnie Elbaum works with the Virtual High School (VHS), a collaborative of high schools from around the United States that, in exchange for contributing a small amount of teaching time, can offer their students a choice of 200+ netcourses – ranging from advanced academic courses to technical and specialized courses – to augment local curriculum offerings.

Sarah Haavind designs and teaches online courses for the Consortium, including the INTEC netcourses and a sequence of courses that support learning the moderating techniques presented in this book.

Robert Tinker, PhD, is internationally recognized as a pioneer in constructivist uses of educational technologies. He developed the idea of using probes, such as the ultrasonic motion detector, for student learning based on real-time measurements. He also was the first person to use electronic networking to permit students to collaborate on dispersed environment investigations. The initial result of this work was the NGS Kids Network, the first curriculum making extensive use of student collaboration and data sharing. This early success led to the Global Lab and GLOBE projects as well as the development of LabNet, an early use of networking to support teachers’ professional development. Six years ago, Dr. Tinker founded The Concord Consortium.