Tips on Moderating Sessions


 

We've tried to collect here some of the ideas generated over the years on how to keep the sessions lively and interactive. Please feel free to add to this list as we go along. And be sure to see the other pages on Engaging Participants, linked in the Sidebar.

 

 

 


 

Getting Started

 

 

 

 

OR, you could just tell them in the file to wait patiently and come back on January 5th to register, and indicate again that discussions will begin on January 12th. Meanwhile, set up a file with the above information, and tick the box to send to members who have just joined.

 

Please don't let anyone into your group until January 5th. Believe me, you will have enough to do before then! You will probably get a large number of inquiries once the announcement goes out, so the above strategy will let the automatic features of Yahoo handle the easy stuff, and relieve your email burdens. --Elizabeth

 

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Email Load in Yahoo!Groups

 

 

"It would be really helpful to the others if when you are replying

to a message, you remember to *delete all the extra parts* of the

old message that you are not directly referring to in your reply." - Susan M.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Email Load in Google Plus Communities

 

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Keeping the session lively

 

 

 

 

 

 

A good rationale for why sessions should be lively and interactive is found in this paper: Guidelines_for_Establishing_Interactivity_in_Online_Courses.pdf

[If]... you're a bit worried about the flow of conversations. Here's what you can do to hopefully perk things up:

 

  1. When you respond to email messages, make sure that you don't just acknowledge receipt of their mails. You have to follow up on what they said and ask questions-- personalize the inquiry while connecting your comment to the topic that you're supposed to be discussing for the week.
  2. Make sure to add the link/s to the reading instead of just saying 'please post your reactions to the article after reading it'.
  3. Instead of asking them to post general comments, you can ask concrete questions based on the article, and ask them to share their experiences and/or ask them to provide suggestions on how to deal with the problems mentioned in the article.
  4. This would require some work, but if you've got time, you could compile all the intros in a table so everybody could see (in one shot) who's who and what their issues are. in this way, you could tailor your session to make sure that you address their issues and help resolve them (or provide ways)
  5. Lead the discussions-- don't just respond to the messages. Week 2 is almost over, but you haven't posted anything that would introduce the activity for this week.
  6. Although readings for Week 1 and 2 are on the wiki, you could have provided a doc file to be placed in the files area. So there'll be folders for each week - instead of just having Week 3 and Week 4. [This applies to a YG or other CMSs also.]

 

Take a deep breath and take it all in. You're a good moderator-- you just need a little sprinkle of magic dust to perk up the discussions.

 

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Too many observers/lurkers?

 

Ways to get into the discussion: The "runway" to participation -- Laine & Robert  

 

learners: An effective way to do this might be to identify the 3 levels

of participation in a rubric at the start of the program. -- Robert

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Comments from John Allen, who is using Moodle:

 

The course participation is steady. In terms of participation, our forums and participant posting of their weekly tasks is healthy. We have added more motivators and guides in a variety of formats - even a cartoon to guide them through weeks 5 and 6! [See illustration below.] Other items include countdown timers, clocks for different regions, animated avatars, a blog and many visuals to direct them to the various aspects of the course.

It is difficult to get numbers to the chats even though the participants themselves vote on the timings, and we even added an additional session, but the chats are intimate and useful.

At this point, I think that our team would agree that the forums are the best mode of communication. I am really glad that we put this course together as we are meeting interesting people from across the globe and sharing on many levels.

 

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Live Chats

 

Chats are a great way to meet your participants and resolve concerns on the spot. You've been introduced to several different venues over the course of these 5 weeks. WiZIQ and Google+/Hangout are voice chat areas and also have other features, such as PowerPoint display, video conferencing, and Web Tours (good for guest speaker presentations).

 

Advice from EVO2015 Moderators

In response to the question, "Can you make any suggestions or recommendations to future moderators?", EVO2015 mods who completed a survey after the sessions were finished wrote,

 


EVO is a project of TESOL's CALL Interest Section
last updated 26 August 2010 by E. Hanson-Smith