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23 of 23 people found the following review helpful:
A must read book for all teachers involved in ICT., 26 Dec 2000
By A Customer
With the advent of Information technology (IT) in education and the use of Internet and World Wide Web (WWW) for delivery of educational programmes, e-learning has become a buzzword in the academic world. A large number of universities around the world have started offering courses online. A number of educational dot-com enterprises have also started offering courses in various subjects online ranging from K-12 to university and lifelong learning. Also, it has become now easier to launch a programme/course online using Virtual Learning Environments (VLEs) such as WebCT, Blackboard CourseInfo, TopClass, LearningSpace, etc. Interestingly, much of the e-learning or we-based education is just about putting the "Classroom" into the web with lecture notes, assignments, tests, discussion groups, chat and e-mail. Most of the times no thought have been given to the critical issues of instructional design for web-based courses. As such, these 'Web-based courses' become worse than first generation 'Correspondence Courses'. Therefore, understanding the potential of the web and what it can do for education and training is very important -- to facilitate constructivist learning. For teachers working online, it becomes paramount to adopt this new paradigm of teaching using e-mails, chat and discussion boards. The book under review is precisely for online teachers whom Gilly Salmon calls as "E-Moderators" with their role as e-moderating.The book is divided into two parts. Part I has six chapters under "Concepts and Cases" and Part II " Resources for Practitioners" has 22 sets of guidelines related to e-moderating. In Chapter 1 ' What is e-moderating?' the author explains the concept of e-moderating by showing what a typical e-moderator actually does. An e-moderator is one who moderates an electronic meeting either at the same time (synchronous) or at different time (asynchronous). However, without specifying the scope of the book, the author goes on to discuss 'asynchronous' systems throughout the book. Chapter 2 is significant contribution to the theory and practice of Computer Mediated Communication (CMC) in education and training. Based on her research and experience of working with the CMC systems of UKOU (CoSy and FirstClass). Gilly describes a model for the progress of learners online from novice to being competent through Access and motivation, Online socialization, Information exchange, Knowledge construction and Development. Chapter 3 enumerates the knowledge and skills required to be a good e-moderator. The author provides practical advice for recruiting e-moderators and also discusses synchronous CMC in this chapter. Chapter 4 describes the e-moderator-training model of Open University Business School. The training design is based on the five-stage model discussed in chapter 2. The training programme is also online and each trainee e-moderator is expected to work at least ten hours online. Chapter 5 focuses on the experience of participants in CMC. Each learner in CMC comes with unique needs and respond to the e-moderator accordingly. Therefore, the e-moderator has to support individual learners very carefully. This chapter provides examples and cases of different experiences of learners related to access of the system, learning styles, disabilities, gender, etc. and how to handle them. Chapter 6 is on the future of online teaching and learning. The author predicts -- " the most successful educator of the future will not be those who keep up with the race to put content on the web or on CD ROM, but those who can predict and act on the less obvious, weaker signals coming from the environment, and then work out how to enable productive, happy, e-moderating for learning" (p.88). Part II outlines 22 sets of guidelines as resources for practitioners. Some of these are; Choosing a software system for CMC, Are you ready to work online? CMC users with disabilities, Training e-moderators, Conference house keeping, Understanding lurkers, and What will we call ourselves? This part could work as prescriptions for possible e-moderators, who may not have time to go through long reports and book. On the whole, it is an excellent book written in a lucid and personalised tone reflecting the huge experience of the author in handling asynchronous conferences. However, to be called comprehensive, the book should have given more emphasis to synchronous discussion as well. Also a chapter on questioning techniques in online discussion, especially synchronous discussion would have been very helpful. E-Moderating is a must read book for all teachers who operate in an electronic environment or are planning to do so in near future. The book comes with a website, which is interactive and provides all the links discussed in the book. Dr. Sanjaya Mishra Lecturer, STRIDE, IGNOU, Maidan Garhi New Delhi 110 068 Note: This review will appear in January 2001 issue of Indian Journal of Open Learning published by Indira Gandhi National Open University.
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