In 2004 the Australian Flexible Learning Community began a public online group, "Getting Started in Flexible Learning" which was moderated by Judy Fawcett and targeted especially for practitioners who were new to flexible learning and wished to engage in a process of guided discovery. This article is drawn from the discussions that took place in the group between February and November. Many thanks to all who participated.

Thoughts from Gilly Salmon (Professor of e-learning, University of Leicester)

‘What makes a successful E-Learning Moderator?

• Visualise success for individuals and their online groups and engage them in achieving the vision
  
• Turn apparent threats into challenges to be tackled as worthwhile tasks in themselves
  
• Create focus for the group by offering short term goals and give a lot of constructive feedback
  
• Give very close attention to group processes, but avoid constant interventions and redirections
  
• Later in the e-learning process, promote the experience of ‘going with the flow’
  
• Encourage participants to articulate feelings of engagement with the online opportunities to take part

Time Management for the E-Learning Moderator
I think we are all aware that e – moderation is time consuming and requires good time management and prioritising – I know I spend a lot of time outside the confines of 9am – 5pm. Gilly Salmon has spoken about this on a number of occasions. She estimates that it takes a minute to read simple messages and 2 mins for longer ones. Doing an effective summary from 30 or messages takes a good hour. Reading, responding and giving feedback is an important part of the facilitation process. The better structured the interaction the easier it is to give feedback.

Gilly’s suggestions for good forum management:

Aim to provide just one instructional message which contains everything a student needs to take part. This could include:

• The purpose of the e – tivity; if it is going to be assessed, some guidelines for success would be helpful
  
• What participants should do and how they will go about doing it
  
• Start and finishing times and approx time required
  
• If group work, ideas on how the group should work together
  
• Outline the role of the e-moderator and the amount of involvement expected

Gilly's ideas are based on her 5 Step Model:
 
 

Online Activities (E-tivities)
Gilly Salmon has some great web sites (references) to help us in developing and moderating our interactive activities and online learning:

http://www.e-tivities.com/home.asp

and

http://www.e-moderating.com/home.asp

These two web sites have a wealth of information and she encourages discussion and feedback. Gilly's email address is gilly.salmon@le.ac.uk