Competencies of E-moderators in Online Learning Environment

In an Online Learning Environment, understanding the learners becomes a very intricate task. More than often it is difficult for the instructors of an online course to know in advance which learners will need help and which of them would sail through the course easily. The solution to this problem is ‘Contingent e-moderating’.

E-moderators must be thorough with the various aspects of the online environment. They should have the capacity to understand their learners quickly and well enough, as this will help them to be good facilitators. They must have the capacity to bring the learners - coming from various backgrounds, together and make them comfortable with the teaching-learning environment. They should be able to make use of various strategies according to their learners needs. Another aspect of efficient e-moderating is that e-moderators should be very sensitive towards online relationships - instructor-learner and learner-learner. The ability to build trust among the learners should come naturally to them.

The e-moderators must be well-versed with their content and the use of various softwares. They should be able to make use of a wide range of approaches, from structured etivities to freewheeling discussions which could help learners to explore ideas, develop arguments, promote valuable threads etc. They should be able to create links between various features of learning programmes, introduce online resources without diverting participants from interaction. They should be open to criticism as well as suggestions from the learners.

They should have strong determination as well as motivation towards their work. Hence, they should act as a catalyst and continuously keep improvising on their skills to foster interaction among participants and hence enhance the teaching-learning process. The ability to adapt to new teaching contexts, methods, audiences as well as their roles is more than often a challenging, but surely an interesting task.