Moderators and the Philosophy of Moodle

Moderators and the Philosophy of Moodle

by Don Hinkelman -
Number of replies: 22
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(Edited by moderator: this discussion was originally a reply to this)

Fascinating discussion point! This is the first time I have noticed anything about a Moodle philosophy about discussions. I think it is extremely useful and productive for both new and old Moodle users to consider our values--maybe split this topic off as well.

Ben writes...
Another issue is the board has expressed an interest in moderated forums: not for learning, but for other school activities. This seems to be contrary to the philosophy of Moodle in general, and therefore something Moodle is not interested in supporting. I'd hate to have to mix in a whole different forum system just to handle that need, if Moodle could be adapted to support moderation. Is this a closed issue, or would the Moodle project be receptive to adding moderation as a feature to serve this need?

Martin replies...
...as you surmised, I'm not interested in supporting moderation for discussions in any context.

My guess is that Moodle forums were originally conceived to avoid heavy handed topic initiation or censorship by formal "moderators". Any other reasons? Any other threads, papers, or links that I missed where this has been covered?

Now Ben points out a need or request for moderated forums. Maybe you could tell us more why you or your colleagues feel that way.

I have also thought about moderators at times, but for different reasons.
  1. student moderators: to initiate a topic, and take charge of maintaining the discussion.
  2. community moderators: to share responsibility for certain topics or assign jobs in the organization/group
  3. energizers: people who will watch an important area/category (not topic) and stimulate it by watching for unanswered threads, or posing questions.
  4. promoters: a person(s) who will pull in new participants by sending out emails with links to topic threads. A way to inform about discussions and invite new comments.
  5. summarizers: a role for a person to collect/select/condense useful information into a compact summary for preservation/longivity.
  6. structured conversations: to lead a conversation in a sequential pattern. In face-to-face reflections, I lead a discussion with objective questions first, followed by subjective ones, then interpretive ones, and finally decisional questions. (Note: this point is more a pedagogical need, and may be served by a new kind of module)
As you can see, I am thinking about roles people can play in a learning community and kinds of responsibility that people take on and pass on or rotate. As a community grows, the need to spread responsibility grows with it.
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In reply to Don Hinkelman

Re: Moderators and the Philosophy of Moodle

by Frances Bell -
Excellent points about moderators Don, especially pointing out that these are roles.  Like Don, I am wondering if there has been any previous discussion on moodle.org about this - Martin's opposition was very definite but I am not quite sure to what wink  I suppose that some discussion board software packages have quite formulaic role and reward earning mechanisms that are manipulated by those with excessive free time and persistence.
Not all of the roles Don mentioned need any special functionality or permissions but some do, and could be done by someone other than a person with the "teacher role".
I am interested in this subject because we at CABWEB are using moodle for student collaborations, and for broader network/community purposes. I guess that there will come a point where we may need to choose different software for each purpose, say moodle for student collaboration and some community software for the rest.
On the other hand, anyone can think of a class as a learning community.  If they try to promote active involvement of students in the activities Don mentions, then they may need some features offered by community software. SO it becomes quite difficult to draw a line between community software and moodle-type software (not getting into that VLE/CMS/etc. debate).
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In reply to Frances Bell

Re: Moderators and the Philosophy of Moodle

by Martin Dougiamas -
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Just to be clearer ...!

The sort of "moderation" I'm opposed to is the type where every post by a student must be approved by a teacher before being made public (people have requested this before). This just goes against every instinct I have for educational, democratic and respectful behaviour.

However, moderation within a forum where someone steers and guides the conversations through questions, answers and reflections is very important and one of the main functions of a teacher in an online environment. I'm definitely very much for this and always have been. smile Don's summary of roles is excellent and matches a lot of my observations of online communities (including this one).
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In reply to Martin Dougiamas

Re: Moderators and the Philosophy of Moodle

by Stan Armstrong -

Martin,

There has been some confusion here. Ben is my son. He is helping our school/group to get set up under Moodle. My wife expressed a concern which I thought I passed on to Ben, but I misunderstood what my wife was asking for.

The concern arose of out the experience of a friend who moderates (in a good sense) a support group forum. Their group had been troubled by a disturbed person who was dominating the forum and distressing others. My wife was looking for a way to deal with the possiblity that our group might encounter something similar. I incorrectly assumed that she wanted the "bad" kind of moderation. Actually, we are just looking for a way to avoid the persistance of the situation I have described. We don't want to censure anything before it is posted. We do, however, want to be able to contact, and if necessary ban, anyone who is behaving in a way that is damaging. Does Moodle have this capability? I think I can answer my own question. Am I right that a "teacher" can kick someone out of a class?

Initially, we will not be conducting formal courses, though after I retire in April that will be a real possibility. We just want a place for informal converstation. We are open to anything anyone wants to say, but if we find a person persisting in foul language, personal attacks, etc., we do need a way of banning such a person.

Sorry about the intial confusion,

Stan

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In reply to Stan Armstrong

Re: Moderators and the Philosophy of Moodle

by Steve Hyndman -

Yes, it is possible...an instructor can remove any student from a class.

Steve

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In reply to Don Hinkelman

Re: Moderators and the Philosophy of Moodle

by Richard Treves -
Very interesting roles Don, I'd add to this a slightly daunting sounding role:

7.  Corrector:  Correcting factual errors when posted by students, e.g. term starts on the 12th of Jan when it actually starts on 10th.  

This was a very important role in the Open University uk where I used to work as the organisation was huge and misinformation was easily generated in forums.

Richard
 
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In reply to Don Hinkelman

Re: Moderators and the Philosophy of Moodle

by Ben Armstrong -
Don, I don't think I can answer that, as I haven't a clear idea myself of what they have in mind.  I have forwarded your question back to the board for consideration.

Personally I find moderation a tedious business, and avoid it.  But then, that's just me.

Thanks for your thoughts on roles.  That's helpful.  Also thanks, Martin, for clarifying the kind of moderation you are opposed to vs. the kind of moderation you support.

Ben

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In reply to Don Hinkelman

Re: Moderators and the Philosophy of Moodle

by Don Hinkelman -
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Although some draconian schools dead may request teacher-approval for postings, I think all of us agree with Martin that we would never want Moodle to go that direction.  We want Moodle to reflect an open, learner-centred, constructivist kind of education.  Interestingly, a director at my school who has never used Moodle was pleasently surprised to see that very philosophy stated on the front page of moodle.org.  Let's let other CMSs provide the transmission-style, teacher-centred approaches to online learning.

Now for us to be more socio-constructivist and more learner-centred, we will have to work on roles.  Frances is right that roles can be done outside the coding/permissions, assigning them in class and showing students how to play those roles.  It is also useful to do that formally, showing the role and the named person on the site, and allowing special rights for that person.  I can think of a few examples.
  • quiz-making: students make a quiz on their in-class presentation for classmates to answer online
  • surveys:  students design a survey and open it to classmates, or the school, or the world
  • calendars:  students post birthdays, personal events, and meetings for the whole class to see
  • peer-editing:  students check each others essays, according to a checklist and pop notes/comments on a classmate's essay
  • forum moderators:  students initiate a whole forum and are responsible for developing the discussions, attracting participants, and making summaries
  • mentors:  as mentioned earlier

I am sure you all have a longer list and have been thinking about this a long time.  One of my hopes for version 1.6/2.0 is this kind of capability.  In other words, we move to flexible roles and more varied roles, roles that can be specified down to an activity level rather than just a course or site level.  Maybe even a role-creator wizard, where a course designer can name a new role and check boxes to assign certain rights in certain places.  I would imagine these kind of things would be extremely difficult to program, but am convinced that is a direction we cannot delay.  That is why I am so passionate about fund-raising at this time, so we can enlist more talented programmers to devote more time to these priorities.

Note: Irene has made you a Moodle button. It is waiting for you  smile

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In reply to Don Hinkelman

Re: Moderators and the Philosophy of Moodle

by Martin Dougiamas -
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For this kind of role, one thing you can do now is to create a group for each role, and then assign people to those groups.

You can also assign icons to the groups, and these are displayed within the forum postings under the user icon! Clicking on the icon takes you to the group page, where you describe that role in detail.

As long as you only need one role per person this would work quite well!
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In reply to Martin Dougiamas

Re: Moderators and the Philosophy of Moodle

by Martin Dougiamas -
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You may have noticed I've switched these icons back on again in this very course.  wink
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In reply to Don Hinkelman

Re: Moderators and the Philosophy of Moodle

by Cynthia Choi -
Hi, I don't think that having a moderation feature and "an open, learner-centred, constructivist kind of education" are mutually excusive things. I would rather not moderate, but in order to provide a safe and supportive online environment in which students share their innermost hearts, I must moderate for reasons similar to those cited by Stan Armstrong in his post.  Currently we use both Yahoo Groups and Mailman.  99.999 percent of the time I let all the postings go through.  In person, there are many visual cues which will tip normal people off that a person is disturbed.  In an online setting, there are none.  We don't want to ban any person 100% of the time, even though they may be disruptive and disturbed, because they need help most of all.  Our community has to be open to everyone, we don't have the luxury of being selective, but it's a big bad internet world out there wink  There is also the problem of people not being able to filter out misinformation due to information overload.  People tend to scan things in a very cursory fashion, intending to spend more time learning later.
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In reply to Cynthia Choi

Re: Moderators and the Philosophy of Moodle

by Martin Dougiamas -
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Note that teachers CAN delete postings in Moodle if they don't like them, as well as communicate privately to anyone who needs talking to about their behaviour, or drop their grades etc etc.

Approving each post however is unworkable.  It places a greater load on the teacher (they have enough already!) and stifles communication.  If the teacher is away for the weekend the class stops, discussions are interrupted and people move on to other thoughts.  Just having the feature there would lead to all sorts of bad assumptions in teachers new to online learning.
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In reply to Martin Dougiamas

Re: Moderators and the Philosophy of Moodle

by Cynthia Choi -
I agree with you 100% in most situations.  However, our situation is fairly unique in that we are not dealing with ordinary intellectual subject matter.  It is debatable whether our subject matter can be taught online at all, because it is not really something to teach, it is an experiential, emotional processing thing and subject to easy misinterpretation.  At the same time, there is a large intellectual component.  We set expectations with our students that their postings are moderated and there will be a delay.  Deleting after the fact is not acceptable because the damage is already done.
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In reply to Cynthia Choi

Re: Moderators and the Philosophy of Moodle

by Timothy Takemoto -

Dear Cynthia
This is obvious but, the glossary has a contribution vetting option, so perhaps you could use that. There is no need to call the module a "glossary" and you can even change the icon.
Tim

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In reply to Timothy Takemoto

Re: Moderators and the Philosophy of Moodle

by Cynthia Choi -
Thanks.  I'm now convinced to go this route, it seems to work just fine and is easy, we don't need anything sophisticated.  So we'll just change "glossary" to "discussion."
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In reply to Cynthia Choi

Re: Moderators and the Philosophy of Moodle

by Steve Hyndman -

Cynthia,

You are correct and there are a lot of situations where posting and comment moderation is necessary and is not counter to good "online facilitation". Moodle is a good product, but if it doesn't provide the features you need for a specific application, then often you are left to change it yourself or look elsewhere...that's the nature of virtually any technology.

In cases where I need to moderate a dicussion I have choosen to use a blog (WordPress has excellent post and comment moderation features.) I haven't worked with phpBB in a while, but if it has comment and posting moderation (I don't remember if it does) then that would be an excellent choice. You could easily set Moodle to authenticate against the accounts created in phpBB and use phpBB for your discussions and use the features of Moodle that will work for your needs.  Just some food for thought.

Steve

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In reply to Steve Hyndman

Re: Moderators and the Philosophy of Moodle

by Richard Treves -
Steve and Cynthia,

I think its interesting to compare your wishes to check every post before posting with the face to face situation.  If you are teaching any course you cannot stop students discussing the course afterwards without your moderation.  No one that I know of has ever asked students 'don't discuss this course unless I'm there because you might not get the facts 100% right' (or whatever reason you would want to moderate your course). 

Like Martin I'm interested in the situation that would merit 'moderation' (I use the commas because in my mind you are talking about censorship), in my experience it really helps a course if students think of the forums as their space, they help each other more and are more likely to share their thoughts, communication is the essence of what makes a course great and 'moderation' would very probably get in the way.

Of course, its also the essence of OS software that if you don't like it you can customise it or go elsewhere so I say this in the spirit of discussion. smile

Rich
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In reply to Richard Treves

Re: Moderators and the Philosophy of Moodle

by Steve Hyndman -

Like Martin I'm interested in the situation that would merit 'moderation'

Okay...

In most cases, I agree that discussion forums should be open and students (or participants) should be able to speak their minds--academic freedom, free speech, and all of that wink. All my college classes are set-up like that...I ask my students to speak their minds, but be respectful of others and 99% of the time that works. But, "my" students are adult public school teachers and administrators...their students are kids: K-12 students.

I find it entirely reasonable, for a public school teacher who sets up a discussion board for use by his/her teenage students to want the ability to moderate that discussion. That teacher knows his/her students better than I, or you, or Martin, or anyone else on these forums...so who am I, or who are you, or who is Martin, to tell that teacher how to conduct their class? You may see this as censorship...the teacher may see this as being a responsible teacher.

I understand that when most people think of online learning, they think of adults. But, Moodle is being used in a lot of public schools where the teacher is far more accountable for what goes on in his/her classrooms (physical or online) than I am in my online classrooms as a university professor. It's easy to sit back as the facilitator of Moodle.org and allow unmoderated discussions to take place (as they should)...no one is accountable for anything said here other than the person saying it...not true in a public school setting when you are dealing with kids.

Let's even take it one step further...let's say you are the principal of a school and a teacher wants to set-up some school-wide discussion forums (similiar to what we have here on Moodle.org) for studetns to discuss things of interest to them--sports, school activities, school clubs, maybe they want to allow comments and feedback on articles published in the school newspaper, etc. Would you allow a teacher to set-up those unmoderated forums? If so, you probably wouldn't be a principal in that school for long smile

Type the term cyber bullying into your search engine and read some of the results. I'm also an elected school board member of a 33,000 student public school district...I could tell you some horror stories about the kinds of things schools (and school teachers) are being sued over these days.

The major blog software like WordPress and MoveableType have moderation for a reason...there are specific instances where moderation is warranted.

I find it humorous everytime I see someone talk about "the philosophy of Moodle". Moodle is a piece of software...that's it. It should be flexable enough to allow "people" to have the philosophies....otherwise, maybe it should be renamed "Hal". smile

Finally, I do agree with your last sentence:

"...if you don't like it you can customise it or go elsewhere..."

That's why, in my opinion, any organization planning to implement Moodle on a large scale basis needs a programmer...that's not a myth.

Likewise, I say all this in the spirit of discussion smile

ps...please forgive all the spelling errors...it seems the spell-check is still not working here sad

Steve

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In reply to Steve Hyndman

Re: Moderators and the Philosophy of Moodle

by Debi Krulak -
As the Lower School Technology Coordinator in a k - 12 school who is considering implementing Moodle, you accurately sum up my concerns about using Moodle in this setting. While we realize that educating the children about how to be responsible online comes hand-in-hand with this kind of learning system, we would like to be able to moderate discussions to prevent cyberbullying or similar misuse of this tool.

And, I do think that there could be valuable teachable moments when a teacher is able to say to a child, "Do you know why I blocked your comment? How could you change it to make it so that I would publish your comment?" Here I think that a teacher could have a wonderful discussion on how to disagree with someone respectfully. I think that this could help students learn how to communicate/write more effectively and creatively.


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In reply to Richard Treves

Re: Moderators and the Philosophy of Moodle

by Manuel Carro -
Like Martin I'm interested in the situation that would merit 'moderation' (I use the commas because in my mind you are talking about censorship), in my experience it really helps a course if students think of the forums as their space, they help each other more and are more likely to share their thoughts, communication is the essence of what makes a course great and 'moderation' would very probably get in the way.

I think I have a situation where moderation may play a role. I am a Computer Science University teacher. We are considering using moodle as a support tool for undergraduate (say, 20 year old) students. I guess one can consider them as adults, and bullying or a bad attitude is not our problem at all.

What I am concerned about is students discussing assignements (which I am happy they do!) and then, unpurposedly, giving more information about what they thought or did than what they were supposed to -- those are personal assignments.

We have been used mailing lists for the discussion so far and maybe I had to stop 1 out of 100 messages (maybe less) from passing through. In all cases telling the student to rephrase her/his comment or to reveal less details of how she/he is approaching the problem has been enough. I suppose that this kind of moderation (call it "supervision" if you want) is not against moodle's teaching philosophy.

On the other hand, producing software with more capabilities that users can make use of "at their own risk" and following their own criteria should be, in the general case, positive. Not including a feature which is in itself not dangerous and technically compatible with the rest of the software is a form of "moderation" regarding what moodle users can or cannot do - just the opposite of what I have read to support the lack of moderation, only that applied to another level.

Best regards.
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In reply to Cynthia Choi

Re: Moderators and the Philosophy of Moodle

by Martin Dougiamas -
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Now I'm curious to learn more!  What is the subject matter you're teaching?  
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In reply to Martin Dougiamas

Re: Moderators and the Philosophy of Moodle

by Ger Tielemans -
Going back to a very old discussion:
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Why not build a function where a moderator (a teacher or better: one of the students) can summarize (and clean !) a long discussion, putting some remarks in a fact file next to that discussion and reseed the discussion with a small summary, ending with a new question?
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One of the things he/she can do is bringing the discussion back to normal.
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By the way Cynthia, aren't you overestimating the healing effect of the live situation? Are you always there when they... When things are written down, you always can reflect on the effect with your students together, live..
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In reply to Ger Tielemans

Re: Moderators and the Philosophy of Moodle

by Richard Treves -
"Why not build a function where a moderator (a teacher or better: one of the students) can summarize (and clean !) a long discussion, putting some remarks in a fact file next to that discussion and reseed the discussion with a small summary, ending with a new question?"

That would be very useful, First Class had such functionality a few years ago, it took all the text in a thread(s) and dumped it into a text file.  As a tutor you could then usefully summarise it to bring a certain discussion to a close or to redirect the discussion.  If done skillfully it can make the students feel that their point has been heard and that they have contributed to the course while giving them a useful summary of the topic.

Rich
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