Chapter One: Introduction

Chapter 1: Introduction

Chapter 1: Introduction
1.1 Background and Scope

British universities are increasingly looking towards the role that technology can play as an
enabler in meeting the challenges of widening access, an increasingly diverse student
population and their need of flexible provision, and the development of lifelong learning
skills. To this end, in most institutions significant investment has been committed to
institutional Virtual Learning Environments (VLEs) and the training of staff and students,
to support their use in what is now widely called ‘online learning’ or ‘e-learning’. Within
this emerging higher education (HE) context, moderation of online discussions by tutors or
e-moderators has been seen as an accepted strategy in bringing about online learning.

Research in the field of online tutoring identifies a plethora of names to define the role of
the online ‘tutor’. These include educational facilitator, promoter, manager, discussion
leader and helper (Berge & Collins, 2000). Other titles include online negotiator, learning
trainer (Paulsen, 1992; Selinger, 1997) and E-moderator (Salmon, 2000). The literature
also offers some insight into possible descriptions of the aforementioned roles (for
example, Cornelius & Higgison, 2000). Unfortunately, to date it offers limited
understanding as to the ways and the practical complexities within which different
members of staff adopt or are required to adopt one role or another in asynchronous
learning environments, in order to best meet the learning needs of the students, according
to their course’s aims and educational standards.

Further, there has been a rather limited interest in naturalistic studies where e-moderated
discussions are part of an on-going course or module for students in higher education.
Moderation has been mainly studied as an activity on its own, in settings which included
either mature or motivated students. But the generalities emerging from there, and aired
about e-moderation in general, need to be qualified in terms of course aims and the
learning outcomes towards which that moderation sets out to facilitate progress. It is rather
common to find in literature wherein the aims of e-moderation and the type of learning
outcomes towards which the e-moderation was directed, the discipline area or even the
delivery mode (i.e., fully online or mixed mode) were rather unclear or not mentioned at
all. There seem to have been many papers where the writer gives no information about
aims of the e-moderation and the type of learning outcomes towards which the e-
 Chapter 1: Introduction

moderation was directed. These omissions imply how unimportant such factors have been
seen to be by the writers.

There is also little known about the range of effective e-moderation strategies available, or
about their relative effectiveness in maximizing the learning opportunities for students
where both directive and non-directive interventions in the VLE take place. This concern
was recently re-affirmed by Salmon (2007:172) who suggested that there is no evidence so
far that there is an easy pathway between instructivist and constructivist approaches to
online moderation. The evaluation of the process of e-moderation and the data gathered
directly relating to the impact of moderation on learning and the learning experience seems
to have been accorded quite a low priority.

There are four case studies that comprised this thesis. They were conducted to address the
shortcomings briefly identified above on a modest scale. A qualitative, interpretative
approach was employed as the principal means of data collection and analysis. Thus, it
focused mainly on the behaviours and experiences of tutors, guest experts (i.e. invited
lecturers) and students involved in e-moderation in two naturalistic research contexts in
two higher education institutions in the UK.

To satisfy the principal aim of this thesis, it proceeds to consolidate the main findings of
the investigation within an emerging theory of e-moderation based on grounded theory
investigation. The emerging theory seeks to conceptualise further the different ways in
which tutors and guest experts adapted an e-moderation role, the factors which influenced
their particular choices of intervention strategies, and the resulting impact in terms of
students’ motivation and engagement in asynchronous, online discussions. In this way, it
is hoped that the thesis may help lay some foundations for researching e-moderation as part
of an ongoing and purposeful educational activity and not merely as a social interaction
process.

1.2 Research Focus

The research question in a grounded theory study is very different to a hypothesis. The
original and general question only lends focus to the study, while further and more specific
questions are generated directly from the data. These questions are not hypotheses to be
confirmed or rejected.
 Chapter 1: Introduction

The original research question, which was set out initially to focus the inquiry in this
thesis, was:

What do higher education teaching and tutoring staff do when they embark upon
e-moderation in order to facilitate online discussions in asynchronous learning
environments?

The questions which emerged from the data coding and analysis in respect of four chosen
case studies, and while the research was progressing towards theory formulation, were:

What are the main decisions that e-moderators made when deciding when and
how to intervene in online discussions?
What factors influence the decisions made by e-moderators for intervention?
What is the impact of various e-moderation interventions on the way students
engaged with the online discussions, and how they learned?

1.3 Structure of the Thesis

The thesis comprises a further six chapters. They present: an overview of the literature
related to this study; the research design and the research methodology employed; the
presentation of the findings from the two research settings; a discussion of the findings
under the themes that emerged from the data; and the final conclusions.

Chapter Two

Chapter two starts with a brief introduction to some of the major and relevant changes in
British higher education that both directly and indirectly influenced the launch of e-
learning in the UK. The chapter then presents some reported issues relating to the use of
computer-mediated communication (CMC) in both the learning and tutoring process.
These are examined in the light of arguments founded in the educational theory of
constructivism and socio-constructivism. The chapter concludes with a thorough
examination of the dominant models for online tutoring and e-moderation in the UK,
presenting both their strengths and their vulnerabilities.

Since this chapter was initially researched and drafted at an early stage in this PhD work, it
has inevitably been enlarged and rewritten as new publications were encountered during
the research period. For this reason it contains some pointers forward to aspects of the
author's own studies that have been influenced by or are responding to the literature
referenced in this chapter.
 Chapter 1: Introduction

Chapter Three

Chapter three presents the research paradigm on which this thesis is founded, and the
reasons why it was selected. It describes the two research settings, and the way data was
collected and analysed. The chapter concludes with a discussion of the reliability and
validity of the collected data and some of its ethical considerations.

Chapters Four & Five

Chapters four and five are devoted to the presentation and interpretation of the main
findings from the two research settings. Each chapter is organised in three sections. Each
section begins with a detailed presentation of the evaluative contextual factors of the
particular study. The contextual factors described in each chapter are: the institutional
setting, the characteristics of the module, the characteristics of the e-moderators, the
characteristics of the students, and the technology used.

Each chapter then moves to the presentation of the data and the analysis. Chapter four
presents the findings from the three case studies (CS1, CS2, CS3), that is, one for each of
the e-moderators involved in research setting one. Chapter five includes the results from
the fourth case study (CS4). Where possible the findings are presented under themes that
emerged from the analysis and are depicted in tables for a quick overview for the reader. In
a more detailed description, most findings are illustrated with extracts from both online and
interview transcripts and other forms of data collected from the-moderators or tutors in
each of the case studies.

Chapter Six

Chapter six is devoted to the development of the e-moderation grounded theory. It

commences with a discussion of the main themes which emerged from the grounded-
theory-based analysis of the findings. It discusses the dichotomy of e-moderation, a
suggested approach for reflecting upon e-moderation; and it offers a diagrammatic
definition of e-moderation to support the grounded theory.

Chapter Seven

Finally, chapter seven presents the main conclusions of the study. It makes a clear
statement about the contribution of this thesis to an understanding of the impact of e-
 Chapter 1: Introduction

moderation, and discusses some of the main implications of its findings to educational
research in general and particularly to research in the fields of e-learning, educational
technology and other related areas. It concludes with some suggestions for further research.
Chapter 1: Introduction