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There are many definitions of an online course. At one end of the spectrum of ‘online-ness’, these include classroom-based training supplemented by notes posted on a Web site or by electronic communication such as e-mail. At the other end of the spectrum, materials may be made available and interactions occur exclusively through networked technologies. My presentation is concerned though with e-courses and e learning where the participants and the tutor/trainer are interacting through computer mediated opportunities. So, I’m not going to talk to you about courseware, or even about online design, but about the experience of learning with others through electronic opportunities – the term I call "networked learning".

Most educational and training providers choose a commercially available system to run their online interaction because they want the benefits of support and development, year in, year out, at a reasonable cost. Lotus Notes, FirstClass and Web CT are examples of popular systems. There are many others. Each has its own underlying software ‘engine’, a different ‘look and feel’ for the participants, and different facilities and functions for e-moderators. Of course, all systems have certain features, but there are real differences. But- I’m not going to talk to you about this either! Others will, I’m sure.

I’m sure you know some of the obvious benefits of learning electronically by now. Compared to face-to-face group training, for example, networked learning is readily available, and does not require participants to travel to a certain place. If you do not try and emulate synchronous communication (as in the training room) then you’ll have the benefit of time as well as place. Many users find that the time lags involved between logging on and taking part, encourages them to consider and think about the experiences they are receiving before replying, rather more than they would in a class situation. Participants can ask questions without waiting in turn. Because of these characteristics, rather different relationships – usually based on shared interests or support – can develop compared to those between learners or trainers who meet face-to-face. Although many people find the lack of visual clues strange, messages are ‘neutral’ since you cannot see whether the sender is young or old nor need to consider their appearance or race. This characteristic of tends to favour minorities of every kind and encourages everyone to ‘be himself or herself’. Of course as online courses include more pictures, as they certainly will, this situation may change again. Meanwhile with text based conferencing it is possible to ‘rewind’ a conversation, to pick out threads and make very direct links. Therefore online discussions have a more permanent feel and are subject to reworking in a way more transient verbal conversation cannot be. This means that the online networked medium is good for giving praise and constructive critiques.

This is a model of teaching and learning online, researched and developed with business school students over several years, but since applied to corporate training and across many learning disciplines and contexts.

First let me summarise the model, before going into detail. I choose to call all learners, in networked, online and e-learning, "participants" and their trainers, facilitators or teachers, "e-moderators". I think that these words are more illustrative of the different roles that each adopt online compared to face to face teaching and learning situations.

Individual access and the ability of participants to use networked learning are essential prerequisites for conference participation (stage one, at the base of the flights of steps). Stage two involves individual participants establishing their online identities and then finding others with whom to interact. At stage three, participants give information relevant to the course to each other. Up to and including stage three, a form of co-operation occurs, i.e. support for each person’s goals. At stage four, course-related group discussions occur and the interaction becomes more collaborative. The communication depends on the establishment of common understandings. At stage five, participants look for more benefits from the system to help them achieve personal goals, explore how to integrate networked learning into other forms of learning and reflect on the learning processes.

Each stage requires participants to master certain technical skills (shown in the bottom left of each step). Each stage calls for different e-moderating skills (shown on the right top of each step). The "interactivity bar" running along the right of the flight of steps suggests the intensity of interactivity that you can expect between the participants at each stage. At first, at stage one, they interact only with one or two others. After stage two, the numbers of others with whom they interact, and the frequency, gradually increases, although stage five often results in a return to more individual pursuits.

Given appropriate technical support, e-moderation and a purpose for taking part in networked learning, nearly all participants will progress through these stages of use in networked learning. There will however be very different responses to how much time they need at each stage before progressing. The model applies to all networked learning software but if experienced participants are introduced to new- to-them networked learning software, they will tend to linger for a while at stages one or two, but then move on quite rapidly up the steps again.

The chief benefit of using the model to design a course with networked learning is that you know how participants are likely to exploit the system at each stage and you can avoid common pitfalls. The results should be higher participation rates and increased student satisfaction. E-moderators who understand the model and apply it should enjoy networked learning and find that their work runs smoothly. This seems to be the experience of OUBS e-moderators, if I am to judge by the feedback from them. But let me go into more detail about the stages of the model. If suitable technical and e-moderating help is given to participants at each stage of the model, they are more likely to move up through the stages, to arrive comfortably and happily at stages three-five. These stages are the ones that are more productive and constructive for learning and teaching purposes

For e-moderators and students alike, being able to gain access quickly and easily to the networked learning system is one key issue at stage one. The other is being motivated to spend time and effort.

The participant needs information and technical support to get online, and strong motivation and encouragement to put in the necessary time and effort. Like learning any new piece of software, mastering the system seems fairly daunting to start with. Many participants need some form of individual technical help at this stage as well as general encouragement. Problems are often specific to a particular configuration of hardware, software and network access or else related to loss of a password. Access to technical support needs to be available, probably through a telephone helpline, particularly when the participant is struggling to get online on his or her own.

Strong motivation is a prime factor at this stage, when participants have to tackle the technical problems. Stage one is when e-moderators can look out for any sign of life online from new students. This is the time to welcome participants and offer them support, by e-mail and/or telephone.

Stage one is over when participants have posted their first messages.

Networked learning offers the ‘affordance’ of online socialising. Affordance means that the technology or enables or creates the opportunity, i.e. it has an inherent social component. However, networked learning will not in itself create the social interaction. Sensitive and appropriate conference design and the e-moderators intervention cause the socialisation to occur. Do not miss this critical stage out- its what continues the motivation and creates the important building bricks of learning in groups.

In stage two, participants get used to being in the new online environment. Many of the benefits of networked learning in education and training flow from building an online community of people who feel they are working together at common tasks. However, such power is not inevitable but depends on the participants’ early experiences with access to the system and integration into the virtual community. Networked learning has the ability to convey feelings and build relationships.

The virtues of a sense of time and place are those of finding ‘roots’ – provided by continuity, connectedness with place and others who share it and our own internalised set of instructions for how to behave, how to make judgements, feeling comfortable and ‘at home in one’s world’ and the reassurance of the familiar. When networked learning fragments and expands this sense of time and place the usual pillars of well being may be less available. There is evidence at stage two that individuals struggle to find their sense of time and place in the online environment. Hence the importance of enabling induction into networked learning to take place with support and in an explicitly targeted way. When opportunities for induction into the online world are taken, participants report benefits to their later online learning.

In my experience, networked learning participants display all these behaviours, needs and feelings, immediately following their gaining access to the system, when they reach stage two. They recognise the need to identify with each other, to develop a sense of direction online and they need some guide to judgement and behaviour. A wide range of responses occurs. Some are initially reluctant to commit themselves fully to public participation in conferencing, and should be encouraged to read and enjoy others’ contributions to the conferences for a short while, before taking the plunge and posting their own messages. This behaviour is sometimes known as ‘lurking’, although the term can cause offence! ‘Browsing’ is perhaps a safer word. Some e-moderators become annoyed with lurkers but it appears to be a natural and normal part of networked learning socialisation and should therefore be encouraged for a while as a first step. When participants feel ‘at home’ with the online culture, and reasonably comfortable with the technology, they move on to contributing. E-moderators really do have to use their skills to ensure that participants develop a sense of community in the medium.

The empathy developed through this stage of online interaction provides an essential prerequisite ingredient for later course and knowledge related discussions. At this stage e-moderators should take the lead in promoting mutual respect between participants, defusing problems and counselling any apparently alienated or offended individuals. They should also try to help those participants with similar interests and needs to find each other.

A key characteristic of networked learning is that the system provides all participants with access to information in the same way. At stage three, they start to appreciate the broad range of information available online. Information exchanges flow very freely since the ‘cost’ of responding to a request for information is quite low. In my experience, participants become excited, even joyful, about the immediate access and fast information exchange. They also show consternation at the volume of information suddenly becoming available. E-moderators can help them all to become independent, confident and enthusiastic about working online at this stage.

Participants develop a variety of strategies to deal with the potential information overload at this stage. Some do not try to read all messages. Some remove themselves from conferences of little or no interest to them, and save or download others. Others try to read everything and spend considerable time happily online, responding where appropriate. Yet others try to read everything but rarely respond. These participants sometimes become irritated and frustrated. They may even disappear offline. E-moderators need to watch out for each of these strategies and offer appropriate support and direction to the participants. Information overload and time management is much less of a problem for those participants who are already well organised, or who rapidly learn to share the workload in teams.

In some training situations, it may be sufficient to develop the e learning to Stage 3. However, for others you may want participants to deploy more complex interactive skills.

At this stage, participants begin to interact with each other in more exposed and participative ways. They formulate and write down their ideas or understanding of a topic. They read such messages from other participants and respond to them frequently and often successfully. As conferences unfold and expand, many (but not all) participants engage in some very active learning, especially through widening their own viewpoints and appreciating differing perspectives.

The issues that can be dealt with best by networked learning participants at this stage are those that have no one right or obvious answers, or ones they need to make sense of, or a series of ideas or challenges. These issues are likely to be the strategic, problem- or practice-based ones.

E-moderators have important roles to play at this stage. The best demonstrate online the highest levels of tutoring skills related to building and sustaining groups. Feenberg (1989) coined the term ‘weaving’ to describe the flow of discussion and how it can be pulled together. Networked learning makes weaving easier to promote even than in face-to-face groups, since everything that has been ‘said’ is available in the conference text. The best e-moderators undertake the ‘weaving’: they pull together the participants’ contributions by, for example, collecting up statements and relating them to concepts and theories from the course. They enable development of ideas through discussion and collaboration. They summarise from time to time, span wide-ranging views and provide new topics when discussions go off track. They stimulate fresh strands of thought, introduce new themes and suggest alternative approaches. In doing all this work, their techniques for sharing good practice and for facilitating the processes become critical.

The locus of power in more formal learning relationships is very much with the tutor, teacher or academic expert. In networked learning at stage four, however, there is much less of a hierarchy. E-moderating is not the same as facilitating a face-to-face group. In stage four, it may be necessary to explain this to the networked learning participants, especially if they expect the e-moderator to provide ‘the answers’. At stage four, we see participants start to become online authors rather than transmitters of information.

At stage five, participants become responsible for their own learning through computer-mediated opportunities and need little support beyond that already available. Rather different skills come into play at this stage. These are those of critical thinking and the ability to challenge the ‘givens’.

At stage five, e-moderators and participants are essentially using a constructivist approach to learning. This personal knowledge includes not only ideas about the topic area under study, but also the teachers’ and participants’ responses to the experiences of teaching and learning themselves. A key principle of constructivism is that the meanings or interpretations that people give to incoming information depend on their previous mental models and maps of the topic area or issue, drawn from experience. Here, in corporate training situations, it is critically important to provide direct links to the work and development situations and provide plenty of opportunity for real world practice of new skills.

When participants are learning through a new medium such as networked learning, their understanding of the processes of using the software and of the experience of learning in new ways is being constructed too. It is therefore common at stage five for participants to reflect on and discuss how they are networking and to evaluate the technology and its impact on their learning processes. These higher level skills require the ability to reflect, articulate and evaluate one’s own thinking. Participants’ thoughts are articulated and put on view through networked learning in a way that is rarely demonstrated through other media.

Honey and Mumford suggest that students use a mixture of active, practical, theoretical and reflective learning . Activists, as they call their first category, tend to learn best when they are dealing with new problems and experiences. These learners need to have a range of different activities to keep them engaged, and the ability to ‘hold the floor’ (or in this context, the conference…) and to be able to ‘bounce ideas’ off of others, all of which networked learning caters for extremely well. Pragmatists, on the other hand, need to be able to see an obvious link between what they are learning and problems or opportunities with which they are engaged in their work. They must become fully engaged in the learning process. They tend to want an immediate opportunity to try out what they have learnt in order to evaluate its practical use and value. In designing networked learning, pragmatists can be catered for through activities. Honey and Mumford’s theorists need sufficient time to explore the links between ideas and situations. As the asynchronous nature of networked learning builds in a time delay and, with structure and encouragement, the exploration can occur. The high level of peer interaction in networked learning should appeal to theorists, although they are likely to be the first to cry ‘it’s all rubbish’ if topics are not dealt with in depth. Good structure and archiving are important, so they can work in appropriate conferences with serious topics. E-moderators should, as always, encourage questioning, probing and exploring.

Honey and Mumford’s reflectors probably benefit most from networked learning opportunities. They engage with the learning task with time to think deeply about the concepts and activities, and to give considered responses that synchronicity and conventional classrooms rarely allow. Activists and pragmatists frequently behave online as if they were extrovert personalities, while the theorists and reflectors have more introverted styles.

Online design of interactive activities (e-tivities) should be planned accordingly. In particular, a clear mixture of engagement in immediately relevant activities, and the opportunity to reflect on online experiences are both important. Activities can either be entirely online, begun face-to-face and extended online, or prepared for online and continued face-to-face. An array of tasks can be provided and groups can be split into smaller learning sets. Such variations are likely to meet a wide variety of learning styles and preferences.

Firstly, understanding the importance of the gradual comfort of learning online will increase participation and completion rates. Secondly, understanding that the design of online activities and interaction is as important as sophisticated, but static, design and delivery of "content". Thirdly, that the role of the e-moderator- the human touch- who is much more than just a facilitator or responder to questions, will make or break the experience for the learners.

Honey, P & Mumford, A (1986) Using Your Learning Styles, Honey, Maidenhead

Preece, J (2000) Online Communities, Designing Usability, Supporting Sociability, Wiley,Chichester

Salmon, G (2000) E-moderating, the key to teaching and learning online, Kogan Page, London