Moderator's Guide

Before you start...

Overview
Moderator's Roles
Life Cycle of Role-Playing
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Before you start...

Teachers thinking about designing a role-play should refer first to the document Designer's Guide whereas this checklist assists teachers in moderating an online role-play once it has been designed. It is particularly helpful for moderators who are not the original designer of the role-play. As designing a role-play is quite an involved activity, it is likely that a teacher may take over an existing ready-made role-play and be the moderator of the activity rather than the designer/moderator. A handy reference for moderators is our Moderator's Checklist (PDF).

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Overview

  : Try it as a learner!

Experience as many role-plays as you can as a learner – it really sensitizes you to what goes on from that perspective. Participation helps to hone both your design and moderation skills.
Marie Jasinski, DMIT

The moderator’s function is the main key to success. Mason (1991) identifies three role functions that online discussion moderators must provide:

• Social role: create a friendly, social environment for learning, especially encourage participation using a friendly, personal tone
• Teaching role: facilitate learning by focusing discussions on crucial points, asking questions and probing responses to encourage students to expand and build on comments.
• Organizational role: set the agenda and objectives of the discussion, the timetable, procedural rules and decision-making norms.

Since online role-play goes much further than online discussion, the role of the moderator in an online role-play will be more complex and varied. In the table below we have mapped five moderator roles:

• Administrator
• Guardian angel
• Teaching/learning resource
• Manipulative devil
• Improvising storyteller

against the life cycle of the online role-play.

The remainder of this document covers in detail firstly the five roles and secondly the life cycle.

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Moderator's Roles

For the moderator of online discussion there are many things that can go wrong:

• lack of participation
• lack of focus
• monopolisation of topic
• surface discourse
• deferring to others
• personal verbal attack
• inappropriate language & behaviour
• arguments
• fizzle out.

However for the moderator of online role-play the fact that participants start out with a ‘persona’ that already has particular goals, should ensure that each participant has focus and that no participant monopolises topics. The dynamic and reflexive nature of the exercise helps ensure that communication does not fizzle out early. Personal attacks and arguments between participants, or inappropriate language can occur, but in general, because participants using a ‘persona’ have their personal identity protected, they are less likely to feel personally threatened.

Ip, (2002) has identified the following five roles for the moderators of online role-play. Each role is explored in greater depth behind its link:

• [Guardian Angel]
• [Manipulative Devil]
• [Resident Teaching/Learning Resource]
• [Improvising Story Teller]
• [Administrator]

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Life Cycle of Role-Playing

Like any work group, learners in online role-play need to rapidly establish a work pattern in order to engage with the scenario and the experience building exercise. Understanding the life cycle of online role-play can help the online role-play moderator to operate more effectively.

Examine the stages of a typical role-play from the Moderator's point of view by looking behind each of the following links:

• [Pre-play]
• [Early Stage]
• [Development]
• [Debriefing, Assessment & Evaluation]

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References

Ip, A. (2002). The zen of being an effective mod. In S. Rodrigues (Ed.), OPPORTUNISTIC CHALLENGES: TEACHING AND LEARNING WITH ICT . New York: Nova Science Publishers, Inc.

Mason, R. (1991). Moderating educational computer conferencing. DEOSNEWS, 1(19)

Acknowledgements

This document benefited greatly from review by Shirley Agostinho, Jim Meek and Maureen Bell of UoW and benefited in general from the numerous comments and examples provided by the members of our Online Role-Play Expert Reference Group:

John Shepherd (UNSW); Andrew Vincent (Mq); Raphael Veit (Mq); Gary Brierley (Mq); Mike Hillman (Mq); Roni Linser (UMelb); Manjula Waniganayake (UMelb); Mark Freeman (UTS); Michael Adams (UTS); Tanja Golja (UTS); Robert McLaughlan (UTS); Denise Kirkpatrick (UNE); Mike Fardon (UWA); Liz Devonshire (USyd); Simon O’Mallon (DMIT); Marie Jasinski (DMIT); Maureen Bell (UoW); Rohan Miller (UoW).