The Internet is transforming the educational landscape. Substantial skills are required to foster effective dialogues in any setting. The demands on the instructor are even greater when learners are at distant sites. Facilitating Online Learning distills the experience of a team at The Concord Consortium.

Members of this group have extensive experience with learning networks, dating to projects such as the landmark National Geographic Kids Network. They have continued to extend this expertise in current projects such as the International Netcourse Teacher Enhancement Coalition (INTEC), developed to support a network of teachers exploring inquiry-based science and mathematics teaching.

Facilitating Online Learning provides practical advice on ways in which netcourse instructors can move out of the middle and facilitate collaborative dialogs among online learners. It is a classic guide that should be on the bookshelf of anyone who is moderating an online course.

Glen L. Bull
Curry School of Education
University of Virginia

Facilitating Online Learning: Effective Strategies for Moderators is a readable and valuable contribution to the relatively new but tremendously hot area of netcourses and e-learning, providing welcome explanations, strategies, and real examples of moderating that can meet the needs of classroom teachers, university faculty, and professional development staff.

Experienced and novice online educators, looking either for new techniques to add to their inventory or for strategies to improve their overall teaching in online mode will find this book informative and useful.

Linda Harasim
Simon Fraser University
at Harbour Centre

Facilitating Online Learning is a successful example of removing the distance from "distance learning." An effective moderator of online courses must have a repertoire of disciplined strategies for interaction with students. This book is a roadmap for traveling from "wallowing in the shallows" to "reasoned discourse" with copious examples that assist. It is not a philosophical examination of strategies but a real "how to" in an area sorely lacking any guidelines.

Many years ago I "taught" an online course to thirty students across the country. I learned how deeply personal people are when they speak with their fingers rather than their voices. How I could have used the advice contained in this volume. I certainly will distribute it to those who are designing courses as well as those moderators with whom I am working.

So much of online learning is scanning of text or streaming of lectures with didactic instruction from the moderator. Facilitating Online Learning is a fresh breeze in a stale and humid environment. Bravo and thanks!

Inabeth Miller
Jason Foundation for Education

The inquiry-based approach of teaching and learning has been highly praised in the business and industries training, in teachers' education, and last but not least, in school science, mathematics and technology teaching. This book describes the new profile of successful facilitators leading virtual learning communities into guided inquiry.

The Concord Consortium staff--the authors of the book--have had a practical and very successful experience in revolutionizing the classical teaching approaches through the use of information technologies in all these domains.

By reading Facilitating Online Learning, you are invited to share their exciting stories and their important practical conclusions.

Goery Delacote
Exploratorium Museum

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