E-moderating practices of ESL teachers in an online forum

As teachers of English in Malaysia are increasingly warming up to the use of ICT applications such as the online discussion board or forum in their teaching, the importance of studying what they do when implementing ICT-enhanced teaching has become apparent. The use of the online forum in teaching involves a change in the role of the teacher from instructor to moderator. While much research has been carried out to describe the benefits of using the online forum in enhancing English language teaching, there is a serious lack of research on the role played by the teacher in such a forum. There is a need to examine what teachers actually do on the ground, that is, how they carry out their role as moderators to facilitate student discussion in an English language learning forum. This study was based on a university-wide online forum project carried out at Universiti Putra Malaysia, involving 30 teachers and 1400 students in one semester and 1700 students in the following semester. Teachers of English who taught a university writing course moderated the forum discussion by students in their respective classes. At the end of the second semester, two types of data were collected and analysed. First, data from a questionnaire answered by the teachers were analysed to obtain information on their background and their general perception about their role as e-moderators in the forum. Second, the archived messages posted by the teachers in the forum were extracted from the online platform and categorised according to their functions to obtain a picture of the overall pattern of the teachers’ e-moderating practices. The analysis identified 16 types of messages posted by the teachers and revealed varied perceptions of the e-moderator role among the teachers. The findings of this study contribute to a better understanding of how teachers of English in Malaysia and possibly Asia who are fairly new to this form of interaction as a tool for teaching practice their e-moderating role in the online forum environment.

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