Gilly Salmon’s e-Moderating is a classic must-read for anyone who is involved with facilitated distance learning. It’s also of value to anyone interested in how pedagogy is a KM skill, as I discuss in some detail in my dual review in eLearn of this book and Cohen and Prusak’s In Good Company.
To begin with, Salmon’s core (empirically substantiated) 5-step model of the evolution of group dynamics in an online class is brilliant. Both descriptive (as in, this happens naturally) and prescriptive (as in, here’s what you can do to facilitate this natural and healthy evolution), the theory should be etched into the brain of every online facilitator of any online knowledge-sharing group. Beyond that, the book is chock full of practical tips and tricks for the practitioner.
Apparently, Salmon has a new, updated edition. I have the old one, which seems to hold up to the test of time pretty well (with the minor exception of a few passages about technology), so I suspect that the new edition will be even better.
This is definitely one you want to have in your personal collection.
Michael Feldstein is the founder of e-Literate who currently works as the Senior Program Manager for MindTap at Cengage Learning. For more information, see his profile page.
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