Online or e-moderation is at the heart of practically all eLearning activities, unless the course has been deliberately designed to be what is sometimes called a ‘standalone’ or ‘self-paced’ learning experience. In general it means the practice of managing the online communications that can, and definitely should, be taking place amongst the teacher, students and any other individuals involved.

This communication can be uni- or bi-directional, can be one-to-one in the sense of being between individual students or the teacher and an individual student or among all students taking the course or sub-groups organised in either a formal or informal way. This communication can be at a very basic level in that it can relate to the most administrative of tasks or activities (start and end times of assignments for example) or it can support simple clarification of issues and questions that arise. Such communications can also form part of the formal course activity such as with online role plays or may be part of the assessment procedures for the course in that students can be assessed on the quality and depth of their contributions to online discussions. So all in all, getting e-moderation right for the course leader is vitally important and many people argue that effective e-moderation is absolutely crucial to the success of any eLearning endeavour.

Aspects that teachers need to consider when taking on the role of e-moderator for the first time include Netiquette which is the term that generally describes the set of rules for acceptable online behaviour. Whether you use an existing set of such rules, perhaps your university already has such rules, or you set them up at the beginning of your course, it is useful to agree what is and what is not acceptable in terms of online communications during your course. Here, for example, is the netiquette of Helsinki University.