Distance Education in Transition - Master of Distance Education ...

8 Moderating a Virtual Seminar –
Reflections on First Practical Experiences
The virtual seminar has become the main format of higher education in many online
graduate and postgraduate courses. This chapter addresses the problem of how the
new virtual learning space can be used to develop adequate learning behaviours. The
experiences acquired in ten virtual master courses show that learning in virtual
seminars differs markedly from traditional expository teaching and reception learning
as it opens up new possibilities for the development of autonomous, self-regulated
learning. Some methods are dealt with which help to facilitate this change to
pedagogical paradigms.
A Pedagogical Approach
When teachers at colleges and universities decide to engage themselves in conducting
virtual seminars they get into difficulties. All of them were educated and socialized at
traditional schools and at campus universities. And all of them have acquired and
internalized the conventional strategies and skills of face-to-face teaching, namely
expository teaching and receptive learning. They believe that these strategies and
skills are the most natural thing in the world. The great leap from real learning spaces
to virtual learning spaces, however, teaches them otherwise. They find themselves in
an entirely new pedagogical situation. Those lacking pedagogical sensitiveness might
not become aware of the new prerequisites and conditions of learning in virtual
seminars and try to continue in the traditional way. Others might try to adapt
conventional ways of teaching to the new situation by replicating them. However, a
growing number of teachers have come to the realization that virtual learning spaces
require new approaches. At present they are in the process of exploring them. They see
and understand that following well-trodden paths will never solve the educational
problems ahead of us and that new pedagogical ground must be broken. They are starting
to define or redefine learning and teaching methods as well as learning and teaching
behaviours anew.
One of the dramatic discoveries is that virtual learning spaces lend themselves much
more to autonomous and self-regulated learning than teaching in real conventional
college classrooms. This means that the education of self-reliant students who learn
independently from the teacher – which, by the way, is an old, but so far too often
ignored educational goal – now has a real chance to become realized. Hence it would be
wrong to plan and design learning in a virtual seminar without at least trying to reach
this goal.
During the last five years I have moderated ten virtual seminars of four weeks each as
a visiting expert. They are part of the Foundations of Distance Education course in
the Master of Distance Education (MDE) program which is offered exclusively online
by the University of Maryland University College and the Carl von Ossietzky
University of Oldenburg. The content of the seminar I am involved in is on "Pedagogy of
Distance Education and Theoretical Approaches to Distance Education". When
developing a pedagogical model for this virtual seminar I decided from the beginning to
make sure that many elements of independent learning were included, not only for
reflecting on them but also for practicing them. I tried to convince the students that a
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