Who coined the term online facilitation?
I'm writing up a small piece on the history of online facilitation and I'm trying to pin down who started using the term. I fell into this field and was using the term in 1997 - as an effort to look beyond the more traditional online community term of "hosting."
Does anyone have any sources/pointers to earlier uses? I'm SURE they are out there, but I have not had much luck in my Sunday morning searching.
Also, if you have any other interesting pointers to the history of online facilitation, I'd love to know about them. You will see down in the lower right hand side of my blog that my FURL additions this morning are all in this area. The RSS feed for my FURLs are also there if you are interested.
posted by Nancy White at 9:08 AM
5 Comments:
Not the origin, by any means, but evidence the term was in use in 1993.
"Volunteers are needed, especially teachers experienced in online facilitation. "
from Google Groups search, keyword "online facilitation" sorted by date.
Newsgroups: misc.activism.progressive
Date: 1993-04-02 14:52:39 PST
Brilliant, Andy. Of course - usenet!
It is interesting as I'm reading through the literature how so much of the early stuff that is, in essense, about facilitation, comes under the rubric of moderation. And the types of things moderators were doing in the early years of the web have some similarities and some differences to the more complex range of online group facilitation we see today. It is a fun history to try and trace.
Thanks again.
Hi Nancy,
When I did my master (late 1980s), I was looking at BBS and it seemed to me that moderator and facilitator were used interchangeable in some circles. I did not pick up the significance of the difference between them until recently.
When I did "The Zen Of Being An Effective 'Mod' In Online Role-Play Simulations" (see http://ausweb.scu.edu.au/aw02/papers/refereed/ip/paper.html) I have looked at some works dated back to 1980s, e.g. Hiltz. I think she has great interest in "moderating" online communications in teaching and learning. (Hiltz, S. R. (1984). Online Community. New Jersey: Ablex Publishing Corporation.)
Nancy -
I'd pin blame or credit on the first person in this role as Einar Stefferud, or Stef as everyone calls him, who moderated the Arpanet mailing list MSGGROUP starting in 1975. From Katie Hafner's "Where Wizards Stay up Late":
"Before long, the bulk of the daily housekeeping chores fell to Stefferud, who began in the job by keeping the lsit of MsgGroup participants, signing up newcomers, cajoling them into posting introductory biographies of themselves, and sorting out bounced mail."
There are several other long running Arpanet mailing lists that have this "moderator" role - the RISKS Digest moderated by Peter G. Neumann is one example.
In the Picospan community on the Well, this is the "fairwitness"; the similar role on Confer II at Michigan was the "organizer". All equivalent names for the same role, plus or minus a few niceties of organizer/moderator/fairwitness/facilitator power (can they get rid of people? can they get rid of postings? do they have special rights to author postings?)
Folks, this is really fantastic. I'll share a draft of the article when I'm done. As I research this I'm finding some cool stories -- worth more research and writing.
What it is leading me to think about is the next evolution of the practice.
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