In moderating, the term weaving refers to the practice of tying together different contributions from different people. You take ideas made by one student and connect them to ideas made by other students. This helps students see how their ideas fit into the broader picture of the whole class and makes their individual contributions less alone.

As Anita Monty wrote,

What you do in traditional teaching [is] to weave the content of the course and course materials and to make it into spoken explanations to the students. These perspectives from you give the students a possibility to make sense of the content.

In e-learning you can do the same. You can weave the content of the messages in discussions together in responses from you.

So this is just another form of what is done in classrooms. In classrooms we try to connect various ideas from the content (e.g., a point of grammar) and different things that students say/do. When students can see these connections between various ideas, they can remember the material much better.

Weaving takes place after some students have posted messages and involves the moderator posting their own messages including the ideas form the students. We can see this is an example taken from the All Things in Moderation website. Here JS is the moderator and includes his own comments in italics, while mentioning the students by initials (D, A, etc.).

D said “we need to be in the conference regularly as a lot of damage can be done if you weren’t there at the ‘bud-nipping’ stage”

I’d go along with that one but bearing in mind A’s point that

“There do have to be parameters otherwise those who can only spend minimum time feel disadvantaged by others who become addicts!”

and a moderator should not need to become an addict to do the job well.

“So, I think I'll be more assertive this time round” (A’s message)

Yes, be assertive (when appropriate !) even if?

“the flaming has broken out, not between the combatants, but against the poor old e-moderator when he or she has intervened to break it up!” (H’s message)

not looking forward to that one coming my way. Hopefully, however, we will generally be in a position to?

“let students get on with discussions if these seem productive” (P’s message)

and as C says:

“it actually sounds fun”

JS

In this example, we can see that the moderator connects ideas from different places and uses the names of the students to make it clear where the ideas are coming from. This helps to draw people in to the discussion and continue it in a productive way.

So, for this week you should try to weave in a topic about which people can express opinions. You should post it early in the week and then make sure to follow the discussion that comes and insert your own weaving comments that connect ideas from different people. This is worth 2 points.

You should also continue to evaluate posts, marking at least 35 posts this week with feedback where appropriate. This is worth 2 points.

There is also the forum for reflections. (You can gain 2 points for an initial post and further two possible points for responses to others).