To Mediate Or Not To Mediate - The Role Of The Mediator In The Online Classroom

Networked computer media have brought significant changes to pedagogical paradigms. Educational environments, such as WebCT, provide a seamless interface for organising online learning and teaching activities, and virtual spaces for computer-mediated communication and collaboration during the learning process. The rate of diffusion of these new technologyenabled environments in education is so rapid that, quite often, tried-andtested face-to-face pedagogical paradigms are being thrown out without sufficient and considered evaluation of the novel environments. In this paper, a framework for the analysis and evaluation of online seminars is proposed. The proposed framework is based on a quantitative analysis of participation and a qualitative content analysis.