A Practice for Building Online Learning Communities

In the following, I discuss the processes I use in one of my online course (EDUC 518) in order to build online learning communities. EDUC 518, Technology and Pedagogy, is a fully online course in an Educational Learning Technologies’ master’s program at a medium-sized university in the U.S. Southwest.

Building Community From the First Day of the Class

           

            In my online course, I provide activities that assist students to connect with peers and to build relationships from the beginning of the course. The first assignment asks students to introduce themselves to their classmates with the purpose of helping students find others with whom they can build a collaborative relationship.  I find that the introductory activity is quite successful in assisting students to develop collegial relationships and to help them to get to know each other early on in the course. The introductory activity effectively enables students to locate compatible colleagues with similar interests to support further collaborative work on assignments and projects. In my online courses, the introductory activity does not require anything more than the ability to express knowledge of self. In the introductory activity, I ask students to provide information about 1) something personal (married, kids, hometown, hobbies, etc.), 2) something about their professional and educational background, and 3) favorite video, favorite song, favorite spoken piece, favorite website, and/or favorite photo/image; thus expanding the range of personal information to be shared with the class. Students are also required to respond to each other.

Using Web 2.0 Technologies

I extensively use Web 2.0 tools in my online course to foster students’ sense of community. In the first unit, I ask students to create a Skype account, a Gmail account, and a Twitter account and send me a message using these tools. The purpose is to help students be familiar with these tools before they actually use them during the semester. In the next unit, I use Twitter to facilitate class discussion. I ask students to read about the week’s topic, and then tweet about what they learned from that week’s reading assignment using the course hashtag #EDUC518. Students are also required to reply to at least two other students’ tweets.

            Additionally, students are required to create blogs through Blogger and engage in conversations through these blogs. The students are to blog in reaction to a prompt. Then they are required to read and comment on each other’s blogs. The course assigns five blogs. Rubrics are used to grade students’ blogs and grade their feedback to each other. In another unit, students are asked to collaborate using Skype and Google Doc to create a lesson plan. Besides, at the beginning of each unit, I use Screencast-o-matic to give students an overview of the unit and to increase students’ sense of belonging in the course. I find that using Web 2.0 technologies help connect students  through these various forms of communication. Particularly, the use of blogs and Twitter helped to build a learning community through dialogue and conversation among students.

Using Threaded Discussions

           

            Threaded discussions are used to encourage students’ sense of community. The course uses Canvas’s threaded discussion feature to conduct asynchronous discussions. There are three discussion forums in the course. In each discussion forum, I post three questions, each as a separate thread. Students are expected to respond to each of the three threads and then react to the responses of a minimum of two peers. By replying to each other’s posts, students have the opportunity to work collaboratively with each other to expand and deepen their learning experience, test out new ideas by sharing them with their classmates, and receive critical and constructive feedback. Students are also required to include references and citations to relevant articles that support their argument. The discussion activities have clear instructions about how much time is involved in participation in the discussion. The discussions are graded using a rubric that assigns points according to the level of engagement. 

            Additionally, there is an ungraded discussion, titled “Get or Give Help Here”, where students are encouraged to post any questions they may have and to help each other. This discussion area became a gathering place where students could engage with each other outside of the regular or required discussion assignments. The focus here is to provide a safe place for students to connect without having to feel like they are being evaluated.

Pairing Students in Activities

           

            Once students have gotten to know one another on a social level through the introductory activity, Canvas’s threaded discussions, and blog discussions, peer partnership activities are utilized. The purpose of pairing learners for an activity is to help them to develop a sense of community and to prepare them for team activities. Around the midterm, I design a Dyad activity in which students are asked to find a partner to work together. In the Dyad activity, students are asked to work with a partner of their choice to investigate a specific topic and use the results of their interaction to prepare a joint posting to the discussion board. Two weeks before the Dyad activity starts, students are asked to select their partners in order to give them enough time so that the selection process can occur. Student evaluation in the Dyad activity is based on: 1) the quality of the discussion which is assessed using a discussion rubric, 2) peer evaluation using a rubric, and 3) reply to at least 2 other students' posts.

Encouraging Collaborative Activities

            After a peer partnership activity has been completed, students are asked to create their own collaborative groups. The students who worked on the Dyad activity have the freedom to combine their small groups into larger teams for collaborative activities or to create new groups. Students are asked to create their groups two weeks before the collaborative activity will start in order to give students enough time so that the selection process can occur. Additionally, before working in the collaborative activity, students are provided with a written explanation of the importance of the collaborative work as well as instructions for completing it. Students are also given guidance to establish group polices and procedures and suggestions of collaborative technology tools that can be used (See Figure 4). Before working in the group activity, the students are asked to use a group contact template suggested by Conrad and Donaldson (2004). This document suggests that the group members specify the primary method of and frequency of communication, make contingency plans for emergencies, and decide whether or not to select a group leader. The contract allows group members to create a group management plan for the semester’s activities. Additionally, before working in the collaborative activity, students are asked to participate in a practice exercise for group development. With this class, a graded activity, titled The Critical Insight Activity, is used. The purpose is to help students to practice their group polices and procedures and to practice collaborative technology tools. Student grading in the collaborative activity is based on: 1) the quality of the content that is graded using a rubric and 2) peer evaluation in which students are asked to assess each other’s performance on the team using a rubric.           

            During the group work, I offer suggestions throughout the creation process, act as a mediator when needed in various groups throughout the semester, and have the final word when problems arose. The contracts were effective in that all groups completed a product or project according to the specifications given in the syllabus. Groups typically handled their problems according to their contracts before asking me for help in this area. Most groups followed the contracts they created without difficulty, but when difficulties arose that the group could not handle, the members sought help from me. The group contracts helped to build a subset of the community (small groups) within the larger community (the class). In addition, the contracts helped to facilitate group interaction and cohesion by subtly forcing group members to look at the various personalities, skills, and workloads involved in their group.

  

Conclusion

            The literature provides evidence that students’ sense of community is critical to student success in online environments. Thus, building and sustaining strong learning communities should be an essential dynamic in virtual classrooms. We educators should intentionally work to build and foster learning communities among students in online courses. A review of the literature suggests that instructors teaching at a distance may promote sense of community by 1) building a learning community from the first day of the class, 2) using Web 2.0 technologies 3) using threaded discussions, 4) pairing students in activities before collaborative work, and 5) encouraging collaborative activities. In my online course, I intentionally draw on these processes in order to build learning communities among my students. I need to continue to evaluate and revise these processes in order to effectively build and sustain learning communities in my online courses. Yet, building online learning communities is a difficult task. However, doing so is an integral step for improving learning and teaching in online environments, and thus work in this area should continue.