A student's guide to strengthening an online learning community (original) (raw)
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This paper presents the findings of a study exploring the nature of online learning from lecturers' and students' perspectives to identify successful ways to facilitate learning in a New Zealand university. The study is part of a project to understand the pedagogical and implementation issues that promote high quality online teaching-learning. Data was collected through a survey and interview of 37 students attending online classes of 10 lecturers at the School of Education. Building a learning community was key in facilitating online student learning. This has implications for the design and implementation of online courses.
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Online learning has grown exponentially in recent years; however, dropout problem remains challenging for some online programmes. The dropout problem can be attributed to a number of reasons, with a lack of interaction between learners and the instructor constituting one of the main reasons. The lack of interaction also leads to learners' feeling of isolation. Learning communities can provide learners with an environment conducive to increased interactions and alleviate their feeling of isolation. Unfortunately, there are no clear rules that instructors can follow to help learners create learning communities. In this paper, we propose guidelines for online instructors to facilitate the development of learning communities in online courses. We first review the definition of a learning community, importance of a learning community and factors affecting the development of a learning community. Afterwards, based on a review of the existing guidelines and other relevant literature, we propose guidelines for facilitating the development of learning communities in online courses.
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Building relationships and community in online courses can be challenging, particularly if those courses are also limited by tight time constraints. In this brief commentary, I share some of the strategies that helped me to build relationships with students over distance and within a limited timeframe, including organization, communication, and use of social media. I provide examples from my teaching to illuminate the specifics and effectiveness of each strategy.
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In this chapter, the authors will expand upon the definition of learning communities, discussing the ways in which this concept has changed and adapted through the incorporation/infusion of web-based technologies. In addition, strategies on how to create and use online learning communities both with students and for professional practice will be shared.
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Developing online learning communities is a promising pedagogical approach in online learning contexts for adult tertiary learners but this is no easy task. Understanding how learning communities are formed and evaluating their efficacy in supporting learning involves a complex set of issues that have a bearing on the design and facilitation of successful online learning experiences. This paper describes the development of a framework for understanding and developing an online learning community for adult tertiary learners in a New Zealand tertiary institution. In accord with sociocultural views of learning and practices, the framework depicts learning as a mediated, situated, distributed, goal-directed and participatory activity within a socially and culturally determined learning community. Evidence for the value of the framework is grounded in the findings of a case study of a semester long fully online asynchronous graduate course. The framework informs our understanding of appr...
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The purpose of this naturalistic case study was to investigate students’ perceptions of community at a mid-size American college. This study sought to identify the learning environments, interactions, and activities that are most predictive of developing and fostering a sense of community in online courses. Study participants were full-time teachers, librarians, or instructional technology facilitators working in K-12 environments. Qualitative and quantitative data included interviews; online learners’ experience surveys; transcripts of online discussions; recordings of synchronous sessions; and researcher observations. Data analysis was based in Charmaz’s (2006) constructivist approach to grounded theory. Findings revealed that 1) age and experience with online courses did not make a significant difference in perceived sense of online community for these participants; however, gender did; 2) learning environments influenced students’ perception of community; 3) shared experience an...
Building Learning Communities in Cyberspace: Effective strategies for the online classroom
The International Review of Research in Open and Distance Learning, 2002
With advancements in Internet technologies, the methodologies associated with imparting education have changed significantly. The book under review, therefore, addresses issues specific to building effective online electronic learning communities. Organised in two parts, the book's first section examines the concept of learning communities in cyberspace, whereas the second part focuses on concrete aspects of building an electronic learning community.
Building Relationship Through Learning Communities and Participation in Online Learning Environments
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With the increase demand for distance education, institutions of higher education are actively exploring opportunities to weave self, subject and students for web based distance education. The pedagogical skills necessary to create effective active learning opportunities are explored throughout this chapter as well as lessons learned from research. The authors used vignettes to position effective course design and implementation aligned with both Bloom's Taxonomy and the SAMR (Substitution, Augmentation, Modification, Redefinition) model to enhance online learning environments. Learning objectives and course goals provided direction for developing task for social presence, cognitive presence and a collaborative stance in authentic online learning.