Jingfang SatowApril 14-16, 20112011NCLC

COLLABORATIVE LEARNING IN AN ONLINE CHINESE-LEARNING COMMUNITY

WelcomeGood instructor-learner interaction begins in the all-important first week. This is the instructor’s opportunity to develop a relationship with your students and begin building a warm and welcoming learning community with students. A welcome letter/announcement serves the purpose of:•Encouraging students that ‘we are

all in this together’ can make

students feel connected and willing

to interact.•Informing students how to start

the course.•Briefly introducing what the

course is about.

Introduction Another

way to begin building community between instructor and learners and among learners.

•About me:

Try to personalize it and draw the

distance of students and instructor

closer. •I

ntroduction Prompt (Ice-breaker) Be

related to everyone.

How to Create Prompts

• Asking open-ended questions

•Use extender

to use extended questions to inspire students with critical

thinking.

•Redirect the discussion

to deepen their response by asking questions which involve

critical thinking.

Promoting Substantive, Constructive Feedback

•Through online learning and teaching, one of the effective ways to promote substantive and constructive feedback is to provide students with very clear rubrics and guidelines to the responses or feedbacks. 

•If the instructor has observed that the student have slipped into the habit of only answering with ‘I agree’ and ‘me, too’, he/she can communicate with the students privately through email or grade comments what the students is expected in the response. Hopefully, the student will be alert in his next feedback to the post. 

 

Group WorkEstablish teams or buddies in online teaching can encourage students to keep in touch with others and maintaining their connection with the whole class. •Goals of small group activities•what size of the group or teams•How the group will be formed•how will individual and group performances be evaluated•Team members evaluate each other in terms of participation, and contribution to the collaborative product.

Assessment tool-Skype•A

nalysisSkype is a

synchronous communication tool used for communication over internet by using text, audio and video. Skype encourages the speaking and listening skills development in the online learning environment.

•Benefits

1.The basic Communication by using Skype is free.

2.Communication can be made by using text, audio and video.

3.Skype has the application sharing and document collaboration feature.

4.Audio and video quality through Skype is excellent especially for international communications.

•Challenges

1.The video conference is limited between two people.

2.The cost of webcam and microphone

•Application

Assessment Tool - Survey Monkey•A

nalysis

SurveyMonkey is an online survey editor which uses the web browser to create the survey. This survey tool enables users of all experience levels to create their own surveys

•Benefits

1.Over a dozen of types of questions can be formatted into one survey including multiple choices, rating scales, drop-down menus, short answers.

2.There are no advertisements, so your surveys will always have a clean and professional appearance.

3.It’s free of charge for the basic use.

4.Survey results can be collected and viewed by using graphs and charts. The survey results can be saved as .PDF file and exported or printed out.

•Challenges

1.For the free of charge version, 10 questions and 100 responses per survey is limited.

•Application

Positive Reinforcement

•Encouraging students that ‘we are all in this together’ can make students feel connected and willing to interact.

•Be able to closely monitoring the discussion.

•Response to students’ questions promptly.

•Giving positive feedbacks to encourage

academic excellence.

Discussion•T

hink about a prompt you will post on the discussion board for your course or your future course. Please use prompt, extender, redirect techniques and then share with someone who sits next to you.