Building Online Community

Community Community online and offline…online and offline…

unity

Community

Number 1 complaint of online students: not enough peer interaction…Distance Education at One Alaskan University: A Case Study (Schrum, Ohler, 2003)

Community, where we:

•work

• live

• learn

• play

• tell stories

Community, where we feel:

•safe

•connected

•integrated

•normed

•synergized

Community theory:

•solidary

•neighborhoods

•personal networks

•embedded, expanded

Welcome to Cyburbia-

- home of the online experience -

Seeing technology...

We use the new to do

the work of the old…

before new art &

communi-cation forms

emerge…McLuhan

New media:

•Expands limits what we can do, be

•Regains what is lost, expands what is gained

New media:

•redefines taboo, tradition

•interlational communication

•from hierarchy to adhocracy

New media:

•lack of meta-info

•20 ways to say coffee

•when we read online text we read ourselves

New media:

•community is both product and process

•stories hold communities together

Tips for creating online

learning communitiesAnd teaching

effectively online…

• conference metaphors

• Hall’s 4 social spaces:

1 - Teach unfamiliar in terms of familiar…

Public Social Private Intimate

• capture formal AND informal

• seminar AND hallway

• office hours?

• small groups, 1-to-1 (email)

2 - Use many social setting metaphors…

• clear expectations, checkins

• synchronous? self-paced? scheduled?

• min/max online involvement?

• authentication?

3 - Clarify structure, expectations…

- assign roles: (note taker, discussion coordinator, researcher, etc.)

- use peer review, jigsawing, methods

of interdependence

4 - Delegate roles & responsibility

- reflection on content, process

- journaling, blogging

- proof of content “mastery”

- use “copy&paste proof” assignments

5 - Require reflection, evidence of learning…

- coach, cheerleader, referee

- attendence taker, task master

- (participant) observer

- guide on side

- tech help

- quality controller

6 - Teacher assumes many roles…

- use meta-references (news, websites)

- extend campus electronically

- mailed DVDs

- meet once?

- students post pics, movies, stories

7 - Blend media, personalize space

- we forget lectures, remember stories

- stories in content context

- students as learning heroes

- transformation = learning

8 - Practice storytelling