Creating an Online Learning Community

Community building is an essential foundation for successful online learning. It is an opportunity to relay high expectations with with low stakes where students feel comfortable taking risks while exploring learning and reaching their full potential.

What is an online community? Does presentation of material and basic interaction comprise the  foundation of community building? An online community, to me, means much more than that! Individuals can establish presence, mutual trust, camaraderie and create a sense of community via a deliberate process to engage ideas, learn collectively and construct meaning from content, resources and shared experiences. I will share a simple illustration of community dynamics:

Credit: http://collaborated.org.uk/what-does-an-effective-plc-professional-learning-community-look-like/

What is the role of the educator?

The educator acts as a facilitator and establishing presence, particularly early in the course is essential. Thus, an inspirational video with a personal story is an excellent way, in an exclusively on line course, to motivate, inspire, create a sense of community, convey approachability and establish trust as well as educator presence. The facilitator is also to model the expected on line behaviour, provide authentic feedback, use appropriate tools and questioning techniques, increase learner autonomy, provide a social space of interaction and use appropriate prompts to propel students in the direction of deeper learning and conceptual understanding.

What is the role of the learner?

The role of the learner extends beyond that of a passive reader with occasional interaction to that of establishing presence, trust, sharing experiences and diverse resources, meaning construction and collaborative learning. The responses are reasonably prompt and focus on quality rather than quantity. They are specific and clear, indicating why a previous post was “great” and incorporating inquiry-based questions to further the discussion.

Once both facilitators and learners comprehend and full fill their roles, the establishment of the online learning community is well on its way and the learning outcomes will be achieved providing a rich reservoir for online learning for all parties.

Teaching Naked – Creating value

“It is at best a paradox, at worst appalling, that although we say we want to develop critical thinking skills, we structure most of higher education around delivery of content.” (Bowen, 2012, p.20).

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This quote conveys the current challenge in higher education, to align instructional strategies and use of class time with the learning outcome of developing critical thinking skills. This in itself insinuates the discontinuation of traditional behaviouristic teaching methods where the educator is a content expert whose main purpose is to dispense knowledge (Merriam & Bierema, 2014). Although delivery of content has been the prevalent educational mode for decades, one crucial question is: “Are you fully convinced that what is familiar to you is really the better way?” (Bowen, 2012, p.31).

As a result, I am hopeful, that since this “paradox” is recognized, it will be adequately addressed within due time, such that intellectual curiosity, active learning and engagement can be effectively incorporated within Science academia.

Embracing technological advancement and incorporating it outside of the classroom can be a means to revert back to teaching naked, in a face to face, highly engaged medium conducive for problem solving and critical thinking. In order to create value, the institution must demonstrate this type of student engagement, which can be further defined by the double helix model of active learning and motivation (Barkley, 2010). As a result, the classroom needs to focus on relevance, intellectual curiosity development and autonomy in order to increase motivation as well as applications, higher-level cognitive processing, oral and written communication, information literacy, team-work, problem based learning and reflection on the significance of content, in order to increase active learning (Bowen, 2012). Technology has advanced in such a manner that it can revolutionize content delivery, teacher office hours, online motivation, student engagement and discussion and free class time for critical thinking for unprecedented success.