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Online Learning: The role of community building in the online classroom. 

12/19/2014

3 Comments

 
Over the course of the last six months I have been examining the history and practices of online education. Were I not an online teacher nor in a master's program, I highly doubt I would have ventured down this research path. But since I have found myself on a journey that requires me to both teach and learn online, the topic could be not be more pertinent than now. 

What I have taken away from all the research and my personal experiences is that online instruction is much more time consuming than most people would imagine and that there is a greater need to for relationships to be built in online classrooms than most people would expect. In addition, I have learned that Spiderman's famous quote, "with great power comes great responsibility" can take on a new meaning when one considers the "power" the tools of technology and training in best practices of learning and instruction. I feel I have been put in a place of great responsibility because I have the "power" of knowledge and the tools of technology, but just as Spiderman faced opposition, I too face a lot of obstacles in utilizing this power and channeling it  into creating the best possible virtual learning environment. But when I face opposition that questions some of my practices I keep in mind some of the articles I have read during my review of literature reading and writing process. 

One such article was, "Empowering knowledge-building pedagogy in online environments: Creating digital moments to transform practice (Barber, Taylor & Buchanan 2014)--see file below. The following quote sums up the heart of the author and the goal of implement “Digital Moments” in an online learning community: “Working and living in the digital landscape requires that we do more than just build knowledge that is measured, assessed and framed by what we currently know. It requires us to step into worlds as yet unknown; to create new knowledge, and to use that knowledge to begin to address some of the complex social problems that exist” (p. 136). Barber, Taylor and Buchanan’s philosophy on the important aspect of online pedagogy align with the views I have, in that they put a very high emphasis on the creating of safety, trust and positive emotional connections among students and between students and the instructor. They point out the importance of narratives, and know one another’s narrative: it creates bonds and allows students to be more engaged and invested in the classroom. The emphasis of this article is on “Digital Moments” (which were never clearly defined in the article) that I gathered to be activities and assignments that draw students in to the lesson by including them in an activity each week that allows them to share something about themselves: ice breakers and community building activities. They argue that without these activities as foundations to the class the content may not be absorbed and students may likely lose interest more quickly. These activities get the students onboard and involved from the start, and then keep them involved because of the connections they make with one another.


Another resource that empowered me to seek after creating a healthy online learning environment was  
Hockly and Clandfield"s book, Teaching online: Tools and techniques, options and opportunities (2010). This book of just over one-hundred pages is chalked full of ideas, resources and explanations of how to effectively implement both into an online or blended course. The authors, Hockly and Clandfield (2010), walk the reader through the process of how to set up an online course. They heavily emphasize the creating of an online learning community with a positive dynamic. Thus, many of the activities and resources offered adhere to these two aims. Much of the focus is on language learning but the activities easily lend themselves to modification. Regardless of the topic at hand, most of the activities can be used as warm-up activities that draw the learners together as a community. Most often the activities have a dual purpose: to practice a skill or learn about an online tool, plus, encouraging interaction among members of the class.

This book remained on my desk throughout the semester. I was able to read through all of the activities and label the week I plan to use them in my research writing class. I made a plan of when to use each activity on a document to be able to easily keep on track with my plan for usage, as well as for posting to my VLE (virtual learning environment). I was very excited to start  the year with at least one, if not two, learning activities ready for each week of the course. This source is well worth the paper back purchase. 

From these sources, and others, I determined to research if the inclusion of community building activities in my online classroom would build relationships among students. I was also looking to determine if students making connections with one another would aid in them completing work throughout the course. 

Now that the semester has come to a close I am ready to go back through my surveys, the students' grades and the tracking of student participation to determine if the efforts I put forth in community building had a positive effect on the students' experiences and learning. We'll see what the data says...


ejel-volume12-issue2-article291.pdf
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3 Comments
Lindsey
12/21/2014 11:32:42 am

You are very thorough about your experiences and research thus far. Have you enjoyed trying out your action research project? I am interested to see what your conclusions are about your data.

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Grant
1/7/2015 03:48:07 am

I find this an interesting topic as many students who have a difficult time in regular classroom settings are seeking their education online. I am wondering the effectiveness as well as what type of data did you collect to explore this topic?
Our Master's program does a monthly talk in which we get to know each other and it is one of my favorite threads to read every single month. Community and relationship building is difficult while teaching online, but just as important as in a regular classroom.

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Jaci
1/9/2015 01:26:30 pm

Grant -- my data is all collected but not organized(or coded). My goal is to look through each student's participation in the community building actives(which were not graded, not even for completion) and see if there are correlations between those students who participated more often in community building assignments and their participation in content related assignments (which would also show a higher grade for the students who participated the content-based assignments). This process will require some looking back and tallying on my part, which is why I haven't gotten my data all set to go yet.
I also took surveys at mid-semester and end of semester to monitor students opinions on both content assignments and community building assignments. As with most surveys, the results were pretty mixed as to whether the students "enjoyed" doing them or not. I did notice at mid-semester nearly everyone's responses were favorable to the community building activities but by the end of the semester the positive opinions were not as strong. I am not sure if that was related to final tests and papers being due at the time or if students really did feel like they didn't care about getting to know more about one another with only a couple weeks left of the course.
The last component of my data is my own reflections (field notes). I haven't even begun to wade into those but I am hoping I will find some nuggets worth sharing when I do.
Thanks for asking these questions. It really got me thinking and has propelled my thinking forward. I now feel somewhat ready to tack the data and begin the last step of this research cycle! Bring on Spring conference!!

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    Picture
    Photo Credit: City Hill Studio

    Jaclyn Loween

    EDUCATION
    M. Ed. in Teaching and Learning, St. Mary’s University, Winona, Minnesota

    B.A. in Communication Arts & Literature Education, grades
    5-12, Bethel University, St. Paul, Minnesota

    TEACHING EXPERIENCES

    Bachelor's & Master's program Writing & Communications, Education Instructor, Curriculum Director and Instructor, Writing Instructor,  International Baccalaureate  English Literature & Writing Teacher (South Korea), English Department Writing & Literacy Coach 



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