How Do We Create A Sense of Community When We Are Online?

Feb 15

• This week in EC&I 834 we discussed building community and connection in our classes. I love being able to interact with my students in person. However, when contemplating interaction during an online or blended class a little more consideration needs to be given. As Leigh T. mentioned in her blog post, many students and teachers felt a lack of connection and community during remote learning. This lack of connection affected our attendance, engagement and our social learning opportunities.

When reading Bates Chapter 4.4 – Online Collaborative Learning, there were several suggestions given to make online collaborative learning meaningful and more successful. The chapter highlighted multiple design principles for successful online learning. Some of these design principles include:

• Allowing for threaded discussions
• Clear guidelines for student online behaviour when participating in discussions
• Student orientation with technology
• Clear goals, explain the purpose of the discussion
• Choice of appropriate topics that expand course materials
• Setting appropriate requirements for discussion such as evidence based
• Clearly defining learner roles and expectations, ex. how many times a week learner needs to post or respond
• Monitoring individual learner participation and responding accordingly
• Regular and ongoing instructor presence, preventing discussions from getting off topic
• Ensuring strong articulation between discussion topics and assessment

Bates also emphasized that the goal of online collaborative learning is to maximize the use of technology and to improve communication between teachers and learners. When designed effectively, online collaborative learning can lead to deep academic learning and can also support intellectual skills such as critical and analytical thinking, synthesis and evaluation, which are important skills in a digital age. Many of the principles discussed in this chapter prove to be successful in online or face-to-face teaching reinforcing that the design model is more important than the mode of delivery. Online collaborative learning can provide a flexible delivery model enabling teachers to meet the diverse needs of their students, thus reinforcing the connections with some of our hard-to-reach students.

When planning my course, I will need to keep these design principles in mind in order to foster an environment conducive to connection, positive behaviour and deep learning. In my original plan many of our lessons were going to be face-to-face with their responses and assessment utilizing the online technologies. However, I am now thinking I would like to adjust my plan to include some online meetings and discussion options to allow for a more flexible and inclusive delivery model.

I plan to use Google Classroom as the platform to organize my course and assignments. I plan to embed my assignments within the documents in order to help my younger students stay organized. Google Meet allows for lessons presentation and instructions and for oral communication between students as well as teachers. It is easy to use with other google platforms such as Google docs, Google Draw and Google Slides. It also allows parents to also stay updated and knowledgeable within the class.  Google has so many compatible options it will be easy to add ice breakers and other connection building activities into my lessons. I have have included a few ways to build classroom connections, most of these I already do but might need to consider new approaches when implementing them during an online class such as finding ways to share and build our common interests into our learning.

I am also planning to use either Flipgrid or Padlet. Lindsey A. and Chris W. each made a compelling case for each of these apps in last week’s technology investigation discussion. Both apps seem to have fantastic avenues for students and teachers to respond in meaningful and creative ways to each other’s work and they are both compatible with Google Classroom. I love how each of these has the capability to use video feedback which is quick, comprehensive and adds a face to face connection value that you can not get from written comments. I would need to ensure I was following the design principles mentioned above such as clear student expectations and monitoring of the feedback.

For assessment I plan to utilize written, video and oral feedback and encouragement for these young students to encourage and support the process of their learning and growth mindset. I also hope to include a Kahoot for an engaging way to showcase student learning. Our assessments will be shared through Edsby parent portal.

My journey through this class has presented new learning opportunities regarding best practices for online teaching and discovering new technologies and their capabilities.  As my knowledge construction in this area evolves, I am encouraged to change the design of my course to support best practice, increased engagement, and student need.

How do you plan to encourage positive interactions, a sense of community and human connection within your course?