When it comes to online interactions and how to plan for developing an enjoyable online community I am presented with a number of obstacles. One of my challenges is that my target students already know each other well, and many of them have been attending the same school and in the same class for the past six years. As a result, my students come to me with a pre-existing community. As I said in an earlier blog post, I am very familiar with my group of students, including the fact that they have both positive and negative attitudes toward one another. It may be difficult to create a positive online community in a blended classroom with a group of students who already know each other and have pre-existing relationships, but I’m not one to give up on a challenge! 

Photo by fauxels from Pexels

As Michael Wesch’s students state, it is important to humanize the online learning experience through interactions as it takes away the hardness of learning online. Providing short simple videos is a great way to interact and connect with students in developing strong relationships. Therefore, I have incorporated several short videos of myself into my course module. Most of the videos give a brief introduction to the assignments or are video tutorials on how to complete a certain online assignment. I have used Screencastify as well as Google Meet as screen recorders to create videos that give step-by-step instructions. Once students have watched these videos they always have the option to comment with any questions they might have. 

Photo by Julia M Cameron

Since I will be teaching grade five I believe it is highly important to follow the principles that Bates sets out in chapter 4 of his text; setting clear guidelines for student online behavior, preparing students, setting clear goals, and having a regular online teacher presence to monitor students online participation. Therefore, it is my plan to incorporate digital citizenship lessons into my health and ELA classes to promote the use of proper online interactions. After teaching digital citizenship lessons, I then plan to provide more online collaborative opportunities for my students to interact with one another. 

“Community is more than participation; it requires moving from participation to engagement, involvement, and action” – Barkley & Major

This comment from The K. Patricia Cross Academy’s 6 Strategies for Building Community in Online Courses spoke to me deeply. It pushed me to consider how I may change my course module to encourage deeper participation among my students. My objective is that by first teaching digital citizenship and then, as my course module continues into later classes, introducing deeper and more meaningful collaborative opportunities among students, I will achieve deeper engagement in the topic. Commenting on other students’ work to provide peer critique, as well as working in groups to construct rubrics and evaluate final projects, are two ways I intend to involve students in collaborating. In addition, I intend to employ the Paper Seminar technique on student final projects before submitting them to me for final evaluation. 

I’m excited to collaborate with my students to build a great online learning community. I hope that through digital citizenship, teacher presence, and whole-class cooperation, students can create open-minded relationships with their classmates. I honestly feel that building a positive classroom community requires time and frequent adjustments throughout the school year. I am eager to put some of my ideas into action, but I am also willing to modify and analyze my students’ needs and classroom environment as needed during the school year.