Creating a Community in an Online Course
For my prototype, I created a recovery course for students who have previously failed Math 10 Workplace and Apprenticeship. My course design is completely online (except for exams), and students work at their own pace through the modules (asynchronously). You might wonder why I choose to go asynchronously, especially for a math class. Well, it wasn’t my first choice…
Originally, I tried to think of how I could “blend” my course with synchronous meetings because I know it is important to be “present” with my students, whether it is through Zoom or in-person. However, I had to be realistic regarding my current job and coaching expectations at the school I work at. In my school division, we only get one prep a year and mine is usually in the first semester because I coach fall sports. I am predicting my course will run in the second semester after the first round of Math 10WA students have taken their face-to-face class with an instructor. For those students who fail this course, they will need an opportunity to recover their credit in the second semester (this is where my online course comes in). Since I will be teaching full-time in the second semester, I am only available to meet with students before school, during lunch, and after school (until Track & Field starts up in the spring). Because of my schedule, I chose to create an asynchronous online course.
After watching the videos and reading the articles/blogs from this weeks tasks, I am inspired to find ways to encourage students to engage with one another and build a sense of community in an online learning environment. As Michael Wesch suggests in the second video, you should try to “humanize your online class” and “build relationships” with your students. He does this by videoing positive shout-outs to students in his courses, getting on camera so his students see that he is human while creating memorable (and unique) learning experiences for them to view (cycling and giving a lecture). Kudos to him… I’m not sure if I can do that while teaching math, but I’m willing to try and be more creative! His suggestions challenged me to think of ways I can be more “present” for my students asynchronously.
To build community in an online course, I need to figure out a way my students can communicate.
1 – DISCORD
Similar to our course (EC&I 834), I will have students join Discord. This app is free, easily accessible to any device, and is user-friendly. Students can take pictures of their work and send directly to the instructor (me), or share in a group chat with other students in the class to verify their work has been done correctly. Depending on the number of students I have in my course (which is unknown at the time), I can set up discussion channels and prompt my students to engage with one another. If I only have one student in my course, this app still provides them an opportunity to ask me questions when they need some additional instruction.
2 – MEETING IN-PERSON IN THE LIBRARY 1x/week
The videos and articles from this week highly suggest meeting in real-time with your students. This will be tricky for me if I am teaching 5 classes during the day. Instead of finding a time to meet during instructional hours, I will encourage students to meet me in the library Wednesdays at lunch for 15-20 minutes (during math tutorial). This way, they will have an opportunity to meet me in-person and ask me questions for clarity/guidance, or just to visit! And everyone needs to eat, so I can bring my lunch upstairs with me and be available to my online learners. Note: this will be completely optional for the students.
3 – FLIPGRID
To establish social pressure, I will use FlipGrid to connect with my students (on video). This forces me to get on camera more often and humanize my online learning environment. I’m sure the students will appreciate watching videos of me explaining details for certain assignments or providing additional instructions for a specific question I want them to work on.
I love FlipGrid and used it a lot when I taught grade 8. The students don’t always enjoy videoing themselves (they mentioned this to me a lot when we used this app), but they can always adjust their camera angle and video themselves working through a question on paper instead. It will still create a personal touch to hear their voices and/or watch them actively problem-solve. FlipGrid is an appropriate tool to use for my online class because I can pre-record video(s) on my own schedule and have students share their replies asynchronously as well.
What guidelines or assessment practices will I adopt to ensure that interactions are meaningful, supportive, engaging, and relevant?
This is a great question… I am not sure how many people will be registered for my online class until it starts up. I could have six students, or I could end up with one student who failed the course semester 1. If I only have one student, well then… they are stuck watching videos of me and texting/sending pictures to me on the Discord app. I am not the most interesting person in the world, but I will do my best to give that one student as much support as I can! If I only had one student in my course, I could still create an online assignment component (for marks) in my course breakdown. This would be for x% (haven’t decided yet) of their overall marks in my course.
The online assignment component would include: sending assignments through FlipGrid, Google Classroom (our main LMS) and/or Discord throughout the course. Students would be prompted each week (similar to our class right now) with a simple task. It could be as simple as sending a picture of their work on Discord to view or sharing a video through FlipGrid of different questions from the workbook. This would encourage my student(s) to be prepared to share their learning with me (instructor) or with others students, and keep them motivated to stay up-to-date with coursework. By sending out different prompts, it would give my learners an opportunity to touch base each week and I can see how things are going.
All my ideas sound good in writing, but how will they actually work in real-time? I’m not exactly sure.
The problem I foresee with my class design is that students may be working on modules at different paces. Note: I hope to have all 7 modules for my Math 10WA course up and running by next year. I’m not sure how to change my class structure without adding pressure for students to complete modules at the same pace.
Any ideas or suggestions are welcome!
Hi Sarah, I enjoyed reading your blog post. I love the idea of an asynch course being used as a recovery course. I also think that it is ok that you are going all asynch. As you mentioned, it seems to be the most realistic option for your current schedule. The good thing about creating online modules is that they can always be adapted in the future.
One connection that I resognated with was from Michael Wesch – “humanize your online class” and “build relationships”. I think this is the most important factor to keep in mind when developing and implementing any amount of asynch teaching. It is easy to get caught up in just providing information and tools to students but at the end of the day they need that pesonal connection (I do as well). I like that you will use Flipgrid not only to connect with your students but for your students to connect with you. I think sometimes we forget that the teacher also needs to feel human as well.
Agreed. I found out how to make videos “private” for students so others aren’t watching their content. There is also an option for students to view videos from their classmates. Having this option will allow me to connect face-to-face (via video) with one student at a time. It will also allow me to connect everyone together so they can view videos from their peers.
Hello Sarah – I am struggling with some of the same issues that you are. I also empathize with your lack of prep periods – when I first started teaching in a rural school in northern Saskatchewan I was alloted one prep a week (25 minutes total). On top of this I was expected to coach and referee. It was a challenging time for a new teacher with no resources. I definately feel the tension of desiginig something in this class that I will actually use (justifying the time I put into it) and creating material that is truly blended, that I don’t really need (but would fit better with some of the course themes). My fear, as you stated, is having a single student take my online module (how boring for them would that be), particularly coming off working with me for an entire semester (our courses have similar objectives). I can’t wait to actually use my modules because I think things will drastically change once I start getting feedback from real students.
Feedback from the students will help us for sure. Especially when we are designing the course (from a teacher’s perspective) we tend to believe everything will work smoothly. It is easy for us to think the kids will understand our instructional videos and be able to complete the assignments/tests aligning with the content we are teaching. What I fear is that we are not there (in-person) checking for understanding and guiding them through the learning process as often as these students need. I can picture the students I am designing this course for, and many of them need constant reassurance they are doing things correctly. I am hoping my online formative feedback activities will provide them with the positive reassurance (for example: immediate feedback) to keep moving forward.
Hi Sarah – I love the idea of making an asynchronous recovery course – it’s so great for students to have that option (speaking as a parent whose kids struggled in high school). I can sympathize with some of your struggles though. My course is likely to be similar – I could very well just have one person enrolled at a time. How do you make that more engaging? Like you, I’ll likely have a video of myself, ask for videos of the students, have in-person or zoom drop-in times (although your time is extremely limited!), discord prompts, etc. I think it’s important to remember that these classes are (or will be) new, and there will be growing pains. Ask for honest feedback from your early students, and you might get some new ideas of what does and doesn’t work. Hopefully you get some good suggestions from our classmates as well!
I think we will all be learning as we go for the first couple of years implementing our courses! But, that is what we do every day… teach a lesson, reflect on it and make it better for next time. But, I am excited to try it out and see what the kids think of it!
Hi Sarah,
I enjoyed reading about how you will engage your students in your online class. I definitely have the same concerns that you do! I agree with you that it is challenging to build connections with students through a screen. Like you, I will try and use Discord as a communication tool for my class and see how that goes! I have never used Flipgrid, so I would be interested in exploring that tool as well.
Leanne