This week’s theme is about building community in the online learning environment, which is one of the most important roles for an online facilitator; learning is a socially constructed experience, so when we do things that help students feel socially connected to each other and to their instructor, we support their learning. In the early days of online learning, many students and instructors noted feeling a sense of isolation or distance from others. Over the years, researchers have found learners report improvement in actual and perceived learning when online instructors strive to address these concerns and build online community.

While greater learner diversity now requires more flexible and responsive teaching approaches, Knowles' (1984) adult learning principles are still helpful to consider. For example, most adult learners are still likely to expect clear information on what, why, and how they are to learn and be assessed, and to be offered relevant, meaningful learning activities. Most adult learners are also likely to appreciate (or even insist on) opportunities for active engagement in defining their own learning needs, goals, resources, methods, and assessments. Younger learners, or cultural groups schooled in less participatory educational models, may find owning responsibility for their own learning, and/or contributing to their peers' learning, more challenging at first. However, the engaged pedagogies, like experiential, inquiry, applied, project-based, and team-based learning, are well-established methods known to support student learning success across age, culture, and other dimensions of diversity. It is important to keep diversity and inclusion in mind when reflecting on the best ways to build online communities.

This week, we are inviting you to read/watch three resources that have been chosen to deepen your understanding of the role of community in the online learning experience. This includes two readings (about 10 pages each – skim if needed) and a short video. We have also included some guiding questions to help focus your reading/watching and make reading/watching task-based. You may wish to make a few notes of what you find, addressing each question as you read.

Week 2 resources

Our first resource comes to you from two researchers from Australia, where online learning developed from a long history of post-secondary education. The first degrees were offered via distance education as early as 1911 as a result of the vast distances that separated individuals and communities from the nearest university. The article explores some of the common challenges and opportunities that instructors experience in cultivating an online learning community and should provide you with an empirical justification for the importance of community in the online learning environment. 

Guiding question: What is the relationship between community, presence, and effective learning in the online environment?

The next resource is an open educational resource by Bektashi (2018) that provides a theoretical framework to help you make sense of the different components for cultivating communities online. What is most important to take from this reading is the understanding of the concept of “presence”, the role of “presence”, and the different kinds of “presence”. This reading presents an overview of the Community of Inquiry (CoI) theoretical framework by Garrison (2017). This framework is widely used to support facilitation practice in online learning contexts. The CoI framework describes three "presence" elements that can help create educational experiences to engage students in deeper learning and critical thinking. The framework reflects a significant change in traditional roles of teacher and students over the last 20 years. In CoI applications, instructors step back from the expert role and focus more on facilitating social and environmental aspects of the course; we sometimes refer to this as becoming a “guide on the side” versus the “sage on the stage”. Within this CoI framework, students are encouraged to take on more independent learning choices and participate in the knowledge building that can be fostered in peer-to-peer learning.

Guiding question(s): What is the relationship between the CoI framework and online learning communities? What is the difference between social, cognitive, and teaching presence?

Finally, we invite you to watch the video below from The Learning to Teach Online Project, an award-winning project completed by Simon McIntyre and Rick Bennett, two faculty at the University of New South Wales (UNSW) in Australia. While the videos that make up the project are now 10 years old, they hold ongoing relevance for facilitating learning online. The video below explores strategies for engaging and motivating students in the online space. 

Guiding question(s): What strategies do the interviewees suggest? Which would help cultivate teaching presence? Social presence? Cognitive presence?

[Note for FLO facilitators: We recommend you include an audio option for the text above here if using a platform that does not have an audio feature built in. Remove this note before offering starts.]

Last modified: Wednesday, 10 February 2021, 5:15 PM