Launching the Online Learning Experience

The first thing to do in setting up a positive and productive environment for an online class is to establish social presence for both the students and the instructor. “[G]etting to know each other as three-dimensional people[,] is the foundation of building trust and presence for the teaching and learning experiences” (Boettcher & Conrad, 2010, p. 51). For the facilitator, that means presenting him/herself as an approachable person, not only as a highbrow scholar with titles and awards, but as a human being with life full of likes and dislikes, family, pets, and hobbies. It’s good to post an informal photo; an audio (or even video) recording of a welcome message in addition to the picture would be even better. That would encourage students to reveal something about themselves. It is inappropriate, however, to insist on certain things, especially photos, because some people feel uncomfortable, or unwilling, for various reasons, to present themselves as who they really are (Walden University, 2010).

The second thing would be to begin to establish cognitive presence, which is one of the three types of presences necessary for running a successful online class: social, cognitive, and teaching (Boettcher & Conrad, 2010). By asking the students to describe their learning goals, the instructor can find out what the students already know and whether they clearly understand the purposes of the class. Knowing that, the instructor can start customizing teaching for this particular group, developing the teaching presence.

Trying to cram all the available technology tools in a class, especially in the first week or two, would be overwhelming and unnecessary. It is important, however, to know what’s available to make an informed decision about what to use. Boettcher and Conrad (2010) also advise to be open to students’ suggestions. A course managements system (CMS) is essential for an online class. It is a website containing all the course materials and some tools often used in distance learning. Boettcher and Conrad (2010) list Blackboard, Desire2Learn, Moddle, WebStudye, and Sakai. I have used Edu 2.0 and thought it was simple to use and had all essential tools integrated, such as an announcement area, forums, wikis, blogs, dropbox, its own email system, monitoring system, etc. It is also helpful trying out different examples of the same tool, to be sure to select those best for the subject being taught and the activities chosen for the class.

It is critical to have all major learning materials for the whole course ready at the beginning, even a few days before the official start of the class so that students could get acquainted with the course, set some personal expectations and goals, and adjust their life schedule for better, less stressful course work. Majority of those, who choose distance-learning education, happens to be adults with many demanding commitments besides schoolwork. They like their life to be carefully planned to be able to effectively deal with all important events. Syllabus is a course description that orients learners to the most important elements of the course and things they will need to know or follow. It will include course requirements, learning objectives, performance goals, major expectations, a list of typical weekly activities, learning materials and bibliography, school’s policies about grading, late work, plagiarism, online conduct (netiquette), ways of contacting for help, and other issues. Besides the syllabus, links to each week’s schedule, calendar, course support info, course rubrics for various assignment types, instructor’s information with his/her schedule and contact information, and other various organizational materials are usually presented on the course’s home page. Setting recurring weekly rhythm also greatly contributes to the learner’s expectations. It is wise to warn about any changes in weekly activities—and in more than one way—to avoid everyone getting surprised and unprepared.

Additionally, instructors should consider the possibility of students’ lack of preparedness for online environment. Not only do they include technical difficulties, but psychological adaptability to studying and communicating with everyone through the Internet. Drs. Pratt and Palloff (Walden University, 2010) suggest having a “week zero”— time when students go through a course orientation, technical training, and, hopefully understand the nature of the environment and whether they like it or not. This way, the unavoidable dropouts will happen before they can negatively influence major activities of the course. Another suggestion is not to “make education deadly serious” (Walden University, 2010) On the other hand, have fun, but to a reasonable degree, for many self-propelled learners might get frustrated with time wasted on “silly games”.

So the first week (and a bit of time before that, if possible) is really a crucial week for setting up the mood, the expectations, and the basic dynamics between all the participants of the learning experience. This first week will influence students’ level of engagement and willingness to participate. It will also affect the rate of attrition. If the instructor appears helpful and approachable, people will be less concerned with their ability to cope with the requirements of the class, and everyone will be happier. Facilitator’s work sounds really overwhelming but, if done right, I’m sure, it will bring a lot of satisfaction.

References:

Boettcher, J., & Conrad, R. (2010). The online teaching survival guide: Simple and practical pedagogical tips. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass

Walden University. (Producer). (2010). Launching the online learning experience. [Online]. Retrieved from Walden University eCollege

Online Learning Communitites

The value of online learning communities is in their collective exploration of the core subject ideas and adding layers upon layers of knowledge, experience, and meaning to the initial structure, thus mirroring the way human memory works and creating strong, deep, multifaceted, and easily retrievable knowledge constructions. Besides building strong collective knowledge base, online learning communities develop important human interaction qualities: the ability to collaborate, to help each other, to overcome shyness and passivity, to exert oneself for the good of one’s group, to analyze and evaluate each other’s thoughts and ideas, to co-create, improve, and crystallize meaning, to sympathize with one another, and to develop personal distinctive voice. It is the best way to learn online because belonging to a community learning the same subject helps to overcome a sense of isolation. It also improves overall student satisfaction because of developing sense of belonging and of growing social presence (it is much harder to ignore a fellow student and leave his/her post without reply when it is right there, in front of you, in black and white; whereas in the classroom, it is easy to forget about one’s quiet presence).

According to Dr. Palloff (Walden University, 2010), learning community needs five elements: people, purpose, process, method, and social presence. The three major ones are people, who come together for a common purpose and interact using a certain process. Additionally, they use some method of interaction, and it helps when people develop a social presence, that is, their recognizable online personality, which makes communication more natural and trustworthy. Another important element of an online community is following certain rules and guidelines to keep constructive communication going.

An instructor is critical for successful functioning of a learning community. S/he plays many roles in an online classroom. Facilitator monitors discussion making sure the learning is happening and conversation is going in the right direction; s/he is the one who makes final decisions and is flexible enough to customize the learning experience for a particular group, to be able to recognize valuable points in discussion, change gears and stir the conversation in a new, even unplanned, direction if it seems important (Boettcher & Conrad, 2010). In an online environment, the instructor should be on a more equal footing with the students because the learning community makes everyone a learner and a practitioner: everyone’s experience becomes a valuable contribution to the common bank of knowledge. The instructor is also a moderator responsible for making the online environment a safe place free of any sort of bias, intolerance, anger, bullying, and other offences. As Dr. Pratt says, the instructor holds the key to the whole online environment and it’s his/her responsibility to create a dynamic setting where students feel safe to be who they are and develop as learners to their fullest potential (Walden University, 2010). Even though, the instructor’s role is very significant, the online environment makes invisible all that work behind the scenes, which might make some student uncomfortable (Walden University, 2010); that means, the instructor should explain to the students at the beginning that s/he will be always there in the supporter’s role ready to jump in if needed.

If you take a traditional face-to-face class and bring it to an online environment, it won’t work: experience shows that the constructivist learning paradigm, where students are engaged with one another to explore and make meaning out of the course content, works best in an online setting (Walden University, 2010)—the instruction has to be more learner-centered, learners have to interact more with one another and be empowered to make some important decisions, have freedom to explore and address their own learning goals, be more responsible for their learning, and share their own experience with other members of their learning community. Building a community of actively engaged learners is directly related to the successful online instruction.

From the online video this week (Walden University, 2010), I learned about the importance of building an online learning community and the right way to build it, also, about all the roles the online instructor has to play to keep the communication going.

References:

Boettcher, J., & Conrad, R. (2010). The online teaching survival guide: Simple and practical pedagogical tips. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass

Walden University. (Producer). (2010). Online learning communities. [Online]. Retrieved from Walden University eCollege

Online Instructional Strategies Class

Hello to all!
This is to welcome you to my blog, this time, for my tenth class of MS IDT program.
Thanks for visiting - I'll try to be engaging!
Sasha