Creating Community in Online Classrooms | Digital Learning - Inside Higher Ed

Rebecca Vidra, senior lecturer explains how she uses her students' shared interest in music to draw them into her course's discussion forum.

The Beastie Boys

When I talk to my colleagues about teaching online, I get the standard responses: that must be so hard, that must be so boring, students can’t possibly learn as much from an online course as they would in my actual classroom, the technology is so glitchy, etc. As someone who is trying to convince these faculty members to teach in our online program, I can point them to this study or that one. Those of us in this online teaching space have compelling answers to these questions.

But what I really want to say is: it’s not you, it’s them.

Teaching online involves creative pedagogical strategies, yes. But we can’t just focus on what the teacher does. Students themselves can make or break an online course by checking in or checking out...

Our program thrives on the connections between our students. When they feel like a community, they can support each other through their journeys. They become responsible, in some small way, for everyone else’s success. This translates into my classroom in the following ways:

• Students pick up each other’s slack when necessary. We have a lot of group work in my class, and they understand each other’s time constraints. When life happens, they work around it. And they hold each other accountable, too.
• Students contribute information, stories and networks that they think will help others in the class. Our students come with at least five years of professional experience, and sometimes more. They use this experience to broaden each other’s networks and to provide context for the course material.
• The discussion forum feels much more like a small group discussion, with students covering the requirements of the post and then going beyond. I have been so impressed with the amount of outside material students link to, with very little prompting, and the directions that these conversations take.

I devote significant time to writing discussion forum posts and divide the class into small groups for this work, because I believe that really good stuff happens here. 
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Source: Inside Higher Ed