CREATING A VIRTUAL LEARNING COMMUNITY
Peg Saragina, Santa Rosa Junior College <saragina@bcl.santarosa.edu>
ABSTRACT
Instructors have become adept in writing objectives, developing lesson plans, creating student activities, and preparing assessment instruments for face-to-face (f2f) courses. Moving a course to the online environment creates new challenges. Creating a virtual learning community - one in which the students feel connected to both the instructor and each other - is but one of those many challenges. This paper will provide a working definition of a virtual learning community that the presenter used to design her online course. She will share techniques used to prepare her students to learn and to provide timely and effective feedback.
PAPER
Instructors have become adept in writing objectives, developing lesson plans, creating student activities, and preparing assessment instruments for face-to-face (f2f) courses. Moving a course to the online environment creates new challenges. Creating a virtual learning community - one in which the students feel connected to both the instructor and each other - is but one of those many challenges.
DEFINITION OF A "LEARNING COMMUNITY"
Because terms get redefined in this new era of education and because my idea of a learning community may not be the same as yours, I will begin by sharing my working definition of a learning community. First, let us take at look at what Merriam Webster's Collegiate Dictionary has to say.
"Learn" - to gain knowledge or understanding of or skill in by instruction, study or experience.
"Community" - an interacting population of various kinds of individuals in a common location; joint ownership or participation; a social state or condition.
Using Merriam Webster as my guide, I created my own working definition of a "learning community":
Various kinds of individuals interacting in a common location for the purpose of gaining knowledge in, understanding of, or skill in a subject matter through instruction, study, and/or experience by the creation of a social state and condition that nurtures and encourages learners.
Whew, that's a mouth full! I realize this is a long definition and one could get lost within it, but it is central to how I structure my courses and coach my students. As I designed my online course, I asked myself questions about various components of this working definition. For example . . .
Interacting - How will this happen? Do I want to have collaborative work groups or teams? Why? How should the students be grouped? Is emphasis on quantity and quality?
Knowledge in, understanding of, skill in - How will this learning be measured? Basically, I am talking about assessment, evaluation, testing. What online tools can be used to capture this assessment data?
Instruction - What information will be provided and how? Instruction can be delivered through lecture, textbook, web sites, other students, etc. How much instruction do I develop, and when should the students rely on other sources?
Study - What activities will be assigned that will require the students to study? What do I mean by "study"? What do I expect my students to do when they "study"?
Experience - What will the students "do" to gain experience?
Social state and condition - What will I do to help create this social state and condition?
Nurture and encourage - What specific things will I do "throughout" the course to strengthen the community?
One of my suggestions to others developing an online course is to create their own definition of a learning community and share that definition with their students. If you are new to online learning, answer your questions as if you were preparing for f2f delivery. Then return to your answers to determine what technology you can use to create your online learning environment.
THE LEARNER
Before I share the techniques that I use in my own online course, I would like to take a moment to talk about the learner. We cannot assume that every student is an effective learner. There are numerous factors that contribute to student success. Yes, the instructor has some responsibility here, but so does the student. The challenge is how to design a course that "helps" the students learn how to learn.
The Distance Education Report is publishing a series of articles on issues and strategies related to preparing students to learn at a distance. In the February 1999 issue, Dr. Farhad Saba wrote an article "Helping Students Learn Online: Learning How to Learn"[1]. In the article Dr. Saba indicates students must take more responsibility for their learning. They need to learn how they learn and how to develop the skills to monitor their learning habits. This concept is not new. For example, in 1992 the Secretary's Commission on Achieving Necessary Skills (SCANS) produced "What Work Requires of School," a document defining the workplace competencies and foundation skills required for effective job performance [2]. Knowing how to learn was listed as one of the foundation skills.
Thinking more about the characteristics of a good learner, I recognize that students who have good study habits, time management skills, effective communication skills, and are responsible and accountable for their learning are more successful in my classes. Unfortunately, not all of my students possess these characteristics. In a perfect academic world, I would simply require my students to take the necessary remedial classes and return to my course when they were better prepared. For numerous reasons, which I will not entertain in this presentation, that is not feasible. So, I decided I needed to devote some of my online course to preparing my students to learn.
In that respect, it is common knowledge among educators that study groups are beneficial to their students' learning. Dr. Saba notes that isolated distance learners are less likely to organize study groups. They need to receive guidance for forming teams and collaborating on assignments and tasks.
CURRICULUM DESIGN TECHNIQUES
Now, let us turn to what I do in my online course. The course focuses on international business practices and is currently entitled The Global Office (http://online.santarosa.edu/bot59.4). It is a semester-length, 3-unit community college course with no prerequisites. Approximately half of the students in the class are California residents, and the other half are living in Sweden. If you click on the "Getting Started" link, you will find the Weekly Schedule. You will see that during the first three weeks of the semester, course content is not discussed. (Note: The content materials are password protected. For the purposes of this paper, you will only need access to the front pages.)
The students have the information about the course content and objectives; but other than that, we do not begin our learning of the content material until Week 4. This is probably the biggest stumbling block for educators when they begin to focus their classrooms on learning rather than teaching. Instructors have so much they want to teach their students and sometimes question how the students will be able to get through all of the material in one semester if they do not begin working on course content until Week 4. If, however, students do not possess the skills necessary to learn effectively, then I may have "taught" a significant amount of content, but my student will not have "learned" that same content. Consequently, I concentrate on learning how to learn first.
In Week 1, I welcome my students, tell them something about me, and ask them to introduce themselves. For me, this is done through a class mailing list (listserv). During this first week, the students are to read the web pages that explain the requirements of the course - textbook, supplies, hardware, software, etc. If the answer to a student's question can be found somewhere on the assigned web pages, I direct the student to the web pages. It is important that the students learn how to access their own information. The front page of my course web site also provides them with information they need to know about how we will communicate in this online course. It also gives them an example of a Typical Week - A Day in the Life of an Online Student. Since many students do not have good study habits and since online students need to be self-motivated and well organized, I found it helpful to give my students an example of what steps they might take each week to work on the course. Most instructors agree that it usually takes the first week to get a class ready - they are used to the beginning-of-the-semester needs of students. So, there is little controversy about the absence of subject content activities during the first week of the course.
During Week 2 the students take the online self-assessment test that is provided by our college [3]. They also are directed to online tutorials that provide lessons in using email and the Internet/Web [4,5,6]. During this second week the students evaluate their skill levels and are required to send email messages sharing their self-assessment information. This gives me an opportunity to test their ability to send an individual message, a message to more than one person, a message to the entire class list, and a message with an attachment. If your course requires chat, audio, or video, you could create a simple activity to allow your students an opportunity to demonstrate their skills in those areas as well.
Also in Week 2, I provide a short lecture on the importance of knowing how to learn and the various types of learning styles. I share with them what I know about my own learning styles and what kinds of things I do to help myself learn. The students visit related web sites and use numerous online assessment tools [7, 8, 9, 10]. There are no right or wrong answers. No one person is better than another based on the learning style(s) used. The students post messages to the class list to describe their predominant learning style, discuss learning techniques that can be used or that they have used successfully in the past, and describe what new technique(s) they will try based on the week's readings and tutorials. These exchanges help the students to get to know each other better and work to create the social state and condition needed for a community. Because there are no grades associated with this activity and because they are discussing a familiar topic - themselves, it is usually easy to get the students to communicate. Also, we focus on power talking and positive statements. I do not ask them what has prohibited them from learning in the past. I do not tell them that they will "improve" their learning, thereby implying they need improvement. I do not discourage any learning technique they want to use. My goal is to get the students to focus on how they learn. I want them to take ownership. For many, this is the first time they have ever thought about "how" they learn best.
During Week 3 I provide the students with a short lecture on their time management and organizational skills. Here it is important to discuss techniques that are unique to online. How will they manage their email messages? What electronic filing system will they develop for the assignments they complete in Word and Excel and send to me? Should they consider printing some of their messages or some of the web sites? When? Why? They are required to maintain a daily calendar - not just for this course, but for their life. Important dates based on the Weekly Schedule and district calendar are posted. Of course, I cannot view their calendars, so I use an online assessment to ask them questions about some of these important dates. I also want to know what "specific" days and times they will work on this class and ask them to calendar those days and times. The students are asked to determine if they plan to work on the course from home, school, or work? Students explain in detail how they maintain their calendar and keep themselves organized. Again, there are no right or wrong answers, the purpose of reviewing time management techniques and asking the students to respond to these questions and complete these activities is to get them to take ownership for the time it will take to do the work for my online course.
To continue building our community, I have the students participate in an "About You" activity during Week 3. First, I tell them something about me. This is done to provide them an example of the kind of information I want them to share. Then, the students are asked to complete a questionnaire. Some of the questions include: Why are you taking this course? What technology experiences do you have? Have you lived in or traveled to other countries? Where? For how long? Why? Have you ever worked in an office environment? How long? What were some of your responsibilities or duties? The students post their answers to the class list. Sharing this information provides them a good overview of how many more resources they have available to them in this class, thus continuing to create the community. I use this About You activity to form smaller student groups (2-4 students per group), taking special care to spread the wealth of skills and experiences among the groups so that they can draw on the strengths and experiences of each other.
Encouraging online students to learn together requires specific assignments - at least at the outset. In my international business practices course I have individuals in several different countries who serve as online international resource partners (OIRP). Each group is assigned an OIRP with whom the group communicates weekly and discusses the topic of the week (e.g. intercultural communication, business ethics/behaviors, currency, etc.). At the end of the week, the groups are responsible for posting their findings to the class list.
Another important aspect of creating a virtual learning community is the instructor's participation. If I want my students to participate in discussions, then I need to model that behavior, all the while being careful not to dominate the discussions or to suppress their ideas and thoughts. As their learning coach I post encouraging comments and appreciation for an individual's contributions. I ask follow-up questions to their postings and invite others in the class to answer. It is not necessary to respond to each posting, but I do find it important to monitor the discussions regularly. The students like to know that I am listening and tend to participate more.
TIMELY FEEDBACK
Even though I have designed an interactive online course and monitor my students' participation and comments, it is important to receive regular feedback from them on their perceptions of how things are going [11]. In my f2f classes it is common for me to ask for student feedback, so it seemed appropriate to do the same in my online course. A simple, online feedback form is used to obtain their input: What worked well for you this week? What did not work well for you this week? What suggestions do you have for improvement? Other comments/remarks? There is a link to this feedback form on the web pages, and there are weekly instructions to complete this form. Their responses are forwarded to my email address. I respond to each of these feedback forms personally with words of encouragement and appreciation for their comments, taking special care not to use defensive language. Their comments and suggestions help me to continually improve upon my work, and my responses nurture and encourage the online students to continue participating.
SUMMARY
Creating a virtual learning community requires a plan. Having a vision and definition of what such a community would feel and look like will help keep an instructor focused on the plan. Without such a definition, the technology may dominate the learning environment. The techniques described above have helped my students to think critically, solve problems, and take responsibility for their learning. With the advent of online education, instructors have the opportunity to rethink how they teach, how their students learn, and how they might redesign their classrooms of the future.
ENDNOTES
[1] Farhad Saba, Ph.D., "Helping Students Learn Online: Learning How to Learn." Distance Education Report (Feb. 1999): Vol. 3, No. 2. Madison, Wisconsin: Magna Publications.
[2] Learning a Living: A Blueprint for High Performance. A SCANS Report for America 2000. The Secretary's Commission on Achieving Necessary Skills, U.S. Department of Labor. (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1992).
[3] C.A.T.E. Self-Assessment, http://online.santarosa.edu/assessment, Online self-assessment used by Santa Rosa Junior College students.
[4] The Help Web - A Guide to Getting Started on the Internet, http://www.imagescape.com/helpweb, Includes email basics using Eudora Light's free software
[5] Learn the Net site, http://www.learnthenet.com/english/index.html, In French, Spanish, Italian, Dutch and English
[6] Internet Information Center, http://www.Austria.Eu.net/iic
[7] DVC Online - DVC Learning Style Survey for College, http://silcon.com/~scmiller/lsweb/dvclearn.htm
[8] Center for Advancement of Learning,Muskingum College in Ohio, http://muskingum.edu/~cal/database/database.html
[9] The Center for New Discoveries in Learning, Personal Learning Style Inventory, http://www.howtolearn.com/personal.html
[10] Sternberg-Wagner Thinking Styles Inventory, http://snow.utoronto.ca/Learn2/tsscale.htm
[11] Sawyer, Jan-Michelle and Will, Mimi. (1998, April) Evaluating the Success of Your Online Instructional Delivery Through Student Surveys. Paper presented at TCC Online Conference,http://leahi.kcc.hawaii.edu/org/tcon98/paper/sawyer.html. Hawaii
TCC Online Conferences
Kapi`olani Community College
University of Hawai`i
Honolulu, HI