Online Learning Communities

Online learning communities can be one of the most effective tools to designing, developing and sustaining online learning. Their use and interaction will be a force within any distance learning opportunity.

How do online learning communities impact student learning and satisfaction within an online course?

Online learning communities allow learners the opportunity to interact with colleagues and other learners in a positive educational environment.  The communities pull students together to construct meaning and gain knowledge of content.  Interacting with other learners serves to support, challenge, encourage, draw thing out of each other.  These communities allow learners to have a safe place where they can share their thoughts and interaction while feeling comfortable sharing and giving thoughts or opinions.

What are the essential elements of online community building?

 

Within the community there are three main parts all joined together to build the online learning community.  Each piece asks and answers a few questions.

The People – Who are the learners? How can you get to know them better? How can you develop their feeling of social presence so they feel a part of something? How can you build positive interactions?

The Purpose – We are coming together for this course what are the guidelines for communication? What do I need to do to complete requirements? What are the guidelines for communication – How often? How will they communicate? What are the requirements?

The Process – How will the class be conducted? What are the requirements? How can I be a part of something? How can I build that sense of community? How can I actively participate? (Palloff and Pratt, 2012)

   How can online learning communities be sustained?

The key to sustaining online learning communities is to build strong safe places for effective communication. 

There needs to be guidelines for communication, instructions for how to communicate, a developed sense of need for their information or responses and an overall sense that they are a part of something and their opinions matter.  They key as Dr. Pratt suggests is building that sense of community from the beginning. (2012) He states that you need to have ways for communication to take place right away.  There needs to be some reaching out by instructors to get to know their students and their situations as well as their needs and abilities.  The instructor also needs to be a positive facilitator in the online environment making sure that all interactions are in regards to the topic and positive. 

What is the relationship between community building and effective online instruction?

Community building is the key to the success of any online course.  The interaction between learners, as well as instructors, makes or breaks the course.  Because there are no face to face interactions, building communities through text can be much more difficult yet much more important.  Face to face people build bonds with the people they interact with. Online these bonds need to be managed and even facilitated.  There needs to be ways for learners to get to know each other, feel confident sharing and commenting and feel as though they have someone they can go to for issues or questions.  Learning communities are co-created knowledge and meaning centers. (Palloff, 2012) Having these communities is crucial to the success of online learning.

Resource

Dr. Rena Palloff and Dr. Keith Pratt. Online Learning Communities. 2012. Retrieved from https://class.waldenu.edu/webapps/portal/frameset.jsp?tab_tab_group_id=_2_1&url=%2Fwebapps%2Fblackboard%2Fexecute%2Flauncher%3Ftype%3DCourse%26id%3D_1341204_1%26url%3D