Creating a Sense of Community in Your Online Course

In last week's blog post we mentioned 2 reasons for the high rate of attrition in online courses as related to the lack of community and instructor presence that can often occur. We spent some time discussing the importance of instructor presence and ways to enhance instructor presence in your online course. This week we will discuss how to build a sense of community in your online class.

Why is community building important? A class is really a learning community. Even though we may not pay much attention to community building in a face to face class, it is naturally built in. When students raise their hands or answer each other questions or do small group work, a community is being built. It contributes to the effective learning in a course. This is also important in an online setting, but not as naturally occurring as in the face to face setting. 

Here are some ways you can build a sense of community in your online course:

• Small Group Discussion Boards: most people who use Discussion Board assignments use them as a whole class forum where 25 or more students make posts and then respond to one or two other classmates, but you might instead consider breaking your class into smaller groups of 4 or 5 students each and have them respond to each comment in their small group weekly. This will help to build relationships between small groups of students. You can still use the large discussion board periodically as well.
• Group Projects: Although group projects can be cumbersome in the online setting, it can be a great method of community building if done right. It also has the added benefits of teaching leadership skills as well as team building skills.
• Q&A Forum / Cyber Cafe: This can be a Discussion Board Forum where students are encouraged to ask course-related questions and other students can help with providing answers. The Cyber Cafe can be a separate forum where students can have non-course related discussions. This is similar to the side conversations that may take place prior to the beginning of class in a face to face setting.
• VoiceThread activities: VoiceThread is a great tool that can help build community because students are using their voice and video to make comments. This adds an intimate element to the course and makes students feel like they really know each other.