OMDE 610 - Reflective Journal
Week Seven - October 23rd - 29th
Establishing and Enhancing Online Communities
I believe that the establishment of an effective learning community in an online environment starts with the way the instructor approaches the students at the beginning of a course. The perception of the instructor is established by the students’ initial contact with the instructor. As an online instructor, I would make sure to give my students a warm welcome to the course. I would provide my expectations throughout the course, while at the same time, making sure that the students understand that I will work with them on their performance in the course should extenuating circumstances arise as they are taking the course. They would understand that frequent communication is necessary, and they will be provided with various ways to contact me if needed. When I was hired at the elementary school where I am presently employed, I received a warm welcome from the administrators, and others upon my arrival on the first day. This welcome helped me feel more comfortable with the people that I would be working with, and it makes a difference as to how I perform on my job.
Further, I remember talking with a parent, and that parent telling me that she was glad that her daughter was not in a particular class. She said that her desire had nothing to do with her not believing in the effectiveness of the teacher, but it was because she didn’t feel as welcomed in that teacher’s class as she had felt in the other classrooms. I believe that whether or not a person feels welcomed in any classroom affects their performance. The welcoming presence in the online classroom is essential because we are not meeting f2f, but online, and we must do everything that we can possibly do to make online learning just as personable as f2f learning. Community can be built in the online classroom, but the only way that it can be built is through the interactions that take place among the instructors and the students. Community is enhanced as the discussions move from first-level responses to higher level responses.
From my experiences as an online student, I feel as though online learning doesn’t produce as many life-long friendships and relationships as there could be. It seems that everyone is in the course to complete the course, and after the course is over, they forget about who they took the course with. There have been a few times where I’ve taken multiple courses with the same majority of people, but it hasn’t been too often. So far, I am only connected to one of my classmates that I’ve attended online courses with here at UMUC, and that is through facebook. I believe that once community is established among individuals, that it can be lifelong, and that there are benefits to establishing community that is ever-lasting. We know that communities support each other, and as we go through our courses to complete our program here at UMUC, we could benefit from the support that is established through community.
Community benefits us academically because it contributes to our learning. This is supported by Wilson’s belief that a strong sense of community eliminates the feeling of isolation, and boosts student retention (Wilson, Hardman, Thornam, & Dunlap, 2004.) However, I believe that personal connections, which are established initially through communities, strengthen us in both our academic and professional endeavors.
Reference:
Wilson, B. G., Ludwig-Hardman, S., Thornam, C.L. & Dunlap, J.C. (2004). Bounded community: Designing and facilitating learning communities in formal courses. In The International Review of Research in Open and Distance Learning,(5)3, 1-22
