Facilitating online learning: A few basics

Even for students who are comfortable communicating online, collaborating and engaging with peers in an academic online environment is a learned skill that needs to be taught – if for no other reason than to explain the specific communicative tools in the context of your course / module. Just as you would create a course overview to orient individual students to the online course environment, the same orientation is required for the collaborative or social spaces (e.g. forums or chat rooms), explaining to students how and when these spaces should be used and providing guidance for engaging in constructive, academic or reflective discussions.

It is further important to take time to establish the social environment before embarking on module discussions. Gilly Salmon (2011) places ‘online socialisation’ as the second step of e-moderated learning (after welcoming students to the course) and characterises it as the building of bridges between ‘cultural, social and learning environments’.

Netiquette

Netiquette may be narrowly defined as ‘etiquette online’. However, in the context of academic online discussion boards, it is more useful to consider it as an outline of expectations, or the setting of clear ‘rules of engagement’ for this particular learning tool.  A typical guideline (such as this useful infographic, left) might incorporate a ‘discussions etiquette’ paragraph among other advice and expectations for online discussion.

Planning a collaborative online activity

A useful approach to consider when designing meaningful discussion tasks is to begin with the end in mind. This involves working back from a particular learning outcome and, at each point, thinking about what students will need to understand in order to arrive there. When designing the task you can follow these steps:

Firstly, clarify (to yourself) the purpose of the activity:

·       How do the ideas & information to be discussed fit into the course as a whole?

·       What skills, knowledge, perspectives, or sensibilities do you want students to walk away from the discussion with?

·       How will you make sure your students meet those objectives?

Then....

1. Once you’ve answered the questions above, the instructional design team will be able to advise on the best format for the activity (e.g. a discussion forum for a large group, smaller group chats, a live seminar, etc.).

2.     When you draft the introduction/brief for the activity, remember to outline the intended benefit of the activity to your students, and to frame the activity within the broader course (in terms of learning outcomes or themes).

3.     Clarify your role for this specific activity, to both yourself and your students. Will you be leading the discussion, responding to content questions, sparking new ideas, observing their engagement, evaluating the quality of dialogue or assessing their actions?

4.     Before you start the activity, clearly communicate your own availability in order to manage students’ expectations in terms of how often they can expect responses or active engagement from you.

5.     List the resources (e.g. notes or readings), technology (e.g. Internet-enabled device) and time investment expected from students in order for them to ensure that they can participate in the activity.

6.     Getting the ball rolling: You may want to recap any ‘ground rules for engagement’ (See: Netiquette), and then start with a light icebreaker or other ‘spark’ (such as an interesting video clip, a link to a newspaper article or juxta-positioning of opposing viewpoints, in order to start the conversation.