OLTDBuilding communities of practice in an online course

Kim LemieuxOLTD ProgramVancouver Island University

Design Context

Goal was to create an opportunity for students to live the experience of facilitating online communication

Most of cohort were classroom teachers with little or no online teaching experience

This course was the third online course in the program, so students were familiar with environment and each other

Program’s focus is to expose educators to best practice in online teaching and learning while allowing them practical experience

Course Textbook: Kear, K. (2010) Online and Social Networking Communities: A best practice guide for educators.

Kolb’s Experiential Learning Theory

Course Design

Emerging Themes

The not so small matter of ‘presence’

Moving outside the Learning Management System (LMS)

Trying out new teaching tools

Working collaboratively to facilitate online

Asynchronous vs Synchronous

What the students had to say…

Teaching online has quickly taught me that interaction and community increase exponentially when we allow learners to participate in producer type activities such as collaborating, moderating, leading and sharing. This was very evident in this course as well, I found that the student led seminars drew out many people that may not have brought their thoughts to the forefront if the course had been mainly instructor led.

I think that often, in our eagerness to demonstrate how available we are to our online learners, we "over-sell" ourselves and our availability. There seems to be a fine line between too much and not enough. I think taking on the role of facilitator and student during these past 6 weeks, has allowed many of us to see teacher presence in a new light.

What the students had to say…

Telling is not knowing

I appreciate that you let us go our own way during the student led seminar weeks, even if by your own admission you had to "bite your tongue" several times.

I’ve always been a very independent person and learner; therefore group projects have been a consistent challenge for me. However, I now more readily recognize the benefit of having someone else to collaborate with and to bounce ideas off of. By listening to other points of view and reflecting upon other people’s perspectives I have been able to create deeper understandings and beliefs myself.

Without a doubt I would argue that the trust and sense of community that we had established online was genuine and every bit as real as a face to face classroom.

… it dawned on me how effective our diverse strategies of largely asynchronous communication had been. This is something I would not have felt possible at the start of the OLTD program.

Tools used in 503

Haiku DeckStorybird Crowdsourcing

Lessons Learned

 - students appreciated the open-ended format of this assignment

 - students enjoyed the opportunity to collaborate with a partner in facilitating a seminar

 - participants in the seminars strived to ensure that seminar leaders were successful in their facilitation

  - students were cognizant of information overload

Lessons Learned

 - students were introduced to many tools in previous OLTD courses. This assignment enabled them to apply these tools to an instructional task  - students would have preferred if the cohort had not been split into two groups

- a spirit of co-operation enhanced all course activities.

Last thoughts, burning questions….

Enso Circle(retrieved from http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/File:Enso_circle.jpg)