Are you interested in the topic of social presence in online learning environments?
Are you aware that research indicates that a social presence is necessary to foster community and build relationships in online learning environments?
Would you be willing to share your experiences with others and help grow the body of information?
Post what sort of activities, actions, or technology tools have helped promote social interaction in your program or online learning experiences?
There are no wrong answers, only ideas we can share to make online learning enjoyable and effective. By sharing ideas, we work together to enhance online classes.
Lets get started!
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Jeff,
ReplyDeleteHere are various resources that I've found useful as some time or another. I am fascinated by the topic of social presence and think that it plays an integral role in online learning.
I'll post again when I come across more things.
This is just a start.
Nings – social networking
http://www.ning.com/
Web 2.0 Social Tools Starter List
http://www.successful-blog.com/1/web-20-social-tools-starter-list/
Social Presence: Time To Push The Reset Button (blog entry)
http://mikeg.typepad.com/perceptions/2008/01/social-presence.html
Community of Inquiry Model (Papers on Social
Presence) – I’ve referred back to this site many times. It has a wealth of information.
http://communitiesofinquiry.com/papers_sp
tngal (Connie)
I took my first online class last summer...and I must say, I was a bit anxious in the beginning, exactly because of the issue of "swimming alone in the pond" and never seeing classmates. I am really fond of exchanging ideas and discussions as I think, these two "social tools" are a great learning experience.
ReplyDeleteWhat I thought, encouraged social presence and made me feel like still learning in the environment of a community was was the listserv, the short bios we sent to each other in the beginning, and especially the discussion boards. Through the discussion I felt I got a sense of the other people in the classroom, and there was an exchange of ideas going on, and it didn't matter so much that it was not from face to face. I must say I grew quite comfortable with online learning, which I would not have expected, but I wouldn't have if we hadn't had these platforms of sharing ideas, questions, knowledge, etc.
This is my first semester of teaching online and I must say I am enjoying it tremendously. Of course it helps to have a good group of students who are working hard. There are some things that have surprised me about teaching online and one in particular that related to the discussion on distributed learning. Part of being an effective teacher is to look at feedback from students and adjusting teaching methods and presentation to help engage and accommodate student understanding of material. Online this feedback is by far more difficult to ascertain. The more students email, post to blogs and converse with each other have now become my clues to the progress of the material. And now, instead of seeing faces, body stance, the questions in class, I am relearning these small nuances in terms of the posts and other types of interactions. I am glad that I have a great group for this for they do provide the feedback needed!
ReplyDeleteCurrently I am teaching environmental sustainability to postgraduate computer professionals via e-leaning. I have found the social presence to be important. Moodle is being used for the student interaction and seems to work well. There is a general chat room for the students, as well as discussion forums dedicated to weekly topics.
ReplyDeleteAlso I have found LinkedIn useful for find out what the students are doing work-wise, without intruding on their privacy.
Interestingly the tutors, of which I am one, don't use the Moodle forums for their meetings, but instead use Skype text chat once a week. There there tends to be five minuets of social chat, while we wait for everyone to be online and start the agenda. This is very useful for seeing who is where.
On Thursday I gave a talk about the course, including the social networking aspects: "Learning to lower carbon emissions with e-Learning and Social Networking"
I just finished taking an online instructional technology class at Illinois State University. I must say that I truly missed the face to face interaction with the other students in the class. My thoughts were that I would have preferred to have a few face to face class meetings during the semester. Maybe a blending of the two. We used a wiki to post all of our course content and assignments. Skype was the tool that helped me feel connected to the other students in the class. A few of us were able to see and talk with each other via our webcams. That was nice but it didn't replace being in a classroom sharing our experiences of what has worked for us as educators. The online class was most challenging for me when we were working on our digital story assignments. I wish I had the instructor and my classmates in the room with me to guide me through that assignment. I did like not having to commute an hour and a half to get to class and it sure saved on gas money and mileage on the car!
ReplyDeleteSome great comments here concerning the topic of my new post about synchronous sessions. Please take a look at it.
ReplyDelete