Creating and Maintaining Effective Online Learning Communities

Creating and Maintaining Effective
Online Learning Communities
Event: Basic Online Teaching
Aug. 9 – 10, 2017, Calvin 306
Global Campus
Kansas State University

One Idea to Build Learning Community in your Online Course(s)
Your Task: Should You Choose to Accept It…
2
[“Social Network Analysis Visualization,” by Martin Grandjean
in Nov. 2, 2013, released on Wikimedia Commons]

Learning objectives
• Learners will…
• define what a community is
• explain why sociality is important to human learning
• define what online learning communities (OLCs) are
• define what “effective” online learning communities are
• define instructor and learner roles in online learning communities
• identify technologies that may be used for building and maintaining online
learning communities and what some of their functionalities are
• describe some practical methods for creating and maintaining an online
learning community
• consider how to design their online learning classroom for learning
community
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Overview
• 1. What is “community”?
• How do communities form? Why do they form? How do these evolve over
time? Why do communities end? Are there ways to prolong the lifespans of
communities?
• What are virtual communities? Why do these form? How do these evolve
over time? Why do virtual communities end? Are there ways to prolong the
lifespans of virtual communities?
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Overview
• 2. Why is sociality important to human learning?
• What is situated learning (from community of practice)?
• What is social constructivism? What is constructivist knowledge sharing?
• What is social constructionism (“the social construction of reality”)?
• What is the role of social integration with learner retention?
5

Overview (cont.)
• 3. What are online learning communities (OLCs)?
• What are learning organizations (groups)?
• What is an online learning community? How are online learning
communities informed by “communities of inquiry” and “communities of
practice”? What are respective roles in communities of inquiry and
communities of practice?
• What are necessary elements for online learning communities based on
communities of inquiry?
• What are necessary elements for online learning communities based on
communities of practice?
6

Overview (cont.)
• 4. What are “effective” online learning communities?
• How are people treated in effective online learning communities?
• What are identity messages about the membership in online learning
communities?
• What resources are available to members?
• What progress do effective online learning communities make?
• What is the internal reputation of the OLC? The external reputation?
• How long do effective online learning communities last?
7

Overview (cont.)
• 5. What are the instructor role(s) and learner role(s) in an online
learning community?
• Instructors and learners as co-equals in a community…or close equals
• Instructor as “guide on the side” and not “sage on the stage,” a co-learner,
co-discoverer
• Instructor as “old-timer” in a community of practice
• Instructor as “expert,” subject matter expert (SME)
• Learners as “apprentice” in a community of practice
• Learners as self-regulated exploratory learning individuals
8

Overview (cont.)
• 6. What technologies enable the building and maintenance of
online learning communities? How are each used singly and
together to enable virtual learning communities over time?
• What are Learning Management Systems (LMSes) and their enablements and
constraints?
• What are lean channels in online learning? What are non-lean channels in
online learning? Why are non-lean channels important for “presence”?
• What are asynchronous channels? Synchronous channels? Mixed
(a)synchronous channels?
• What are authoring tools?
9

Overview (cont.)
• 7. What are some practical methods for building and maintaining
an online learning community?
• Original impetus
• Leader actions
• Inputs and investments
• Membership
• Progress and achievements
• Continual refreshing
• 8. How can you design your online learning classroom for learning
community?
10

1. What is “community”?
How do communities form? Why do they form? How do these evolve over time? Why do
communities end? Are there ways to prolong the lifespans of communities?
What are virtual communities? Why do these form? How do these evolve over time? Why do
virtual communities end? Are there ways to prolong the lifespans of virtual communities?
11

Why Connect?
• Why do people connect with others? Practically, people connect
because…
• they share cultures and understandings of the world…
• they may like each other…
• they may have shared friends and acquaintances…
• they have shared interests…
• they have needs that the other(s) may fulfill, a complementarity (practical
functional considerations)…
• they are similar to each other and perceive that similarity (homophily:
people connecting to others similar to themselves)…
12

Why Connect? (cont.)
• Broadly speaking, people are born social.
• They connect because they are hardwired to do so as a survival mechanism.
• People have a built-in sense of social cognition and social hierarchy.
• Deeper interpersonal bonds come from…
• shared experiences, particularly challenging / traumatic / “crucible” or
hardship experiences
• longer periods of meaningful interactions
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Group Sizes
• People usually connect more personally in dyads, triads, and
smaller groups and somewhat less personally in larger groups.
• There is thought to be a real limit to how many meaningful
relationships people may have (Dunbar’s number: 150 stable
relationships).
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Why Communities?
• People form communities for a number of reasons and combinations of
reasons:
• Proximity or physical closeness
• Shared identities (race, ethnicity, gender, nationality, religious beliefs, and
others)
• Shared practices
• Shared interests (like hobbies, sports, and others)
• Shared beliefs and values
• Shared work, and others
• Groups form because people need each other.
• Practical reasons: people can achieve more in groups than as singletons.
• Corporations are examples of work-based groupings to enable complex and high
achievements.
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Motivations to Stay in Communal Relationship
• There are costs to maintaining social relationships in voluntary
organizations.
• People volitionally choose whether or not to join communities and
then whether they stay. These decisions may be based on cost-
benefit calculations:
• How well does the community affirm his / her sense of self?
• How well does the community support his /her sense of purpose, growth,
and direction?
• How well does the community offer friendship, camaraderie and company;
excitement, adventure; professional opportunities, or other desirable
features?
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(cont.)
• How open is the community in having his / her active
participation? His / her voice? His / her agency and decision-
making? His / her leadership?
• Do the core values of the community align with that of the
membership?
• Is the competition constructive and healthy for its members (or
negative)?
• Do the members have a sense of inclusion and belongingness? Is
difference encouraged? Is heterophily encouraged?
• Is the leadership inspired?
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(cont.)
• How well run is the community?
• How strong is the leadership? Do the leadership provide a sense of order,
purpose, and direction?
• Are basic issues handled well in that community?
• How are anomalies and crises handled?
• Is the leadership concentrated or dispersed/distributed?
• How much turnover is there in the group? Is there high churn or
not (or is it at a reasonable or normal level)? Why is the churn
occurring?
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Communal Leadership Required
• Communities are not “clockwork universes” which are wound up
and run on their own. If neglected, organizations go to entropy.
• Even with technological systems, they cannot just be set up to run on their
own. They need constant support, updating, oversight, monitoring, security
supports, and so on.
• Members have differing and competing ideas for how the group
should proceed, and decisions have to be made about how to
advance.
• Disruptive elements emerge that may move the organization
forward if these are handled appropriately, but if not, such
elements may become anti-social and destructive.
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Community Lifespans
• Communities generally have average lifespans. They do not last
forever. People join communities, and they leave them. Strong
leaders and community members work to retain members.
However, sometimes, at some point, the rationales for
communities end, or a competitor group offers better returns for
members, and members are persuaded away. Or the communities
themselves sometimes just implode or dissipate.
• Some communities are necessarily transient and only last a short
time. For example, cross-disciplinary work teams may come
together to solve a particular problem, and then, they disband.
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Community Lifespans (cont.)
• Are there ways to prolong the lifespans of communities?
Sometimes. The methods depend on the…
• types of communities,
• the reasons why the members are a part of the group,
• the availability of inputs and resources to that community,
• the leadership in that group,
• the social dynamics in that group,
• the social ecosystem, and
• other factors.
• Likewise, the converse is true. There are ways to shorten the
lifespans of communities.
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Virtual Communities
• Virtual communities are groups of people who are not physically co-
located (they are physically distributed).
• Such communities are “virtual” because they interconnect using
immersive virtual worlds, email, microblogging, social networking sites,
video sharing sites, image sharing sites, smartphones / mobile devices,
and other technological means.
• Virtual communities form for various reasons, based on shared interests
and endeavors. People have deep needs for social connections and
emotional support. They have need for information.
• For members, virtual communities provide (1) contextual situatedness,
(2) commonality of interests, and (3) member interdependency among
members (Rovai, April 2002).
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Virtual Communities (cont.)
Many of the reasons why people interact socially F2F apply online.
However, virtuality enables different ways for people to connect
beyond the physical.
• People can interact as humanoid and other types of digital
avatars.
• They can share digital objects in transient or semi-permanent
ways.
• They can create transient or semi-permanent identities and
profiles through which they may interact with others.
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• Virtual communities coalesce, thrive at a certain level (with
different levels of burstiness), and then dissipate. There are ups-
and-downs with communities.
• In social networks online, smaller groups of connections (“motifs”)
tend to cluster around charismatic individuals, but individuals
either join the larger groups, or they disappear from a network
over time. Small connections do not tend to last as long as larger
ones. Thin ties break more easily than thick ones.
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• Thin ties are fairly common online:
• Romance on FB is said to be more “flings” than “lifetimes”…with fast
diminishing likelihood of continuance in the first few months, but a 50%
chance of survival to four years or longer past the three-month mark.
However, there is a fair amount of churn in people’s relationships. FB
friendships are said to last about three years.
• As in other communities, virtual communities ultimately do
dissipate. (Virtual communities leave data tracks in ways that
analog ones do not, at least not without costly sensors and
collection methods.)
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• Groups last longer if they have sufficient human mass (population)
and social cohesion (stickiness, closeness). They last longer if
they have resources. They last longer if there is effective
leadership.
• In terms of expanding the lifespan of virtual communities, there
are ways to achieve this…by bringing in new blood, investing
resources, nullifying competition, and so on. There are nuances
to this based on the different types of communities.
• Members of virtual communities may also know each other and
meet in real space. They may have prior relationships in the
physical (vs. virtual-only) world.
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2. Why is sociality important
to human learning?
What is situated learning (from community of practice)?
What is social constructivism?
What is social constructionism (“the social construction of reality”)?
What is the role of social integration with learner retention?
27

Sociality
• Sociality: the amount of socializing that occurs among people
(and animals) as a survival response
• Humans are considered “social animals,” with eusociality (or high
amounts of socializing)
• In a community, the amount of sociality may be understood as due
to…
• the amount or frequency of social interactions
• the intensity of positive interactions
• the types of interactions
28

Situated Learning
• Jean Lave and Etienne Wenger’s (1991) insight was that learning occurs in the
context of social relationships and contexts, such as in workplaces.
• They conceptualized that such communities have individuals with varying levels
of expertise—from new arrivals (who serve as “apprentices”) and “old-timers”
(who serve as “experts”).
• In “communities of practice,” people interact with each other and share
knowledge. Apprentices acquire knowledge and skills, and they take on
professional identities. Experts gain from the naïve insights of apprentices.
• The situated context affords many ways to surface tacit insights to enhance the
learning.
• Situatedness does not have to be physical, but it can be virtual and achieved
through thick-channel (multimodal, persistent) communications technologies.
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Situated Learning in Online Learning
• In online learning, “situated learning” is created in the following ways:
• Group assignments (social engagements, social co-participation)
• High-touch social interactions among the learners in the course
• Guest speakers from the professional domain
and
• Case analyses (often based on real-world data)
• Scenarios
• Virtual immersive worlds (with simulated environments)
• Simulations
• Game play
• Roleplaying games (with learners taking on professional identities), and others
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Social Constructivism
• Social constructivism suggests that people interact with the world
and form understandings of that world based on reflection as
individuals. Humans co-create knowledge by interacting with
each other and forming shared understandings. Reality is
subjectively and socially created by people.
• These understandings become institutionalized, with meaning
maintained at societal and cultural levels (Berger & Luckmann,
1966).
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Social Constructionism
• “Social constructionism” suggests that people co-create reality
together through individual and group interactions to co-define
shared realities.
• These conceptualizations are reified or brought into reality through
language, and they are distributed through societies through culture and
technologies.
• Reality is socially constructed.
• Learners do not want to feel alone in their learning endeavors.
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Social Constructionism in Online Learning
• In online learning, “social constructionism” is applied in the
following ways:
• Co-design assignments
• Peer critique assignments
• Group discussions
• Group work
• Moderated debates
• Social media platform engagements (digital content sharing,
intercommunications, and others)
• Intercultural communications
• Jigsaw assignments, and others
33

Social Integration and Learner Retention
• Learners who are more socially integrated tend to have higher
retention (higher persistence, higher completion rates) in their
respective courses and courses of study.
• Social integration means that the learners are emotionally
connected with their co-learners and their instructors, socially
involved with their peers. They are non-isolated, non-excluded.
• Social supports enable learners to have stronger emotional
resilience in the face of setbacks and hardships, which are par for
the course. (Everyone has challenges.) Social resources help
people cope and rebound from hardship. Timely encouragement
and help can make a real difference.
34

3. What are online learning communities?
What is an online learning community? How are online learning communities informed by
“communities of inquiry” and “communities of practice”? What are respective roles in
communities of inquiry and communities of practice?
What are necessary elements for online learning communities based on communities of inquiry?
What are necessary elements for online learning communities based on communities of practice?
35

Learning Organizations (in Groups)
• One insight of learning organizations is that people do not only
learn as individuals…but groups (at micro to macro levels) can and
do learn and can and do apply that learning to its decision-
making, resource allocations, and actions.
• Learning is a major competitive advantage for groups and
organizations, if done right.
• Leadership is important for organizations to be learning ones…which are
adept at using learning in strategic and tactical ways.
• This is not about change for change’s sake but change for higher efficiencies
and better outcomes.
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Learning Organizations (in Groups) (cont.)
• “Done right” means…
• Seeing reality clearly and exploring
broadly
• Asking the right questions
• Learning cross-fields and contexts
• Owning mistakes and analyzing
these in depth
• Tactical risk-taking and
experimentation
• Learning from others’ experiences
• Agency for all team members (in
flat and interactive teams)
• Avoiding social-group (and
individual) cognitive traps
• Maintaining institutional memory
• Sharing relevant knowledge
• Protecting innovation groups from
corruption of over-socializing
(overshare can be highly negative
in specialized innovation
groups…because they can take on
banal and mediocre options
without considering a range of
possibilities)
• Lean teams
37

Online Learning Communities
• Online learning communities are groups of people who interact
with each other virtually in order to co-learn.
• Some of these are
• formal groupings based on study for credit while others may be
• nonformal (learning from structured learning situations) or
• informal (incidental learning as a byproduct of activities).
38

Online Learning Communities (cont.)
• Examples:
• A formal OLC may be those linked to university- and college-provided
courses.
• A nonformal one may be a group of writers who met through a non-credit
community-based writing course.
• An informal online learning community may coalesce around an image-
sharing social media platform grouping of travel photography.
39

Learning Communities Informed by CoI and
CoP
• Communities of inquiry (CoI) coalesce around shared research and
problem-solving interests.
• Example: Citizen scientists who collaborate online engage in learning
communities informed by communities of inquiry.
• Learners who are more highly self-regulated do better in CoI in online
learning than those with low self-regulated tendencies (Cho, Kim, & Choi,
2017).
• Communities of practice (CoP) coalesce around situated learning
based on workplace contexts and social relationships.
• Example: Developers who share work on coding projects online are
engaging in online learning communities based on CoP.
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Necessary Elements for Communities of
Inquiry / Communities of Practice
Inquiry
• Animating research questions
for group exploration
• May be open or closed questions
(those currently without known
answers or those with already
known answers)
• Co-learning experiences
Practice
• Shared work context with
members with expertise and
members without expertise
(novices, amateurs)
• Shared work experiences
• Co-learning
41

Types of Collaborative and Active Learning-
by-Doing Constructs
• Problem-based learning: Uses of real-world (or imaginary) scenarios as
well as a basis for learning: identifying problems in full complexity,
identifying what information is needed, applying the information to the
challenge, and summarizing what is learned…all in community and in
authentic and situated ways
• May include case-based learning from historical and contemporaneous examples
of the problem; systematic listing of solution methods; expert-based thinking
about how to approach the target problems or problem-set
• Project-based learning: facing a real-world challenge(s), investigating
the issue(s), proposing and co-designing possible solutions, developing a
solution or part of a solution, and summarizing what is learned… all in
community and in authentic and situated ways
42

4. What are “effective”
online learning communities?
How are people treated in effective online learning communities?
What are identity messages about the membership in online learning communities?
What resources are available to members?
What progress do effective online learning communities make?
What is the internal reputation of the OLC? The external reputation?
How long do effective online learning communities last?
43

How Members are Treated
• An online learning community (OLC) is only as powerful as its
membership, and strong communities attract people of various
backgrounds, talents, skills, and personalities; they are heterogeneous.
• OLCs vary in how open or closed they are and how they treat old and
new members. Are members treated with respect and civility? Warmth?
• Do members interact with constructive and healthy competition? Cooperation?
Collaboration?
• What are the community’s social norms—both visible and invisible?
• What are the expectations of members? How are “lurkers” treated?
44

Member Identity Messaging
• An online learning community communicates messages about its
members both explicitly and implicitly.
• Explicit messaging comes from its formal designed communications and
branding. The branding is both to its external audiences and its internal
audiences.
• Implicit messaging comes from how the leadership treats its members…and
how its members treat each other.
• Member identity is also communicated through shared activities,
hosted formally and those taking place informally.
• The activities may range from free ones to at-cost ones.
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Member Identity Messaging (cont.)
• Membership identity is conveyed in terms of the various roles the
members may take on—elected, assigned, self-assigned, and
others.
• The respective roles should be meaningful…and should have actual
constructive impacts in the online community.
• Membership identity is also conveyed through common practices.
• Membership identity may be conveyed in terms of group
inclusiveness / exclusiveness.
• How easy is it to join? Is there a sense of appeal to joining? A sense of
appeal to staying? To being active?
• How easy is it to leave?
46

Member Identity Messaging (cont.)
• Membership identity is also conveyed by the sense of potential in
members.
• Is there a sense that novices and amateurs can someday be professionals? Is
there a sense that professionals have room to grow and develop? (A healthy
online learning community has to convey a sense of potential to all its
members.)
47

Resources Available to Members
• The health of an online learning community depends in part on its
resources:
• its ability to acquire resources;
• its holdings;
• its decision-making around expenditures; and so on.
• Resources are also human resources or talent.
• Resources are technologies.
• There are also negative-resources or costs.
48

Progress in Online Learning Communities
• If the aim of an online learning community is to learn, what
amounts of learning is going on? Which of the membership is
gaining (hopefully all)?
• Is there a lot of friction or challenge in terms of achieving the learning aims
of the group? If so, that is a negative for the community and its
effectiveness.
• If the online learning community aims to share new research with
the larger world, is it able to meet its aims? How often? With
how much investment?
49

Reputation: Internal and External
Internal
• How do members within the
online learning community
view themselves and each
other based on their direct
experiences and insider
knowledge?
External
• How is the online learning
community viewed by
outsiders who may not have
direct knowledge of the group
but only impressions?
50

Lifespans of Effective Online Learning
Communities
• Online learning communities vary in their lifespans. Some, for
example, are only understood to exist for the length of a formal
term of learning (a quarter, a semester, a year, or four years, or
six years, etc.).
• Cohort learning models are thought to last for the length of time it takes to
finish a degree.
• Some massive open online course (MOOC) sequences are only for a time as
well.
• Other online learning communities are open-entry, open-exit, and
people may come and go as they need.
51

Levels of Communities
Micro Level
(individuals, dyads,
triads, “motifs”)
Meso Level
(sub-groups)
Macro Level
(population-size)
Membership and
sociality
Resources
Progress and
outputs
Reputation
(internal)
Reputation
(external)
Lifespans …and others
52

5. What are the instructor role(s) and learner
role(s) in an online learning community?
Instructors and learners as co-equals in a community…or close equals
Instructor as “guide on the side” and not “sage on the stage,” a co-learner, co-discoverer
Instructor as “old-timer” in a community of practice
Instructor as “expert,” subject matter expert (SME)
Learners as “apprentice” in a community of practice
Learners as self-regulated exploratory learning individuals
53

Roles in Online Learning Communities
• The roles in online learning communities (OLCs) vary based on the
contexts.
• In formal higher education learning environments, instructors and
learners are not quite co-equals, but the instructor is more a
guide to the learners and a co-discoverer in the learning.
• In online learning, instructors share power. They may co-design some of the
learning with the learners.
• Learners are often motivated by impressing each other, and formal learning
communities may build on this dynamic.
• Learner contributions enrich the online teaching and learning…if their
contributions are designed and channeled in a pro-learning way.
54

Roles in Online Learning Communities (cont.)
• In online communities of practice, novice and amateur learners
are apprentices, and “old-timers” are experts.
• In some informal learning communities on social media platforms,
the roles are defined by an individual’s interactions, so roles may
be emergent. They are not necessarily “assigned” in a top-down
way.
• In some OLCs, some members take on the roles of the “10th man,”
the skeptic who takes contrarian positions in order to test the
learning work and the solidness of the work.
55

6. What technologies enable the building and maintenance of
online learning communities? How are each used singly and
together to enable virtual learning communities over time?
What are Learning Management Systems (LMSes) and their enablements and constraints? Social
media platforms?
What are lean channels in online learning? What are non-lean channels in online learning? Why are
non-lean channels important for “presence”?
What are asynchronous channels? Synchronous channels? Mixed (a)synchronous channels?
What are authoring tools?
56

Learning Management Systems (LMSes)
• Learning management systems are technology systems designed to
enable online learning, with a suite of capabilities, including
enrollments, user profile building, course building, digital content
delivery, assignment creation, assignment submittal, discussion
boards, web conferencing, emailing, groupwork, assessments,
grading, live chat, white board illustrations, learning analytics,
and other capabilities (with some of the prior capabilities
provided through integrated third-party tools).
• LMSes enable learners to orientate to the online learning space, acculturate
into the practices of the field, and socialize with others.
57

Learning Management Systems (LMSes) (cont.)
• LMSes also contain integrations with social media platforms,
including microblogging sites, news sharing sites, social
networking sites, crowd-sourced encyclopedias, video-sharing
sites, image-sharing sites, review sites, pinning sites, folk tagging
sites, bulletin boards, text messaging, and others.
• The integrations are by designed apps, links, and other forms of
connectivity.
• Some integrations are fully “baked” into the tool.
58

Social Media Platforms
• There are a number of different social media platform types:
• Social networking sites
• Image sharing sites
• Video sharing sites
• Multimedia sharing sites
• Collaborative co-creation and shared work sites
• Slideshow sharing sites
• Web logging / blogging
• Microblogging
• Wikis, and a number of dedicated topic-specific social media platforms
59

Lean Channels? Thick Channels? Presence?
• “Presence” refers to how people convey their participation in an
online course, and how they communicate their personhood.
• From the socio-cultural learning theories perspective, how people
self-portray and communicate with others in a distributed online
context affects the learning.
• The instructor has to be present in order to teach, to convey expertise, to
express concern and care, to provide learning feedback, to be aware of
learner needs, to customize or adjust the teaching to learner needs, and so
on.
• Learners have to come across as full people in order to be real to other
learners and to share parts of their lives and expertise which are relevant to
the learning.
60

Lean Channels? Thick Channels? Presence?
(cont.)
• Lean channels may be like microblogging sites which only allow
140 characters at a time (along with URLs and imagery)…because
these constrain what may be communicated. These do not allow
the full range of human expression or thought or communications
of personhood.
• Thick channels or non-lean ones enable asynchronous and
synchronous interactions; audio, video, text, multimedia, and
other modalities of communications; both transitory messaging
and permanent messaging, and so on. These multimodal channels
enable much more human presence online.
61

Asynchronous Channel? Synchronous
Channels? Mixed (A)Synchronous Channels?
• Asynchronous channels: Discussion or message boards,
announcements, electronic mail, pre-recorded video and screen
captures and audio recordings, and others
• Synchronous channels: Live chat, live web conferencing,
telephone, voice over IP (VOIP), and others
• Mixed (a)synchronous channels: Discussion or message boards,
electronic mail, and others (as long as the communicators are on
live and simultaneously)
62

Authoring Tools
• Presentation software: slideshows, digital learning objects
• Video editing software; screen capturing software
• Image editing software
• Diagramming and drawing software
• Simulation software: agent-based modeling, math-based
modeling, and others
• Data modeling software
• Game design software
63

Authoring Tools (cont.)
• Data analytics software (with data visualization capabilities)
• Machine learning software, and others
64

Harnessing Synergies
• Technologies used for online learning communities are seldom used in
isolation. The idea is to select the tools’ various features and create a
fairly seamless learning experience for learners…and to use the
affordances of the Web and Internet to connect learners with solid
practitioners and experts in the field.
• There are lots of right ways to design and deploy to support learners. It
makes sense to experiment and explore.
• The online learning communities’ technologies will change as the
community needs change.
• Technologies themselves are in constant flux, so it is important to stay
aware of what is going on in the environment.
65

7. What are some practical methods for building
and maintaining an online learning community?
Original impetus
Leader actions
Inputs and investments
Membership
Progress and achievements
Continual refreshing
66

Original Impetus(es)
• If individuals come together to form communities based on felt
needs, then it is important to make sure that those needs are
being met. As those needs evolve and diverge, these other needs
should also be met, or the membership will look elsewhere for
solutions.
• As group memberships change, the reasons for the community may
evolve.
67

Leader Actions
• Leaders, whether in a concentrated context or a distributed one,
are important to communities. To strengthen the online learning
community, they would do well to:
• Model civility, respect, and the ideals of group citizenship
• Be inclusive of all
• Provide opportunities for learners to fully express personhood (through thick
and lean channels)
• Provide opportunities to interact informally as well as formally
• Assign learners to respective roles in the online learning community for
jigsaw assignments and problem solving (in formal learning OLCs)
68

Leader Actions (cont.)
• Leaders…would do well to…
• Foster a sense of the learning objective(s) in the learners and appreciation
for learning in the learners
• Capture relevant learning resources for the community
• Affirm learners on their individual learning paths, and others
• Online learning communities have to stay relevant to keep its
membership.
69

Inputs and Investments
• Online learning communities require inputs:
• Fresh members
• Guest speakers and experts
• Resources
• Technologies
• Informational contents
• Funds, and others
• To attract resources, online learning communities have to be
shown to create value: savvy and skilled members, discoveries,
new learning, and so on.
70

Membership
• Members of online learning communities join and leave.
• For OLCs to be effective, they have to attract and keep talent.
They have to enable and strengthen members.
• They have to offer a desirable identity to maintain membership.
• They have to offer enjoyment and humor and pleasure.
71

Progress and Achievements
• Online learning communities (OLCs) have to help its members
make progress and make achievements.
• This is to affect OLC reputation, but it is also to strengthen groupness
impetuses.
72

Continual Refreshing
• Online learning communities, as virtual communities and as
communities, have to be continually refreshed to be relevant.
• Methods for refreshing OLCs will vary depending on the specifics
of the local contexts, memberships, and so on, and the larger
environment.
• However, there are points at which OLCs may necessarily have to
sunset.
73

8. How can you design your online learning classroom for
learning community?
(discussion)
74

Some Questions
• How can learning community be beneficial (or harmful) to your
learners in the online course?
• What would an optimal online learning community look like in your online
course(s)?
• If social dynamics in an online course “go negative,” what are some possible
interventions?
• Are there ways to encourage positive interactivity among co-learners in an
online learning community (without being too interventionist)?
• What are some resources you can bring to enliven the social
aspects of online learning? What are some collective mood
enhancers?
75

Some Questions (cont.)
• How do you see your social presence and role in the virtual
learning community? How will your presence align with your
authentic personality and self?
• Some profs teach through personas. If you do, how would your persona
instantiate in an online course?
• Who are some professionals in the learning domain who may take
part in this online learning community? And in what roles?
• What sorts of real-world “problems” and “projects” do you have
in your subject matter area that can be harnessed for learning
communities?
76

Some Questions (cont.)
• How can you extend the lifespan of an online learning community
beyond the end of your particular course or course sequence?
• How can you ensure that the online learning community is constructive,
positive, and pro-learning?
• In very public venues, should learners use their personal identities or
pseudonyms?
• Would you play a role in such communities, and how? (If not, do you know
others in that post-course community who can provide some leadership and
support?)
• What technology tools would make the most sense to use for an
online learning community? What social media platforms? Why?
77

Conclusion and Contact
• Dr. Shalin Hai-Jew
• Instructional Designer
• iTAC, Kansas State University
• 212 Hale / Farrell Library
• 785-532-5262
• shalin@k-state.edu
• Notes: Sources are cited within the slideshow with URLs.
78

Creating and Maintaining Effective Online Learning Communities

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