Developing Active Learning Community for an Online Course

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Developing Active Learning Community for an
Online Course

• Hao (Harrison) Yang
• State University of New York _at_ Oswego

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What is ALN and Why?

• ALN refers to asynchronous learning network.
• ALN courses have been recognized more common than
  synchronous communication. Many of the
  traditional face-to-face classroom activities can
  be reconstructed through web-based asynchronous
  distance learning such as conferencing,
  electronic mail, bulletin, etc.
• Students and instructors can work at their own
  pace and at locations they are able to control.

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What are SLN and EDU 505?

• SUNY Learning Network (SLN)
• http//sln.suny.edu/
• SLN EDU 505 Course
• http//sln.suny.edu/faculty/

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What is the Main Problem on ALN/SLN Courses?
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Communication Anxiety
Seeing
Listening
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Social Presence

• Social presence relates the concepts of intimacy
  and immediacy.
• Social presence is defined as
• the degree of salience of the other person in
  the (mediated) interaction and the consequent
  salience of the interpersonal relationships
  (Short, Williams, and Christie, 1976).
• the ability of participants in a community of
  inquiry to project themselves socially and
  emotionally, as real people through the medium of
  communication being used (Garrison and Anderson,
  2003).

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What Does Research Say?

• It is important that instructors and students
  involved in asynchronous communication develop a
  set of immediacy behaviors that cultures social
  presence and establish active learning community.

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What Do I Do?

• Strategies of promoting active learning community
  for this online course emerged as a result of
  using a systematic approach to break the
  isolation and to increase social presence between
  students and the instructor, students and
  students, and students and their learning
  environment, and to ensure the meaningfulness of
  Web-based communication. STEP is essentially a
  cyclic process and the four components of STEP
  are interrelated.

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The S in STEP

• Most students participated in the course either
  with little experience in asynchronous distance
  learning or with limited skills and
  understandings on this type of learning which had
  multiple threads with several discussions and
  interactions progressing simultaneously.
• The S in STEP stands for scaffolds before
  initiating class and starting new learning
  modules. The basic idea of scaffolding is to
  gradually ease students into what are likely to
  be challenging tasks by creating a supportive
  structure to guide their work. In other words, as
  the educators we would initially do some of the
  work for students.

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• To reduce the communication anxiety among
  students,
• Ice-breaker at the beginning of learning modules
  instructor constructed an open discussion on
  the bulletin board by sharing his own experience
  on distance learning and background on computer
  technology, and invited students to participate
  in this activity.
• Mini-Lecture in learning modules - instructor
  started with the related concepts/knowledge and
  particular technological skill that students need
  to prepare their undertaking actual
  assignments/projects, provided resources links
  and examples, and encouraged students to reflect
  and discuss the possibilities for extending the
  ideas and technologies into real world
  situations.

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The T in STEP

• ALN brings some new challenges in practice on
  the one hand, students have to deal with the lack
  of personal touches, non-verbal cues, and delayed
  responses on the other hand, instructor may
  carry off the real discussions among students,
  students may eliminate their own ideas and
  thoughts and simply play safe ball around
  instructor.
• Research indicates that distance education is
  characterized by dialogue (or, the amount of
  control exercised by the learner) and structure
  (or, the amount of control exercised by the
  instructor). Additional structure tends to
  increase distance (decreases community), and more
  dialogue tends to decrease (increase community).
• The T in STEP stands for transitions during the
  learning process.

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• To meet these challenges and to keep students
  actively participating in learning activities,
  the instructor of this course used the Online
  Office Hours (private folder) to promptly
  respond to students questions, and to privately
  acknowledge those students whose ideas were
  posted without many or any responses and
  feedback. Meanwhile, when common
  questions/concerns appeared, the instructor
  interacted with students by posting his thoughts
  on the bulletin board or discussion area.

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The E in STEP

• The E in STEP stands for the evaluations during
  and after each learning module. Periodically
  evaluating students performances serves two
  ends to remind inactive students to contribute
  ideas and/or react to others contributions, and
  to reinforce interactive students continuing
  their journey on their knowledge and skills from
  emergent to mastery.
• As one of practices, the instructor sent every
  student a brief evaluation report every other
  week to share the frequency of her or his
  postings and concerns/comments which occurred
  between instructor and student, student and
  classmates. Meanwhile, the instructor encouraged
  students to periodically summarize the discussion
  to avoid it becoming too fragmented or drifting
  off the theme.

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The P in STEP

• The P in STEP stands for the presentations on
  outcomes. There are a variety of ways to launch
  active, reflective learning. Providing
  opportunities for students to present their
  ideas, methods, and products is one of the most
  powerful ways. This is essential not only at the
  conclusion of a project, but also as the project
  grows. Presenting projects is an authentic
  activity that provides an enormous motivation for
  students.
• Due to the nature of asynchronous learning,
  instead of the face-to-face presentation,
  students projects have been opened on the online
  class after gaining their permission. Through the
  online class, students could share and compare
  their projects with projects generated by their
  classmates, which might inspire them to revise
  and communicate further more.

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Method

• To assess the effectiveness of STEP approach and
  to measure the social presence of students
  working collaboratively in this course, Lins
  (2004) Social Presence Questionnaire was adopted
  based upon its validity and reliability. 12
  statements in this questionnaire were placed on a
  7-point continuum with endpoints of strongly
  agree (7) to strongly disagree (1).
• In order to preserve anonymity, an anonymous and
  voluntary on-line student survey of the social
  presence was undertaken by the end of spring
  2006. 13 in 22 of students responses (59) were
  completed and usable.

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Results

• Perception of the assistance of group activity to
  learning
• Social comfort of expressing and sensing affect
• Social navigation

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Recap

• This study presents how a sound practical
  approach was designed and then implemented in a
  graduate on-line course, including
• Scaffolds before initiating class and starting
  new learning topics
• Transitions during the learning process in order
  to avoid the lack of personal touches and
  non-verbal cues
• Evaluations during and after each learning topic
• Presentations on outcomes sharing with the class.

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Conclusions

• The results of this study indicate that in order
  to establish the active learning community for
  ALN courses, the systematic approach with a
  variety of strategies should be designed and
  implemented.
• The results of this study indicate that
  establishing the active learning community can
  reduce the communication anxiety and increase
  social presence when students and instructor are
  separated in different spaces and timing. The
  active learning community in some way can help
  participants to interact through nonverbal
  communication and encourage students continually
  post their ideas and thoughts.