This week I see the chapter being all about interaction. I think this is one of the key differences between a blended course and a fully online course. In many online courses I have taught, interaction between students was minimal, in fact even discouraged to a point due to restrictions on having synchronous meetings. In the most recent course I taught online, there was a group project and many students who were taking the program's courses online really didn't know how to react, as they had never had to participate in online interactions with their fellow students.
So my first question is what are student expectations for the course? Are they looking for an completely autonomous experience where they complete assigned work where their only interaction is with the course instructor when it's necessary, or is the student expecting something more? If we tell a student the course is autonomous, we should not include any face-to-face meetings (either in-person or via web conference) unless its very clear that such meetings are 1) completely optional, 2) no material is covered in the meetings that will be assessed later, and 3) meetings are recorded and will be available for review later.
If we are integrating student-student interaction, it should not be for the sake of student-student interaction. To me, discussions or other interactive activities should be carefully crafted to allow for a clear topic of discussion, but there should be enough flexibility where students can develop their own position and engage other students they may agree or disagree with. Topics that are to narrow can lead to a swarm of similar postings; topics that are too broad can allow for easily derailed conversations.
Interactions though should be somewhat safe. There should be an option for students to post anonymously to their fellow students. For classes where sensitive topics could be discussed, students should have the option to keep their identities hidden from other students (but not necessarily from their instructors). Faculty may also need to consider backchannel discussion tools that can be used in face-to-face or web conference meetings to also allow for students who may not desire to verbally participate in the live discussion, but who do want to add to the conversation.
I believe laying out expectations for interaction needs to be done at the beginning of the class and any interactions should be done to significantly impact the student experience in the class, not just to force interactions.
You make a good point about the expectations about interaction have to be made clear in the beginning of the course.
ReplyDeleteAlso the choice of the right tool to make that interaction happen is very important. The point you made about anonymous communication will encourage students to take more of a risk and ask a 'stupid' question perhaps.
I remember when I was studying an evening course which had implmented a Blackboard forum to ask questions about the course or content. It was never used. Participants just didn't check the forum. There was a very active facebookgroup that took care of that. All questions were asked and answered within an hour. People could see the question almost instantly where the Blackboard forum was rarely checked.
What is your stance on integrating 'non-academic' tools like a facebookgroup in a course ?
To obligate interaction always feels forced, but on the other hand, the gentle push in of 'forcing' in the beginning may lead to the point where the 'community' actually picks up and adopt the 'forum' as a virtual meeting place. I rememberd that facebookgroup as something very nice that kind of cemented the group together as we are were working students living in different regions and never actually met eachother