January 15 2007

E-Coaching Tip 32: Steps in Building a Course Community

We often talk about the importance of building a course community, a community of learning, a community of inquiry. Creating a course community seems to be unique goal for online courses. Just what does this mean?

I think we have two key questions to consider: (1) What is a learning community? and (2) What behaviors by faculty and students support the process of community-building?

This e-coaching tip departs a little from the normal process of starting with actionable behaviors and then providing background, so if you have only five minutes you may want to start at the end and work backwards!

What is a Course Community?

Here are some of the definitions of community proposed in the literature as identified by Brown (2001, p. 20).

• Support from people who share common joys and trials (C. Dede, 1996).
• Community-building (is) creating a sense of belonging, of continuity, of being connected to others and to ideas and values (Sergiovanni, T. J., 1994.)
• Community of learners (is) a group of people with "a shared purpose, good communication, and a climate with justice, discipline, caring, and occasions for celebration" (Boyer, E., 1995)

When the 21 graduate students in Browns' study were asked to identify characteristics of a community, they suggested ideas coalescing around the following definition:

• Members of a community "generally had something in common, whether it was interests, experiences, goals, values or vision."

A second theme from these same students focused on defining a "learning community", in particular. Those definitions usually included this perhaps most distinctive characteristic.

• Action on the part of participants who said they were responsible in part not just for their own learning but for others' learning, too. "

This characteristic - being responsible for fellow students -- may be a key differentiator in online learning experiences that succeed in building a community of learning. This may be a subject to examine in more depth in another tip!

A Three-Stage Process for Community-Building in Online Learning

We know that community does not just happen and that there are certain stages and phases in online courses. (Conrad, etc) Brown identified three stages in the community-building process and noted that achieving these stages required a degree of engagement beyond what might normally be required.

• Stage One: Making friends on-line with those students felt comfortable communicating.
• Stage Two: Community conferment (acceptance). Community conferment appeared to have occurred following a " long, thoughtful, threaded discussion on a subject of importance after which participants felt both personal satisfaction and kinship." One might conclude that it is similar to a "shared experience" that learners can then subsequently refer back to.
• Stage Three: This is a stage characterized by camaraderie generally achieved after "long-term or intense association with others involving personal communication."

Faculty Behaviors for Launching Community

Faculty can support the initial phase of the community-building process by inviting personal introductions in week one of a course, such as sharing one's favorite study place or personal interests. One quality of the introduction question that often results in delightful initial responses is to ask students a simple question about themselves that is safe, straightforward and yet shares something insightful about the uniqueness of the students. The goal is multi-faceted -- getting the students using the tools and interacting, allowing for "early discovery of commonalities," and beginning the process of creating a course community. I still remember the delight of three participants in one of my workshops when they discovered that they all had adopted children! As part of this process it is good for the faculty to share some professional and life experiences as well creating "threads of connection" such as "I lived in Pennsylvania for five years, too" or Yes, I have had an experience working for "for-profit companies as well!"

A good "second" question in the first week of the course is to ask the student to identify their learning goal(s) for the course -- shifting from the social "cocktail" interaction to thinking and discussing the course content and personal learning goals. This question about goals helps to provide insights as to the state of the learners' knowledge, confidence and experience with the content. For Vygotsky fans, it is a way of gaining insight into learner's individual zones of proximal development.

What are faculty behaviors in the first stage?

• Positive, supportive, encouraging comments
• Clarifying comments about the process and course expectations
• Pointers to other members of the instructional team and support
• Eliciting successful student strategies from the learners

Faculty Behaviors for Building Community

A common question that new and experienced online faculty often struggle with is just how involved they should be in the student discussions. I think we struggle with it because the level of involvement ideally changes over the course of a course. A faculty member is quite involved in the early part of the course when course expectations, and processes are being clarified, but less involved later on in the course.

Garrison (2006) noted that a key advantage of an online learning is that the interaction pattern is "group-centered" rather than "authority-centered." This means that for some discussions, particularly later in the course, that the faculty member observes, monitors and comments more as a collaborative member of the community.

A good step in weeks two through four of an online class is to create dyads or other small groups to work on content-related assignments. For classes that have a mix of veteran online students and newbies this can create a comfortable way for students to develop confidence in the process and in the environment.

What are faculty behaviors in the building stage of community?

• Continuing clarifications about processes
• Open-ended questions about what students think and think they know
• Making positive "substantive" observations about student's participation
• Encouraging the identifying of relationships and linking of ideas
• Encouraging the linking of course content to current events, problems
• Challenging students to share questions and strategies and insights about the course content
• Facilitating the student to student discussion
• Delegating some of the facilitation of groups to the students on a rotating basis

Setting Expectations Regarding a Community of Learning

Research on learner satisfaction consistently identifies clear expectations about a course and the responsibilities of a course, in terms of assessment, etc. as essential to learner satisfaction. This research suggests that as online learning develops, creating clearer expectations about what it means to be contributing and supportive members of a learning community will also be helpful.

For community-building the discussion area or forum of an online course is where connections are made and the community of learning supporting learning and discovery happens. Whether you design your course with a discussion board for each chapter or use one general discussion forum for the entire course, or both, monitoring and supporting the exchanges of these online places is where you help create and build community of learners.

As always, we would enjoy hearing your questions, experiences and strategies in your online teaching experiences.

Notes and References

Revised November 8, 2008
Copyright Judith V. Boettcher, 1997-2008