Socialization is a crucial part of school life for young people, but it can be challenging in an online environment where face-to-face interaction is limited. A strong sense of community in an online school is important because it helps students stay engaged as they learn and makes them feel like they are part of a safe space for learning. Here are some key ways educators and parents can foster connection in an online learning community.
One of the most effective ways to foster a thriving student community in an online learning environment is for instructors to take a strong lead. Monitor the discussions to ensure that appropriate conversations are taking place, and intervene only when necessary – allow students to engage with one another in debate and correct each other if they make mistakes. Also, continually providing your students with support, motivation, and inspiration as they participate in these activities is essential. Make sure your students’ contributions are seen and appreciated.
Learning should be fun, so that students can look forward to participating in their class activities. A great way to get students excited about daily lessons and to dedicate time to helping students get to know one another, is to host some ice-breaker activities within your online learning community. Simple things like asking students to share their favorite something or post a riddle for them to solve can get students thinking in a different way and help them connect with each other.
A lot of virtual instructors believe that participation in discussion forums should be a part of a student’s grade. Just as students are expected to participate during in-class discussions, online learning is no exception. Consider incorporating online discussion forum participation into a student’s grade as a whole, not based on individual comments/posts. Then you can assign a grade based on the quality – not just the quantity – of their participation. This allows students to improve their discussion forum participation tactics and lets students create the flow of conversations on their own.
Whether your online learning community is asynchronous or synchronous, the best way to get students to engage in a community discussion is to post thought provoking questions. Follow-up questions to the lecture are always a good way to reinforce what was learned during the lesson, but there are ways to make the discussion forum more topical and interesting to students. For example, if your students read Romeo and Juliet in your online Language Arts class, a great discussion forum post would maybe be “Compare a modern love story from your favorite book or movie to Romeo and Juliet’s story. What are the differences and similarities?” This allows students to share a story that they are interested in while creating connections with the text they read for class.
Creating an online learning community can be difficult, but it is worth the time and effort. Students learn better when they feel connected to one another, their instructors, and the curriculum they are learning. There are many resources and tools available to teachers looking to make the most out of their online learning community – so keep your students engaged and excited to learn!
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