EIDT-6510 Learning Communities

As an instructional designer seeking to learn how to create engaging and dynamic courses understanding what learning communities are and how they impact student learning and satisfaction is imperative.  Drs. Palloff and Pratt (Laureate Education, 2010) define a learning community as way for students to come together to support one another and co-construct knowledge about the content of the course.  Additionally, learning communities create a dynamic where facilitators and learners are equal participants (Laureate Education, 2010).  Oftentimes, students in an online program struggle with feelings of isolation and separation that they may not feel in an on-ground face to face classroom experience.  Simonson, Smaldino and Zvacek (2015) state that learning communities in distance education environments contribute to greater student engagement and success.  Boettcher and Conrad (2010) further state that a learning community in an online course is just as important as faculty presence for keeping students engaged and successful.

What are essential elements of an online learning community?  Drs. Palloff and Pratt (Laureate Education, 2010) list five essential elements of an online learning community:

1. People:  Quite obviously a community cannot exist without people.  In the case of an online course, the people involved in the learning community would be the learners enrolled in the course.
2. Purpose:  A common purpose must exist among the people in order for a community to arise.  For example, in an online course, the common purpose of the people in the course would be to access and process the content and information.
3. Process:  This is the way in which the online course is designed that encourages the building of community.  This is the where the role of the instructional designer is key.  The activities within a course should always seek to foster and build the community among the learners.
4. Method:  This relates to the way that students will interact and communicate.  There must be some way for them to talk to each other else no community can exist.  Again this is where designers play a critical role.  A course should be designed to encourage as much interaction as possible among learners.
5. Social Presence:  Each learner should be able to establish their own social presence within the class and it is that presence that each learner interacts with in the course of communication.  Once again, the designer is key here in ensuring that students have the opportunity to do so.

How can learning communities be sustained?  One of the main ways to sustain a learning community in an online environment is to ensure that the facilitator of the course remains engaged.  For example, in discussion forums, learners want to know that the facilitator is reading and responding to their comments.  They want to see the presence of the facilitator.  A second way of sustaining a learning community is to create learning experiences that allow the group to continue to work together.  Group projects and student cohorts are just two examples of how this can be accomplished.

As stated above, learning communities can increase the engagement and success of students (Simonson, et al., 2015).  As a designer, it is important to look at some of the best practices presented in the text (Boettcher, et al., 2010) to create a positive experience for learners in the online environment.

References

Boettcher, J. V., & Conrad, R. M. (2010). The online teaching survival guide: Simple and practical pedagogical tips. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.

Laureate Education (Producer). (2010). Online learning communities [Video file]. Retrieved from https://class.waldenu.edu.

Simonson, M., Smaldino, S., & Zvacek, S. (2015). Teaching and learning at a distance: Foundations for distance education (6th ed.). Charlotte, NC: Information Age Press.