Construction and Collaboration building a community for online students David White, Co-manager, Technology-Assisted Lifelong Learning, Department for Continuing Education, University of Oxford

Continuing Education at Oxford Started in 19th century Opened opportunity to groups who could not come to Oxford –women, working class men In late 1990’s offered some of the earliest fully online programmes in the UK Undergraduate Diploma in Computing Undergraduate Advanced Diploma in Local History Immunology (Professional Development)

TALL Technology-Assisted Lifelong Learning Founded 1996 10 full time specialists Focussed on online learning for lifelong learners at HE level Attempt to replicate the best of the Oxford experience online Undertake elearning related research

Community centred elearning Initial development focussed on content development Gave students a place to talk almost as an after thought Worked for local history Not for computing Learning through experimentation (and some failure)

Current subject areas Mixture of traditional academic subjects and continuing professional development programmes Archaeology Art history Bioremediation Biosciences Computing Electronics Economics English literature Ethics Local history Health sciences Law Nanotechnology Philosophy Statistics Study skills

Why is feeling part of a community important for online distance students? ‘Negotiation of Meaning’ Wenger Students value interaction with a tutor - but also with each other Students more likely to complete the course and go on to further study if they feel real people are invested in their success ‘Cultural Capital’ is generated and communicated

What can you use to build a learning community? Your learning environment Expectation setting Your learning design Your tutors

The learning environment Must be student centred You want students to learn your subject not the environment Key tools Profile (who am I, who is everyone else) Forums Personal space (journal/blog) Useful tools Chat IM Who is online Tracking Wiki

Expectation setting Don’t miss sell your courses (not everyone wants to participate) What do you expect students to do each day/week What can (and can’t) students expect from their tutor How does the course assessment work? Introductions up front, the tutor sets the tone

Tutoring Most visible component of a course Can make or break the experience – regardless of the quality of the rest of the offering Must provide training for online tutors Must provide guidance for tutoring the course

Learning design Design activities that students can see the point of Activity-driven learning processes - encourage active participation with the learning Include explicit statements of assumed pre-knowledge (if any) for each unit Design the learning so that students feel that they are part of a community of learners and teachers with all the support that this offers Consider how your activity fits into the assessment of the course as a whole. Will it contribute to summative or formative assessment, and in either case how will the requirement for feedback be handled?

Good activity checklist Is the activity: Aligned with the objectives and assessment of the course as a whole? Complete within itself - does it make sense? Achievable in the time allotted for it? At the right level? Who will find it too hard or too easy? Is the motivation for undertaking the activity integral, and clear to the student? Where collaboration is part of an activity does it actually require students to work together? If so, how do you expect this to happen? What tutoring will this activity require to be successful, is it feasible? How will students get feedback on what they do?

Under consideration User-owned technology Persistence Connectivism Collaborative authoring

Online courses: http://onlinecourses.conted.ox.ac.uk/ TALL site: http://www.tall.ox.ac.uk/ TALL blog: http://tallblog.conted.ox.ac.uk/ david.white@conted.ox.ac.uk