Developing Active Learning Community for an Online Course Hao (Harrison) Yang State University of New Oswego

What is ALN and Why?  ALN refers to asynchronous learning network.  ALN courses have been recognized more common than synchronous communication. Many of the traditional face-to-face classroom activities can be reconstructed through web-based asynchronous distance learning such as conferencing, electronic mail, bulletin, etc.  Students and instructors can work at their own pace and at locations they are able to control.

What are SLN and EDU 505?  SUNY Learning Network (SLN)  SLN EDU 505 Course

What is the Main Problem on ALN/SLN Courses?

Seeing Listening Communication Anxiety

Social Presence  Social presence relates the concepts of intimacy and immediacy.  Social presence is defined as the “degree of salience of the other person in the (mediated) interaction and the consequent salience of the interpersonal relationships” (Short, Williams, and Christie, 1976). “the ability of participants in a community of inquiry to project themselves socially and emotionally, as real people through the medium of communication being used” (Garrison and Anderson, 2003).

What Does “Research” Say?  It is important that instructors and students involved in asynchronous communication develop a set of immediacy behaviors that “cultures” social presence and establish active learning community.

What Do I Do?  Strategies of promoting active learning community for this online course emerged as a result of using a systematic approach to break the isolation and to increase social presence between students and the instructor, students and students, and students and their learning environment, and to ensure the meaningfulness of Web-based communication. STEP is essentially a cyclic process and the four components of STEP are interrelated. S caffold T ransition P resentation E valuation

The S in STEP  Most students participated in the course either with little experience in asynchronous distance learning or with limited skills and understandings on this type of learning which had multiple threads with several discussions and interactions progressing simultaneously.  The S in STEP stands for scaffolds before initiating class and starting new learning modules. The basic idea of scaffolding is to gradually ease students into what are likely to be challenging tasks by creating a supportive structure to guide their work. In other words, as the educators we would initially do some of the work for students.

 To reduce the communication anxiety among students, Ice-breaker at the beginning of learning modules – instructor constructed an open discussion on the bulletin board by sharing his own experience on distance learning and background on computer technology, and invited students to participate in this activity. “Mini-Lecture” in learning modules - instructor started with the related concepts/knowledge and particular technological skill that students need to prepare their undertaking actual assignments/projects, provided resources links and examples, and encouraged students to reflect and discuss the possibilities for extending the ideas and technologies into real world situations.

The T in STEP  ALN brings some new challenges in practice: on the one hand, students have to deal with the lack of personal touches, non-verbal cues, and delayed responses; on the other hand, instructor may carry off the real discussions among students, students may eliminate their own ideas and thoughts and simply play “safe ball” around instructor.  Research indicates that distance education is characterized by dialogue (or, the amount of control exercised by the learner) and structure (or, the amount of control exercised by the instructor). Additional structure tends to increase distance (decreases community), and more dialogue tends to decrease (increase community).  The T in STEP stands for transitions during the learning process.

 To meet these challenges and to keep students actively participating in learning activities, the instructor of this course used the “Online Office Hours” (private folder) to promptly respond to students’ questions, and to privately acknowledge those students whose ideas were posted without many or any responses and feedback. Meanwhile, when common questions/concerns appeared, the instructor interacted with students by posting his thoughts on the bulletin board or discussion area.

The E in STEP  The E in STEP stands for the evaluations during and after each learning module. Periodically evaluating students’ performances serves two ends: to remind inactive students to contribute ideas and/or react to others’ contributions, and to reinforce interactive students continuing their journey on their knowledge and skills from emergent to mastery.  As one of practices, the instructor sent every student a brief evaluation report every other week to share the frequency of her or his postings and concerns/comments which occurred between instructor and student, student and classmates. Meanwhile, the instructor encouraged students to periodically summarize the discussion to avoid it becoming too fragmented or drifting off the theme.

The P in STEP  The P in STEP stands for the presentations on outcomes. There are a variety of ways to launch active, reflective learning. Providing opportunities for students to present their ideas, methods, and products is one of the most powerful ways. This is essential not only at the conclusion of a project, but also as the project grows. Presenting projects is an authentic activity that provides an enormous motivation for students.  Due to the nature of asynchronous learning, instead of the face-to-face presentation, students’ projects have been opened on the online class after gaining their permission. Through the online class, students could share and compare their projects with projects generated by their classmates, which might inspire them to revise and communicate further more.

Method  To assess the effectiveness of STEP approach and to measure the social presence of students working collaboratively in this course, Lin’s (2004) Social Presence Questionnaire was adopted based upon its validity and reliability. 12 statements in this questionnaire were placed on a 7-point continuum with endpoints of strongly agree (7) to strongly disagree (1).  In order to preserve anonymity, an anonymous and voluntary on-line student survey of the social presence was undertaken by the end of spring in 22 of students’ responses (59%) were completed and usable.

Results  Perception of the assistance of group activity to learning  Social comfort of expressing and sensing affect  Social navigation

Recap  This study presents how a sound practical approach was designed and then implemented in a graduate on-line course, including: S caffolds before initiating class and starting new learning topics; T ransitions during the learning process in order to avoid the lack of personal touches and non- verbal cues; E valuations during and after each learning topic; P resentations on outcomes sharing with the class.

Conclusions  The results of this study indicate that in order to establish the active learning community for ALN courses, the systematic approach with a variety of strategies should be designed and implemented.  The results of this study indicate that establishing the active learning community can reduce the communication anxiety and increase social presence when students and instructor are separated in different spaces and timing. The active learning community in some way can help participants to interact through nonverbal communication and encourage students continually post their ideas and thoughts.