These past few weeks have been rather interesting, I just started teaching an online class for mobile web design and development this is my first time teaching. I am also taking Fundamentals of Online Teaching and Learning class to learn how to create a sense of online community through distance learning with several asynchronous and synchronous methods such as emails, discission foums, Wikis as well as instant messaging, group chat, video conferncing.
When trying to reflect upon what I am currently learning about the knowledge economy, Social capital, learning at a distance and Community involvment. I am reminded of Nelson Nagai my old economics instructor from years ago, He had taught me that Capital was "Knowledge", Capital is not just the start up funds you need to start a business. Capital is the knowledge and creative ideas you need to start-up the business and knowledge you need to know how to utilize new technologies. His emphasis on technology was that the more tools, devices and programs you know how to use the more capital you own.
I am also starting to relate classroom community facilitation with the other types of online groups, blogs, and social networking community managment. So the he first thing that comes to mind about Social Capital is Social networking communities like Facebook, myspace, Bebo and more importantly Linkedin, the list goes on and on. Connecting with old friends or meeting new people online from all over the world, getting to know them, adding them to your contact list is social capital.
Thanks to my classmate Rebecca she pointed out to me that in The article
Building a Sense of Community at a Distance emphasizes that "a strong sense of community based on socializing and sharing of personal information", So here I have my facebook that is just a bunch of old classmates kindergarten friends as well as high school. I like to use Linkedin for my business contacts. I got a myspace too, I'm sure I have signed up to most of the communities on the web. In fact I used to work for one of the worlds largest online dating communities, where networking is the major part of generating the company's revenue.
I feel that online learning from the students stand point can look like any blog, forum, online chat, youtube video. While from the instructors point of view it can look like any open source content management system administration back end where you are publishing/unpublishing modules, creating html content and linking to outside resources.
There are a few discussion forums on the web I hang out at that are frequented by so many people responses to post are almost instantaneous even though forums are asynchronous. The type communities I like to participate at are usually mobile development communities or programming groups. I find that high traffic forums have a synchronous feel to them, almost like chat just public. You can post back and forth with anyone anywhere.
Whats nice about networking on live forums is that you can exchange IM or email address info. The usual contact method when posting back and forth in a live forum is that one initiates IM contact to not post email and other contact info to a public forum. Contact information can usually be obtained in a users signature or avatar profile.
The social aspect of networking does not stop there, the conversation usually is something about exchanging
XFN web links or rss feeds to their blog which will help search engines recognize their blog as part of a network/community. This type of social networking can be mostly attributed to
Web 2.0 concepts.
I think that using blogs as an educational tool in conjunction with a learning management system is a good way to share resources with the knowledge economy to create a sense of community as well serve as a download facility where students can access PowerPoint lecture slides, WWW links, solutions to problems, past examination papers, chat space, and discussion forums (electronic bulletin boards). It is also a good interaction tool when commenting on posted articles has been enabled.
I have participated in many online communities and blogs as well as built them. I find that Interaction and presence are major factors in building a community. A good example of presence would be something like a "who's online indicator" and interaction being one person greeting another user when they appear to be online. Same applies here in Moodle you are able to send another user a personal messages while both user are logged in. As for me the instructor, I like to be logged in to my class the whole time I am at the PC. I want to make the students aware of my presence so all they would have to do to ask me a question is click my contact info from the "who's online module".
What I am learning from the Fundamentals of Online Teaching and Learning Class is that I am able to relate a little bit more from students point of view. Since this is my first semester teaching I have been interacting with the students as much as I can to help generate a sense of community. I also have been trying to structure my assignments where students check others work and provide them with some feedback. I think that this method works well for me because with mobile programming you are developing for 100's of different browsers and students need to know how thier web page's look on other phones.
The only problem I have with how it's working out for me is that I was not to specific about the frequency at witch they need to make posts in the discussion area. It's been the students interest to wait till the weekend to turn in work and post to discussions. This week I started my own discussion asking that they share design tips in the discussion forum as well as if they have any as well as post if you learned anything in the discussion
I already know that the Fundamentals of Online Teaching and Learning class is going to be a huge help for me in the future create a better sense of community with the class.
Resources:
Suzanne Ama, Maria Bertsch-Brown, Valiscia Greenwell, “Integration of Millennials in Online Communities,” June 2, 2006
Alfred P. Rovai, “Building a Sense of Community at a Distance,” April 2002
