MARK ROM: One of the issues that I really
wanted to grapple with the online course
is how do you create a community of students.
On my in-person classes, I assign them to teams.
They work in teams face to face over
the course of the semester.
I wanted that same possibility through the online course.
So I had to think carefully about how can I
get the students to interact with each other,
to engage in conversations with each other,
and most importantly, how to provide
each other valuable feedback on their projects
over the course of the semester.
That's hard to do.
I think it can be done, but you have to think carefully
about how to bring those students together
even if they will never be in the same place with each other.
In order to bring the students together in workable teams
so that they actually had a chance
to develop some relationships, I had to create team assignments
for every module of the course.
So they're not working together just a little bit occasionally,
but every week they have different kinds
of team activities they can do together.
Some of them would be involved in just a discussion board
topic where they would have to read and respond
to each other's posts.
They also had a semester-long project
where they had to do an original piece of research,
but they do their original research in teams
in order to provide guidance, feedback, suggestions,
comments, and criticisms to each other.
I think for the students to fully engage
in the online environment they have to know that I'm engaged--
that the instructor is fully engaged.
That means I would take steps to write them reasonably
often outside the formal course material just
to let them know that I'm caring about them
and thinking about them, being responsive to their criticisms,
their concerns, their questions.
I'm answering their emails promptly.
The more they feel that you are in it with them,
I think, the more that they will be in it with you.