ONLINE EXPERIENCE Building Community and Interaction

Building and maintaining community is an important aspect of a Butler University learning environment. Creating a community for a face-to-face learning environment typically occurs without much effort. Learners meet before or after class to study or chat, they ask you questions after class or during office hours, and learners participate in class discussions or group activities within the class. A continuous challenge for HyFlex instructors is keeping learners engaged in a single learning community regardless of their participation mode.

Establish Rapport

Icebreaker Activity

To build community and get better acquainted with your learners, include an icebreaker discussion forum or video submission assignment in which learners can introduce themselves to both you and their classmates. Remember to introduce yourself as well. If you have already created an introductory video for your course, provide a link to it or embed it into the assignment instead of creating a completely new video. Keep in mind that many people find the standard icebreakers boring. Provide guidelines so learners say and/or write something both meaningful and specific to your course – what they hope to gain from the course, what they are most looking forward to, etc.

If you choose to have your learners record a Panopto video, make sure to set up an assignments folder in Panopto (see instructions at the following link: How to Allow Viewers to Record Videos Using Assignment Folders) and provide instructions on how to record a Panopto video.

Prior Knowledge/Experience Survey

To gather more targeted information about your learners, consider putting together a brief survey. Keep the survey short and focused on what might be most useful for you to know about your learners.

You might also consider a knowledge-checking self-assessment or quiz if you want to ensure learners master specific prerequisite topics. Then you can plan additional optional assignments for learners who might not quite be up to speed at the beginning of your course.

Learner Goals/Outcomes

Encouraging learners to write (and assess their progress towards) their own learning outcomes makes the course more relevant to your learners. Providing this type of opportunity for learners to take ownership of their own learning increases motivation.

For a simple assignment, ask learners to write their own personal goals/outcomes for the course. Make sure to give them guidelines on how to create realistic and attainable goals. For a more in-depth assignment, learners can create and define both short- and long-term learning goals with the expectation that they monitor personal progress throughout the course.

Opportunities for Online Interaction

Opportunities for online interaction can occur in three ways:

- Students interacting with course content,
- Students interacting with one another, and
- Students interacting with the instructor.

Interaction with Course Content

Provide students with time and opportunity to learn to use and interact with the resources provided. Think beyond reading a textbook and writing a paper. Consider using some of these techniques to present content:

- - Branching scenarios
  - Storytelling
  - Virtual brainstorming sessions
  - Q&A forums

Interaction with One Another

Most online courses at Butler are asynchronous, but there are many ways to build in interaction between learners:

- - Give and receive peer reviews on individual papers.
  - Locate, share, and critique resources and report group findings to the entire class.
  - Work through a case study online.
  - Debate a topic.
  - Discuss ways they would apply theories or concepts to real-world situations.
  - Complete a collaborative research project and write a paper together.

Interaction with the Instructor

- - Provide prompt and thorough feedback on activities.
  - Participate in and summarize key discussion points.
  - Design content, questions, reviews, and assessments for interactive engagement.

Regular and Substantive Interaction

In order for your course to be considered online or hybrid education, it must have significant "regular and substantive interaction between the students and the instructor" based on guidelines provided by the US Department of Education and the Higher Learning Commission (HLC). If interaction is limited or primarily initiated by the student, it's considered a correspondence course, NOT a distance education/online course. Students may NOT use federal financial aid to pay for correspondence education. Simply posting recorded lectures or textual materials, along with exams or quizzes, does not meet these federal guidelines.

How do You Include Substantive Interaction?

Not all interaction is considered substantive. For example, an announcement reminding students of due dates, while important, isn't focused on content and isn't adding value to student learning of the course material. Also, although your course might technically include engagement through group assignments or when a student emails you to ask a question, neither of these interactions "count" because engagement needs to be instructor-initiated interaction.

Over the years, best practices resulted in a list of recommended techniques. The Instructional Design Team suggests the following to help you provide “substantive interaction” in your online courses:

- - - Threaded discussion forums with appropriate instructor participation.
    - Real-time audio/videoconferencing.
    - Using chat room, telephone, text, and/or email to help students learn more about the subject matter.
    - Weekly announcements (dealing with course content to add value to student understanding).
    - Timely feedback for student work with feedback substantive enough that it's adding to student understanding of content.
    - Live orientation or review sessions.
    - In-person labs/exams.
    - Face-to-face group or individual meetings.

Note: Although the revised guideline suggests only incorporating a couple of these methods, good practices encourage utilizing as many as possible.

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