For awhile now I have been preoccupied with thoughts about the future of education, and the extent to which we want to rely on online education; over this past year, this train of thought has been traveling through areas of higher education and Catholic universities for how to better create online learning communities. Ideas from this train of thought have included:
Teachers are the gatekeepers and guides to better learning experiences and outcomes for students whether through online or offline learning.
— CarrieLynn Reinhard (@MediaOracle) March 5, 2015
To create #onlinecommunity in #onlineeducation you have to help professors develop their teaching skills whether they are online or offline.
— CarrieLynn Reinhard (@MediaOracle) March 5, 2015
I am getting to the point where the train needs to pull into a station — where I need to report on these ideas to my university. Before I do, I have some last questions to ask all of you, about online education and online communities.
Please complete the following two polls to help me fuel my train of thought and get me to that station. And, of course, anything I present just to my university will come online to share with the wider world.
It's Playing, Just With Research 
2 responses to “Online Learning Communities Polls”
been doing this and thinking about it for a longer time. Building community is, for my pegagogical approach to online education, essential. But in traditional brick-and-mortar classes, community can develop even if the prof does nothing, because there are a number of avenues for communications (e.g. before and after class) In the online environment it must be more formally developed. That said, again depending on pedagogy, I think both F2F and online courses benefit from creating an effective online community. And look at Professional Learning Communities and the benefit they provide.
Good luck
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Indeed, which is why one of my overall thoughts is that we just need to help develop better teachers who are more comfortable developing these types of relationships with their students, and encouraging their students to do the same with each other. And if the teacher is comfortable doing it F2F, then we can help find the tools/techniques to do it online as well. And part of that is encouraging students to develop community themselves — to recognize that students are not just in school for an education (i.e. discipline specific knowledge gathering and skill building) but also for social interaction and social literacy.
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