Socratic Monologue
I was talking with Alec a couple of nights ago about the upcoming grad class we are working on. One part of the discussion concerned my role in the course. I’m listed as a teaching assistant but we agreed that my role wouldn’t be one that usually falls in that category. Alec said that he wanted me to be a sort of community builder in the course. This is going to be a much needed role in this first iteration of the course. We have 30 students enlisted in a fully online graduate level course that would normally be limited to 15. Usually there is a certain degree of community building in a class that enhances the learning process. In a class of 30 where students won’t get to meet in person, that’s a little harder to do.
As a community builder, I need to generate and spread around some social capital. My posse members Alec, Rick and Heather have studied and written about social capital from an academic perspective. Some of Rick’s work has included social capital in virtual learning communities (good stuff, and worth a read if you are involved in any kind of online learning). I’ll have to make sure I re-read his writing as I develop my role. Dean had a blog post recently about social capital, and Heather writes extensively about social capital. Their ideas will also inform what I do.
My first impression of this role of community builder is that I’ll be trying to get the social capital flowing in the class to see if we can grow into some sort of community. Usually, a community comes into being and grows organically – without any kind of guidance or planning. I’ll need to share out as much social capital as I can. I like to think that I’ll be more than just a community builder. I’m going to be a social capital philanthropist and donate as much goodwill, trust and helpfulness as I can muster with the goal of jump-starting the community formation process. This will be an interesting experience and I’m sure I’ll have much to write about as this develops.
Oops – I had a couple of links that were gorfed. Thanks to Corrie Bergeron for leaving me a tweet to let me know.
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First, Rob, you really need to sleep more. This post showed up in my reader at 12:56 AM.
As for building community, 30 people in an online course is a lot. Have you given any thought to splitting them into two groups within the same class. This would make discussion boards more manageable for everyone involved. I always recommend to instructors that you keep the number of students to 15 or under if possible. Rick may have written something about class sizes for discussion board purposes somewhere.
I would imagine that the same would apply if you are having students communicate in other ways as well. Imagine trying to follow the conversation with 30 people in IRC.
Random thoughts – As my eight-year old might say, “…the Cub Scout gives goodwill.”
There’s a class of professional party-goers who get paid to get people out on the dance floor and having a good time. Same concept?
Heather has an excellent and practical point about keeping things managable.
Left to itself, a thirty-person synchronous discussion event – regardless of venue* – will tend to go one of two ways. It will either form a large group centered around one or two charismatic people “holding court”, or split up into ten or fifteen small-group conversations.
Knowing this is a natural pattern, don’t fight it. Plan for it and exploit it. Especially in a disorienting and unfamiliar environment, use familiar forms and structures as much as possible – the crackerbarrel / poster session, round-table discussions, debate, game show, mock trial, etc.
Hi Rob. As a participant in 831, I have to agree about the size of the class. Last term I took 2 online courses – one with 8 students and one with 31. The 8-student class was intimate and memorable. The 30-person class started out like a marathon (can I possibly read all these posts and produce meaningful replies?) until we broke into smaller groups (whew..). The challenge was being in a group that was stimulating. For one discussion, the group was very active. But in a subsequent one, I posted and then waited a week for another group member (ugh) to join in. Perhaps organizing groups around interest, or a particular discussion question would work. It is nice, however, to also see what is being discussed in the other groups (that didn’t happen in my last course) so that one can get to know all 30 members. A nice way for others might be to have a facilitator for each discussion who summarizes the discussion for others to read. Just some thoughts from recent experience that you may find helpful! Best regards, Cindy
Thanks for your thoughts and suggestions, everyone. One idea that came out of your comments was to break the class into smaller groups. I think that we’ve designed enough flexibility into the course that participants will be able to coalesce into smaller groups as it suits their learning needs. I should probably have a full blog post to do a decent job of describing the course structure. I fully agree that 30 is a really large group for an online class, but I think we’ll be able to make it work for us.
@Heather – I’ve been reading a lot of Rick’s papers to get myself ready for the job. I’ll keep you posted how things are going over the semester. Hopefully you’ll share some of your expertise.
@Corrie – I think your description of the social dynamic of large groups is perfect. I see part of my job as “social capital philanthropist” will be to try to keep the group moving between those two states – sometimes the large groups, sometimes the small conversations.
@Cindy. First off I want to welcome you to the course and to the edu-tech-learning ongoing discussion. (I am starting to fatigue of the “o-sphere” collective nouns, and I think that ongoing discussion is a better descriptor). With regards to your experiences, I’m glad you are letting us know about that experience. I hope you’ll speak a bit more about that when we have our whole class synchronous sessions, as well as in your own blog postings.
Thanks to all three of you for taking the time to comment.
Corrie – I forgot to add that I thought the quotation of your son is a nicely succinct description of what I hope to do. Thanks for passing that along.