Building Online Community with Emerging Technologies

with Michelle Pacansky-Brock

Mon, 03/01/2010 - 8:00am - Fri, 03/26/2010 - 5:00pm (Pacific Time)

Learning is, by nature, a social activity and successful online courses should be designed with this in mind. This class will explore the essentials of fostering community in an online class and provide you with a robust toolkit of tips, learning activities, and creative uses of new collaborative technologies for you to integrate into your course design.  Experience new levels of student engagement and retention and see online learning through a whole new lens!

Throughout the class, you will be using a variety of tools to converse with your classmates through voice and video conversations, connect through our own closed social network and collaboratively build a wiki.

Learning Outcomes

By the end of this course, you'll be able to:

• Facilitate an online class that promotes active learning and fosters online community.
• Validate the role of community in a successful online learning experience.
• Experience the social effects of personalized learning activities.
• Identify the essential instructor and student roles in the development of online community.
• Evaluate the effectiveness of collaborative web 2.0 tools (social networking, VoiceThreads, wikis and blogs) in the development of online community.
• Create a VoiceThread.
• Contribute to a wiki.

Requirements for Completion:

To earn university credit or to earn a completion certificate, you must earn a minimum of 130 of the possible 185 points.

Hours Required

This is a 4-week course. Course completion, including reading, online discussions, and assignments, will take approximately 10 hours per week.

Recommended Skills

• Completion of "Introduction to Teaching with Moodle" course or equivalent experience using Moodle
• Basic computer skills (use of word processor, e-mail, file management)
• Basic Internet skills (use of browser, searches, uploading and downloading files)
• Familiarity with discussion boards
• Basic PowerPoint skills

Technical Requirements

• Fairly recent Mac or PC (not more than three years old) with a current operating system
• Current browser (Netscape 7, Firefox 1.0, or Internet Explorer 6 or later)
• Internet connection, preferably broadband (DSL speeds), but a 56k modem will do

Other

• You will be asked to create three free online accounts that will enable you to utilize VoiceThread, WetPaint (a wiki site), and Ning (a social networking tool). We'll be using these in class.
• While not required, a USB microphone and/or a webcam is strongly encouraged.