Building Online Communities

 After researching how to build online communities among students, this is what stood out the most:

Planning real-life or online synchronous meeting times can massively help build connections among students who are enrolled in asynchronous classes. These meetings don't have to be mandatory; however, when students begin to participate and build connections with not only the instructor but their peers, it motivates them to try in class. This feeling of an actual classroom helps students feel like they aren't just staring at a screen, but they are actually part of an online community. A good way to set up these meetings is to post a survey at the beginning of a course to see what time and/or location works best for everyone, and overall get a general demographic of your students and what the classroom looks like. This is also highly important because students and instructors are able to know what their students are like and students can feel like their instructor isn't a demanding force on a screen but an actual human being.

Secondly, using collaborative learning techniques help immensely foment an online learning presence among students. As students are forced to collaborate with each other, they are able to get to know each other better and work together on assignments. Although this technique may not work in every asynchronous classroom, in English classes, for example, online collaborative learning techniques can be extremely helpful. Peer review, group projects, and splitting class reading and notes are all examples of online collaborative techniques that increase virtual interaction among students, ultimately creating a small online learning community. A con to this perhaps is the lack of teacher presence; meanwhile, students connect, there is lack of teacher presence among the classroom, creating a lack of connection between students and instructor. Despite this, the student-to-student connection can increase massively through these techniques. 

Thirdly, an initial introduction from students on a discussion board/presentation can massively help asynchronous students introduce themselves to one another. An additional bonus is requiring them to reply to people's videos, as this can help begin the online community.  When you introduce students to each other, you open the door for further interaction, as you continue to assign group tasks, students are more likely to set up virtual meetings or exchange social media for group projects as you're able to put a name to a face. This task can be the foundational block for an online learning community, when combines with the two other previously mentioned tasks, a teacher can successfully build an online learning community.

To tie this up, after doing half of high school both asynchronous and synchronous during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, I practically consider myself an expert in what methods work the best for learning and for creating those online communities. I personally believe that zoom and online virtual meeting help the most with establishing an online community, things like breakout rooms and virtual collaboration is so highly important. Humans are naturally social animals and when we lack this socialization, it can be detrimental to us, so by virtually socializing with people, we are able to get what we need and build connections that may be beneficial to us later.

That's all I have, thanks for reading. Do you struggle in asynchronous classes when you don't have an online learning community?

- Ms. C.

Websites used:

https://kpcrossacademy.org/building-community-in-online-courses/

Online Learning

 Online learning has become more prevalent than ever in our society, especially now that technology and learners are evolving faster and faster every year. After reading Behaviorism, Cognitivism, Constructivism: Comparing Critical Features From an Instructional Design Perspective by Peggy A. Ertmer and Timothy J. Newby, the three theories, Behaviorism, Cognitivism, and Constructivism all came to my mind as I wondered how they applied in an online setting.

The Behaviorism theory states that all behavior is learned through our interactions with our environment. Although this theory is often only brought up in our psychology classes and textbooks, this theory according to scientists plays a big role in learning. Many children and lessons function best when the learning theory is applied in the classroom. In theory, there is always a stimulus and a response, this stimulus in the classroom could come in the form of a question, the response of course being the answer. However, a concern with there always being a stimulus and response is that it must be constantly maintained and strengthened. A primary example of the Behaviorism learning theory in full action is Pavlov's dog experiment where he conditioned the dog to salivate with the ring of a bell. While children aren't dogs, the idea itself applies to every area of our lives. Meanwhile, a dog becomes conditioned to salivate at the ring of a bell, we become conditioned to become anxious for an exam because we know that if we do good, there will be positive reinforcement whereas if we do bad, we may be punished. Ultimately, the theory of behaviorism becomes a theory for online learning as this ancient theory goes through a period of evolution so that it can be applied to this new high-tech world.

Secondly, you have the Social Cognitive Theory or the Cognitive theory. This theory developed in the 1950s when there was a shift of interest from the behavioral standpoint to the cognitive sciences, focusing more on the mental processes that went into each action instead of the observable behavior. When compared to the behaviorist theory, knowledge isn't measured by what learners do but what they know and how they acquire it, learning is seen as coding information into your brain and as a mental process. However, they also do share similarities in the sense that both theories believe that the environment plays a massive role in the acquisition of knowledge. Both theories have their fair share of similarities and differences. Due to the Cognitive theory having a heavy emphasis on mental structures, it is often only applied when complex forms of learning occur, like analytical problems or information processing. This becomes a large point that hinders the functionality of the cognitive theory, for example, this theory would most likely not be applied in a kindergarten setting as many kindergarteners aren't doing complex problem-solving nor are they very familiar with other environments or schemas. Whereas for example, a college student who has lived, experienced, and felt may be able to grasp content better with the cognitive theory as it'll apply more to their life, allowing it to stick better. In online learning, this theory can be highly effective as many students struggle with memorizing content when just staring at a screen; however, if you apply it to their current struggles and life, they might just memorize it better.

Thirdly, the constructivism theory becomes the opposer to both the behaviorist theory and the cognitive theory. As both of these theories focus on the objective world, the constructivism theory highly focuses on mapping the structure of the world onto the learner as  Behaviorism, Cognitivism, Constructivism: Comparing Critical Features From an Instructional Design Perspective by Peggy A. Ertmer and Timothy J. Newby. Old faithful believers of both the behaviorist and cognitive theories wonder how we attach meaning to knowledge, viewing this theory of learning as the most abstract way, believing that humans create meaning instead of acquiring it. Students simply use their previously acquired knowledge as the foundation blocks for their newly acquired knowledge. This theory isn't applicable to young learners either as they have no foundational blocks or previous history of knowledge, meaning that they have nothing to build knowledge of. This theory can be beneficial for older learners as the content they're learning will apply to older content that they've most likely acquired in person, whereas like the cognitive theory, the constructivism theory isn't applicable.

After the pandemic, two methods of online learning became the most prevalent, asynchronous and synchronous. Asynchronous learning basically means that you get to learn in your own schedule within a certain time frame, meaning you get your assignments and as long as you complete them within a time-frame, you got it. Synchronous learning isn't quite the same, you allocate time towards a certain class or task and you and your class all complete the assignment at the same time. A very good example of synchronous learning was the time when everything shut down and we all had to start hopping on google meets/zooms with our classes to learn at the same time. The debate of what is better really depends on what type of person you are, many people being able to sit down and get everything done; meanwhile many other students require to be fully online to get everything done.

Now that we've briefed on the three learning types and in what settings we apply them, now we can discuss the disadvantages and advantages. The advantages of online learning include being able to do it remotely, meaning someone who doesn't have either the time or the resources to come into a classroom, they can do it right from wherever they are. Being remote because of online learning can also allow you to develop healthy habits and a better work-life balance, while you're surrounded by comfort and familiarity, it facilitates these habits to develop. Aditionally, you also develop a variety of new skills such as time management, communication skills, and self-motivation/discipline. Some of the disadvantages of online learning can be the sense of isolation, while many people are able to develop those healthy work-life habits, there are also people who need constant social stimulation to keep going, things like peer-work are lost due to being remote, making connections harder. Online learning also enables more screen-time which can be extremely harmful both mentally and medically, drying out your eyes, causing headaches, and even opening the gate for mental illness. Finally, online learning requires a huge sum of self-discipline and self-motivation, many students who may struggle with content learning struggling.

I hope you've gained some new insight from this blog post and learned something new. What did you struggle with the most during remote learning?

-Ms. C