Building Community Online

1) Creating Productive Online Discussions by Karen Peters, Penn State University. (April 2000)

Part 1: Creative Use of Threaded Discussion Areas
     Five specific educational advantages (e.g. confidence, enhances discussion, and multiple perspectives) of a course with online discussion tools.

Part 2: Asynchronous Learning Environments: Key Issues
     Issues in running discussions such as workload, access, and evaluation, as well as notes on fostering group participation.

Part 3: Concrete Steps for Online Discussions: A Checklist
     12 Strategies addressing support, structure, controversy and stress, and 11 activities (e.g. summarizing, guest facilitator, role playing and polling) for successful online discussions.

2) On-line learning, on-line communities
Dorothy Bennett, Margaret Honey, Naomi Hupert, Terri Meade, News from the Center for Children and Technology.
     Discussion on building an effective learning community, including creating a safe environment, and designing flexible classroom activities (including posting excerpts).

3) Online Learning Communities
Marcy Bauman, University of Michigan-Dearborn.
    Looks at difficulties faced by students and instructors in online discussions, guidelines for creating communities within individual classes, and for creating learning communities outside of class. (1997)

4) Creating a Virtual Learning Community
Peg Saragina, Santa Rosa Junior College.
      This paper provides a working definition of a virtual learning community that the presenter used to design her online course. She shares techniques used to prepare her students to learn and to provide timely and effective feedback. (1999)

5) Creating An Online Learning Environment That Fosters Information Literacy, Autonomous Learning and Leadershi
Dr. Leon James, Professor of Psychology, University of Hawaii (Manoa).
     Educational principles of the online generational community-classroom from psychological perspective, including mining hypertext as a learning resource, creating community-building forces among learners, maintaining a focus on learning skills, and more. (1997)

6) Building an Online Educational Community: The Architecture and Language of the Electronic Classroom
Ann Marie Olson, LeTourneau University.  
      The author concludes that instructors designing online courses need to develop deliberate strategies for fostering community, strategies which will help to orient their students to the rhetorical contexts of the online classroom. Specifically, these strategies must address the architecture of the online classroom and the ways in which this architecture impacts relationships and behavioral norms. Concurrently, these strategies must address language and the rhetorical features of electronic text. (1999)

7) Dear ______, Wish You Were Here! Humanizing Online Instruction
Libby Roeger, Shawnee Community College.
      Eight tips for humanizing a web course, including tone, student bios, and keeping the audience in mind. (1999)

8) Fostering the Student-Centered Classroom Online
Kevin T. McNulty T.H.E. Journal, February 2002.
      A teacher's experiences in creating a website to allow students to interact, check weekly grades, publish projects and portfolios for family and friends to see, as well as a place for faculty to publish. The author found that creating this type of an authentic audience had a positive effect on production and motivation.