RSA4: Strategies for Collaborative Learning: Building eLearning and Blended Learning Communities

Strategies for Collaborative Learning: Building eLearning and Blended Learning Communities

Since the development of online learning, instructors have been searching for a way to promote collaborative learning online. It becomes a struggle to collaborate with people you have never met or spoken with face to face. “The online environment can be a lonely place” (Palloff & Pratt, 2007). Collaborating with classmates can help ease those feelings of loneliness, but only if it is done correctly. Collaboration can also help create an atmosphere of critical thinking, therefore allowing students to learn more and gain deeper understandings of content. So then the question remains, how can one promote collaboration in an online class?

Before one can begin to promote online collaboration, they must first understand how creating community relates to learning. According to Soren Kaplan, co-founder of iCohere, Inc., communities are the vehicle for which people are connected to other people’s stories, ideas, and knowledge. “Communities extend learning by creating a structure whereby people can learn from “informal” interactions” (Kaplan, 2009). With an online learning community, facilitators need to think specifically how they can create a collaborative atmosphere without pushing any students into that lonely place. It is important to create an environment of trust in which students feel safe to open up and share their thoughts and experiences. Among many others, one suggestion Kaplan has is to create a Buddy System. Students are put into pairs or groups to work together on projects or discussions. Buddies could be responsible for ensuring their partner is not feeling isolated within the course. The partner then always has someone in that class to turn to with questions or concerns.

“Initially ten students posted introductions to the group, but one disappeared immediately thereafter” (Palloff & Pratt, 2007). The authors go on to explain that this student’s absence was due to the fact that no one had commented on her introductory post. She had shared quite a bit of herself, but had the feeling that no one else really cared what she had to say. If the course had used the Buddy System idea that Soren Kaplan had proposed, this student may not have felt so alone because she would have had at least one student in the course guaranteed to comment on her posting. Both Palloff & Pratt and Kaplan focus on creating a collaborative community in order to foster learning in the online classroom.

References

Palloff, R.M., & Pratt, K. (2007). Building online learning communities: Effective strategies for the virtual classroom. San Francisco: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

Kaplan, S. (2009) Strategies for collaborative learning: Building eLearning and blended learning communities. Accessed at http://www.icohere.com/collaborativeLearning.htm on December 8, 2012.