Bounded Community - DeRoma

Establishing learning communities is important in any learning situation. Learning is a social and cultural process in which students make meaning based on previous experience. Students learn best when they have opportunities to collaborate with their peers and share ideas. Learning communities are especially important in online environments because students lack the face-to-face interaction of a traditional classroom. Unless instructors take steps to develop a sense of community, many online students may feel disconnected and unmotivated.

The Bounded Community article describes several strategies to assist instructors in establishing learning communities within their courses. The most significant thing that instructors can do is to incorporate plenty of collaborative opportunities into the course design. These activities can be as simple as asynchronous discussion forums or as complex as group projects. Unless students are very comfortable with the online environment, it may be best for instructors to begin by offering “weak” forms of collaboration, such as threaded discussions, before introducing complicated group assignments. Collaborative activities are most effective when they model authentic problems or real-world situations.

Because ongoing collaboration depends on the development of trust and respect among students, the instructor may need to set some guidelines for online interaction. These guidelines might include tips for responding to forum posts or descriptions of roles for group activities. To reinforce the importance of these guidelines, the instructor should model them whenever he/she interacts with students in the course. Instructors can further develop a sense of trust in the online environment by including personal experiences and anecdotes in interactions with students.

Finally, instructors must be diligent in responding to students. They need to be actively involved in all aspects of the course in order to avoid appearing “absent.” Students are likely to take a course less seriously if they sense that it is a low priority. If the instructor is not online every day, the students won’t be there either.