Welcome to Week 2 of the New Online Teacher Course.
The theme for this week is online communication. Last week we had a general introduction and overview related to the online environment in terms of the online learner and e-learning trends. This week we will address ways to establish social presence and communication with online students.
Let's start this week with a story.
Scenario: Online Communication
This is Maria's first experience teaching an online course. She misses the live cues from students, and the spontaneity of classroom interaction. While some of the students are participating in the Discussion Group, most seem to be inactive. What's more she is has no sense of whether the students are actually learning anything. She is not sure what the problem is, but to her, there seems to be a general lack of energy and enthusiasm for the course. She is becoming increasingly anxious about this situation. How might Maria make connections with her students, and help her students to connect with each other?
What is Social Presence?
An underlying theme for this week, is the notion of social presence online.Social presence may be defined as:"The ability to portray one's self as a “real” person in the online environment." *As you work your way through this week, think about the following questions:
- How important is social presence?
- Do students care about social presence, or do they just want to get working on their course materials?
- What strategies would you use to establish social presence?
View this short video on how one of your colleagues (Lina Medaglia, Liberal Arts and Science), addresses this question. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=syWSv9cBTxM
*Social Presence Quote -Source: Pallof_Pratt_Presence. pdffrom Jossey-Bass Conference, Oct 2008
Learning Tasks for Week 2 include the following:
- Letter to Students
Contribute to the development of a letter to new online students. Go to the Wikispaces site and add your thoughts to the letter. Include I key idea or piece of advice etc related to their learning in this environment. Hopefully,as everyone contributes, you will have a substantial portion of a letter that you could post to your online students. You are encouraged to work together to fashion the wording. This may require some editing and additions to each other’s work. - Reflection
By the end of week 2, post a reflection to the blog that you were asked to create (in week 1) related to your learning experience thus far in this course. You may want to include thoughts related to the following questions: Did you have any aha moments? Did anything surprise you or help to validate what you already know?Are there elements of the course that you could use in your work with your online students? What issues emerge for you? What remains unclear to you? I will create a page with links to all of your blogs so that you can easily view them. - Discovery Learning
Create an account in Wordle
http://www.wordle.net
This site creates an image of key concepts in your course. Just copy and paste text that reflects key themes and then paste it into wordle. It creates an interesting image. Can you think of any possible uses with your students?
Or, if you would rather search for another tool that might engage your students, feel free to do so, and share your findings with us.
Post your link to your Wordle, or alternate resource, into the Discussions tab in the course Wiki. - Social Presence using Twitter OPTIONAL ACTIVITY
View the following link on the use of Twitter for establishing social presence online.http://www.patricklowenthal.com/publications/Using_Twitter_to_Enhance_Social_Presence.pdf
Create a Twitter account and send me an e-mail when you have done so. http://www.twitter.com
You can then follow me on Twitter . Just do a search within Twitter for slesch. Or, you may want to search for others to follow. I can also follow you if you send me an invitation. In this way, you can evaluate whether this media might be a useful way to connect with your online students.
I hope you enjoy these activities.
Cheers,
Shirley
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