Communication, Community, and Student Engagement in the Online Classroom

The most difficult task in transitioning from on-ground to online teaching is determining the best way to emulate the community and engagement inherent in a face-to-face classroom. Consider this: Your online classroom can be even more engaging than an on-campus classroom. Simple tools, such as discussion forums and announcements, can elevate your classroom immensely. You will be able not only to share your expertise with students, but also give them opportunities to experience real-world events, discuss course topics, and expand on their knowledge base by leveraging their peers’ experiences. Announcements and discussions aren’t the only methods of communication that can create an engaging environment in which students can thrive. Group work is not an impossibility, nor is bringing in outside voices such as guest lecturers or community members. Here are some simple tips and tricks for taking your online classroom to the next level.

A good in-person conversation can be incredibly inspiring; the same holds true for online discussions. However, simply inserting discussions into a course does not automatically create an interactive and collaborative environment (Kanuka, Rourke, & Laflamme, 2007, p. 269). Online discussions are most engaging when thoughtfully structured to optimize learning. Lundberg and Sheridan (2015) explain, “online students report that they learn better when they receive guiding questions, frequent dialog, meaningful instructor feedback, and when they engage with one another” (p. 8). Thus, discussion questions ought to be carefully crafted to support student learning and engagement.

Discussion questions should be complex (to foster thorough answers), open-ended (to allow for multiple perspectives), and relevant (to solidify understanding). By responding to well-crafted discussion questions, students can construct new knowledge, make meaningful real-world connections, and learn from their peers (Hsiao, Chen, & Hu, 2013, p. 15). Kanuka, Rourke, and Laflamme (2007) suggest “highly structured, planned, confrontational and demanding activities that include directed roles and responsibilities for the students’ contributions in the online classroom are key elements to moving students to higher levels of understanding and critical discourse” (p. 268-269). By providing an environment in which students can explore ideas, discussions offer students experience in the practice of serious inquiry.

Faculty should monitor, direct, and enhance the conversation to guide students toward discovery. Conversations must be actively shaped according to pedagogical intent. Faculty presence is essential: “professors may find success fostering critical discourse abilities in students by posing higher order discussion topics and challenging students to become actively involved” (Gerber, Scott, Clements, & Sarama, 2005, p. 26). Elevating and promoting purposeful conversation can be accomplished through highlighting replies that are particularly cogent to reward excellence, redirecting conversations to promote reflection, and asking penetrating questions to deepen understanding. Clearly communicated guidelines and expectations also support engagement and success.

Announcements are an important means by which an instructor can build community and inject personality into a course. While the announcement space can be used to provide information pertinent to the course content, announcements can also act as a space for instructors to share their own experiences, provide anecdotes, or connect course concepts to the world outside of the classroom. Sharing announcements helps an instructor maintain a visible presence during the course and conveys important information to the whole class (Mitchell-Holder, 2016).

Announcements are especially important for providing clarity to assignments, projects, and class expectations. You can use your announcements to course correct, praise, or encourage students to keep up the good work. Announcements also provide an avenue for students to interact with you outside of discussions and lecture material. Announcements are also a great place to link to current supplementary articles and resources that your students may find interesting.

It is recommended that you log in to your course a few times a week; each time you do, provide an announcement. There’s no need to send multiple announcements in a day or to send large, multi-topic announcements. Doing so can cause students to lose track of your announcements or to treat them as unimportant. Remember that announcements crammed with information run the risk of creating cognitive overload for students—especially at a time when students and professors are still acclimating to a university life lived entirely online (Costa, 2019). Don’t forget that your students are now receiving more e-communications from their professors than ever. Including only the most important information in class announcements ensures that students will begin to regard them as necessary reading amidst all of the other online chatter. Be clear and concise, and provide what’s necessary to help your students succeed.

Building community is key to ensuring that you and your students stay engaged when making the switch to online classes. When teaching online, you need to be intentional about providing networking opportunities for students that would have happened more naturally in face-to-face settings.

One of the easiest ways to build community in online courses is through small group activities or assignments. As Williams, Duray, and Reddy (2006) explain, team learning stimulates student thinking at the higher levels of Bloom’s taxonomy, including application, analysis, synthesis, and evaluation.

It is important to begin the group collaboration process through clear course planning. In group assignment directions, be sure to write clear expectations for the collaboration process and suggest technologies that students can use for collaboration. Many learning management systems create a space for each small group to communicate and share materials and information with each other. Other options include Google Drive, OneDrive, and/or Zoom. When choosing the technologies to suggest, consider whether you, the instructor, would like to have access to monitor the communication of group members.

A key component to community building through group activities is to underscore the importance of collaboration. This can be done by not basing grades for group projects solely on the final project, but by incorporating measurement of success with the research and writing process (Lowes, 2014). You may consider asking students to submit a peer survey at the conclusion of the project, where they measure each member’s contribution to the final project.

One of the best ways to keep students engaged in the group assessment is to suggest or assign specific roles for students, such as team leader, team recorder/communicator, and team editor (Milman, 2015). Kleinsasser and Hong (2016) suggest that students must take charge of how they will learn in a group project. Assigning student roles can help eliminate ambiguity and facilitate communication within a group. You may also consider asking each group to create their own “contract,” where they address fundamental decisions such as how often they will they communicate with each other, what method they will use for communication, and how they will break up task responsibilities.

Finally, consider adding checkpoints throughout the course to scaffold group projects and ensure students are making regular progress toward the end goal. These checkpoints can be formal assignments that the group turns in for grading, or they can be reminders or timelines that you provide throughout the course (Milman, 2015).

There are thousands of technologies available for use at any given moment. It’s likely that you and your students all know how to use many of the most commonly used technologies. If that is the case, don’t be afraid to build community using some of these tools. Use what you know to help bolster student knowledge and provide them with the opportunity to guide their own learning.

It’s important to meet your students where they are; use social media to your advantage. Create a course hashtag on Twitter or create a course- or topic-specific group on a site such as LinkedIn. Many of your students are already using these technologies. In this way, you can provide your students with immediate networking opportunities within your field.

Other technologies can be used just as easily in your classroom. Sometimes, the best way to provide formative experience with a topic is by giving students the opportunity to interact with the content; they can provide opinions and feedback through surveys or polls, or they can take simple quizzes on terminology right within the course.

Be wary of including too much technology. As you consider how to integrate technologies and social networking into your course, consider the importance of the tool. In his 2017 study on social media in university classrooms, Chawinga (2017) notes, “social media works well by clearly defining the purpose for their use or inclusion in a course.” You’ll want to be sure that the tool you are using is providing a sound pedagogical purpose (Chawinga, 2017). Be sure to be cognizant of your students’ skill levels, as well. Oftentimes, the simpler the technology, the better.

Chawinga, W. D., (2017, January 25). Taking social media to a university classroom: Teaching and learning using Twitter and blogs. International Journal of Educational Technology in Higher Education,14(3).

Costa, K. (2019, February 1). The art & science of quality course announcements: How to avoid the trap of the info dump. Faculty Focus. Retrieved from https://www.facultyfocus.com/articles/online-education/the-art- science-of-quality-announcements-how-to-avoid-the-trap-of-the-info-dump/

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Lowes, S. (2014). How much “group” is there in online group work? Journal of Asynchronous Learning Networks, 18(1), 133-146.

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Mitchell-Holder, S. (2016). Let’s talk: Effectively communicating with your online students. In Kilgore, W. (Ed.), Humanizing online teaching and learning (pp. 49-64). Whitney Kilgore.

Williams, E. A., Duray, R., & Reddy, V. (2006). Teamwork orientation, group cohesiveness, and student learning: A study of the use of teams in online distance education. Journal of Management Education, 30(4), 592-616.