Building community online

Support for communication with and between students.

You have a variety of communication tools available to you, as do your students; it is vital that you all have a way to manage this to avoid you or your students being overloaded, or important messages being lost. Building a sense of ‘presence’ in your course is also an important part of community building.

Communication

It goes without saying that communication between you and your students is important. 

Firstly, pick the right tool for the job: decide what the purpose of your communication is and choose the tool (and settings) appropriate to that. Secondly, create a communication plan: state clearly to your students who to contact, for what purpose, and how to do it, to avoid unnecessary delays, and be clear about your ‘office hours’ and response times (see Wellbeing).

Learn produces notifications based on what is happening in a course which students can see in their Activity Stream. Many activities will trigger a notification; however, the notification settings are customisable by the individual based on their preferences. Because of this, you cannot assume that a student has received a notification. Therefore, it is important to make your students aware of how they need to manage their settings in Learn, so that they do not get overwhelmed by messages, but also so they do not miss important updates.

Announcements are for staff communications to the whole cohort and are recommended for the most critical information, particularly if it is time sensitive (e.g., venue changes). You can opt to have students also receive an email of the Announcement (so they don’t have to log into Learn to receive it).

Conversations can be enabled for individual content item to encourage student discussion say, about a resource, or to ask questions say, about an assignment.

SharePoint resources


These can be used for both informal (e.g., icebreaker activities, getting to know each other) and formal (e.g., requests for help) communication.

Setting up Discussions at the beginning of a course, with instructions/questions for each, can help you organise space for different kinds of communication in such a way that makes it relatively easy to monitor. Having dedicated Discussions for more crucial topics (e.g., technical problems) helps draw your attention to questions that are important to answer quickly. Putting end dates on some discussion (e.g., weekly topics) stops you having too many Discussions running continuously, leading to possible overload as the course proceeds, and a loss of focus.

SharePoint resources


Community

There are simple ways to show presence using learning technology, such as sharing an introduction to yourself and your research or teaching interests; posting regular short introductions to new topics or class activities; hosting online drop-in sessions for questions; etc.

Of course, it is important that you balance being present with not trying to be always available. Being clear about your availability and response times can help, as can helping students build more of a community between themselves, so that they are less likely to feel totally reliant on you. Dedicating some of your initial course activity to making connections can help students get to know one another and feel part of the cohort.

Learn offers Discussions, a discussion board tool, which can be used to create a space to host online, asynchronous discussions. These can used in a variety of ways, both informal and formal.

For instance, an informal discussion board can be created at the start of a course to help student become familiar with the tool itself, useful if it is new to them or their use of discussion boards later in the course will be an essential part of their learning and/or assessed. Having a ‘welcome’ discussion board gives all students the opportunity to test posting in a low-stakes situation, and also gives staff feedback that students are able to access the environment, have found the discussion board, and know how to post (and intervene if students do not respond to see if there are issues.) Beginning a discussion with a question (and an example post from you) helps students understand what is expected of them and increases the probability of them taking part.

Enthusiasm to take part will be at its highest at the start of the course and it is vital to get students engaging with activities and one another as early as you can; making activities as inviting as possible can help. In the case of informal discussion boards, consider enabling students to be able to edit their posts; if they are able to correct any errors, they may be more willing to post, which can help those who lack confidence about their written English to take part and be seen by the rest of the cohort. You may find that students who are quiet in class are more confident on a discussion board, so even if you have synchronous discussions, consider having a discussion board too to enable everyone to take part as fully as they can.

Discussion boards can be set up for posting academic questions. Encouraging students to ask questions this way will help you to reduce the number of individual questions directed to you, as students will be able to see that a question they have has already been posted (and answered) (see also 7 Wellbeing). You may also encourage students to answer one another’s questions where they are able, helping them to see themselves as part of a community.

You will almost certainly be giving students the opportunity to work together during your course. This can be as a way to build community and help students feel a part of their course; as part of developing their communication skills; to learn about the subject; or as part of an assessed task. As well as having activities to which all students on the course can contribute and work together, you can also create Groups within your Learn course so that you determine who works together, or groups to which students can assign themselves, giving you flexibility in how you design student interaction on your course.

Sharepoint resources


Microsoft Teams is a secure collaboration hub which seamlessly integrates with Office 365 apps. We recommend using Teams only for meetings or group chat.

Synchronous meetings between a tutor and tutor group, a supervisor and their research student, or for a study group, give opportunities to work on shared issues but also to get to know one another and build connections in a way that is not easy to do in large group activities.

An agenda lets everyone know the purpose of the meeting and prepare if necessary; it can also help the time to be used productively and lower anxiety in those who worry about what is expected of them. Teams allows you to record Meetings; consider if doing this helps those in the meeting and, if you do record, secure the participants’ agreement first.


If you are interested in using blogs for teaching, learning or assessment purposes, there are different tools available to you, including:

· Blogs.ed (Academic Blogging Service)

· PebblePad

There is also support to help you choose the one that is right for you.

Blogging for teaching and learning


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