Admit it; we all spend too much time thinking about the perfect activity for our learners. Why not include real-world scenarios in the activities that we design? By including real-world scenarios, learners find the relevance of the course they are taking with their lives. This, in turn, will motivate them to engage themselves and perform their best in the activity. As a learner, I love it when the instructor or facilitator uses real-world examples and provides real tasks for me to do.  I remember when I was taking a course on Instructional Design, my instructor asked us to design and develop a learning product for a client. The interesting part was the client is a real client — an author! We had to transform this client’s children’s storybook into an eBook. My team and I learnt a lot from the experience and I really appreciate my instructor’s effort to help us learn from doing real-world relevant task.

Some of you might think that this is easier said than done. It seems easy to implement when the learning is being conducted face-to-face. However, you may ask, is it possible to implement it fully online such as on the OpenLearning platform? My answer is, it is absolutely possible!

Here are a few tips on how to use real-world scenarios in activity design. Some of them might be more focused on the final activity but you can modify this idea to what is more suitable for your course.

Bring the living world into the online space

When designing an online activity, we could ask the learners to incorporate the world that they live in and share it with their virtual friends. For example, if the course is about Animal Welfare, we could ask them to find stray animals and to feed them. Ask them to do this a few times a week, and record a Vlog (a video blog), recording their experience and feelings after helping the animals. The best part, they can actually share the videos with their friends in the online course and connect with others with similar experiences.

Give authentic tasks

Instead of giving tasks just to check their understanding and skills on a superficial level, why not give them a real task that helps them explore the topic deeper? For example, if for a Graphic Design course, we can ask learners to help create a poster or a banner for a family member. They could help design an advertisement poster for a friend to find a tenant for their house. Or, design a logo for a family member’s new small business. Or even a digital wedding invite for a friend Learners can share their experiences with their friends along with their finished designs. As long as the learners do it for a real event and real people, they will feel proud after they have completed the activity. At the same time, they get to experience what designing for a client's real project might feel like!

Publish learners’ works

Final activity sharing with the real world is a great motivator for students to perform well. Since they are aware that their works will be published and be known to the public, they will put in a lot of effort to do it well. A simple example would be to compile and publish poems written by the whole class of a Poetry course. Learners can share the link to their work  with anyone they want. The more people who know about their works, the better! Such an activity can help spread good messages, such as taking care of the environment, appreciating your loved ones and even healthy self-expression. As teachers and professionals in the field, we can even help them to sell or promote their work with money collected being donated to a charity. It is both course-work and work experience in one!

Real-world evaluation

Another way to connect learning to the real world is by asking an expert in the field to help assess learner's works. Continuing with the poetry course example, we could collaborate with a well-known poet and have them assess and review learners’ poems. This activity could make them feel honoured, knowing that their work has been read and noticed by a notable figure in the industry.

Simple is great

My last tip would be not to underestimate any simple activity. Something as simple as asking the learners to share a screenshot of their phone, showing their must-have apps in their smartphones, could be a great real-world introductory activity in a Computer Programming or Game Design course. Learners could discuss their specific app preferences, likes, and dislikes. It can help them break the ice and connect over shared interests which they can continue exploring throughout the course.

How would you include real-world scenarios in your activity design? Share with us in the comments section below! :) ← show less

Admit it; we all spend too much time thinking about the perfect activity for our learners. Why not include real-world scenarios in the activities that we design? By including real-world scenarios, learners find the relevance of the course they are taking with their lives. This, in turn, will motivate them to engage themselves and perform their best in the activity. As a learner, I love it when the instructor or facilitator uses real-world examples and provides real tasks for me to do... read more

“Strength lies in differences, not in similarities." — Stephen R. Covey

Have you ever wondered how it would feel to work and learn in an environment where everyone had the same skills, experiences, strengths /weaknesses, and the same preferences in terms of learning topics and projects? How would it make you feel? How much do you think you could grow, learn new things, and develop new skills?

In today’s blog post, we will seek answers to:

• How the human need to belong and fit in affects the way people behave in a community

• What group dynamics is and what fundamental pillars communities are built on

• How we can apply these key concepts to education and help learners learn and grow through diverse environments

• Strategies and techniques you can implement to better understand diversity and improve your personal and professional skills.

Why people desire to belong and fit in

The sense of belonging and the need to be accepted by the members of a community (work team, learning or study group, family, group of friends, etc.) is one of the core needs people experience. Belongingness not only forms our own identity, values and beliefs but also motivates us to put effort into building positive relationships and to work on our best selves.

When we find a community that we are eager to belong in, we naturally tend to conform with the community set of values, beliefs, behaviours and expectations. The more they match with our own sets, the more confident and accepted we feel in the group. This is a good thing, however, in some instances too much conformity can do more harm than good.

Group dynamics and its impact on community

Conformity sometimes referred to as a groupthink. means that we accept and identify with the social norms of a community we are part of. Members whose behaviour goes against the expected behavioural norms risk conflict or social rejection by the social group. Communities are like living organisms and keeping in mind the dynamics will help you create an inclusive, accepting and unique learning environment.

Promoting diversity as a core community value

The principles above reflect the dynamics and fundamental pillars communities are built on. This includes sense of belongingness, acceptance, social norms, risk/fear of social rejection, common values, behaviours, beliefs and expectations.

Communities are rarely ever homogenous environments, whereby everyone has the same values, experiences, strengths, weaknesses and skills. The question is how communities accept differences and encourage diversity among its members, and how comfortable its members feel to express a different opinion or attitude. There is a large spectrum of communities, from diverse-promoting to conform-expecting.

Imagine you are part of a work community where everyone likes playing chess. You seem to be the only one avoiding it, it’s simply not your thing. In a diverse-promoting community, your other likes and strengths are encouraged, whilst in a conform-expecting workplace, you’ll probably learn to like chess (because it’s expected if you want to fit in). Facilitating and nurturing diversity will help everyone be themselves, inspire others, grow personally and professionally, help your community improve as a whole and achieve its goals more effectively. The benefits are limitless!

How to facilitate and nurture diversity in a learning community

Most often, diversity is linked to cultural differences and similarities. However, diversity is much more complex than that. In a learning environment, be it face-to-face or online, you might experience a wide range of differences between students. These may include unique personalities, age, language capabilities, previous experiences, communication styles, aspirations and ambitions, motivations and drivers, expectations, strengths and weaknesses, cultural background, attitudes and mindsets, stress resistance and coping mechanisms, the need to succeed and lead, etc. You have an idea. 

“The real skill of a facilitator and a teacher is to accept differences and help every student in a learning community reach their potential to the fullest.”

To help you begin nurturing more diverse learning communities, we’ve prepared 5 winning strategies and techniques you can apply to face-to-face, blended and/or purely online learning facilitation.

5 Winning strategies and techniques for facilitators and teachers

1. Promote fairness, equity and provide equal opportunities to learn and grow

Promoting fairness, equity and providing equal opportunities to learn and grow for each student in your learning community is a fundamental skill if you want to succeed in creating diverse and inclusive learning communities. 

You might experience different personalities in your learning community, from strongly introverted to greatly extroverted students. I experienced it as a teacher too and one day, I realised how easy it was to overlook introverted students and focus the attention on extroverts who felt more confident to speak up, ask thought-provoking questions, challenge other students and express their opinions and thoughts loudly. Reflecting on my own teaching practices and on students’ needs helped me to create a much more inclusive learning community.

What could have happened if I had not changed the course of action? Introverted students may have perceived extraversion as being a desired social norm and they might have tried to conform and become extraverted in nature. This goal is almost impossible and would have most likely, lead to students  experiencing a sense of  failure and discomfort.

Promoting diversity in this particular learning environment means that introverted and extroverted students are given equal opportunities to learn and grow. Make sure that their voices are listened to equally so everybody feels accepted, involved respected.

Powerful techniques and strategies you could consider and implement are mentoring, pairing up students, group activities, guiding students to develop better social and communication skills, empathy, self-awareness and social awareness, reflecting on social situations you and students experience in learning, using drama and literature to solve social paradigms, and enhance two-way communication within your community of learners.

Creating a non-judgemental and respectful learning environment

This is a good space to mention the importance of creating a non-judgemental learning environment. Diversity, in essence, means accepting differences and perceiving them as community strengths rather than weaknesses. Only in a non-judgemental and respectful community, students can feel confident to express and accept their differences in opinions, likes and dislikes, attitudes, values and behaviours.

How can you create a non-judgmental and respectful learning environment? The most effective techniques and strategies you might like to put into practice are building rapport with students, being respectful towards students and role modelling behaviour, setting the tone, setting positive communication flow between you and students and being empathetic.

2. Learn and upskill yourself/your team of facilitators

Every relationship requires work, effort, time and determination. If you want to build strong, respectful and positive relationships with your students, it will require you to work on it continuously. The time and effort you invest will lead to great returns. 

After identifying skills you’d like to improve, you might like to join a short online course, face-to-face course, attend an evening workshop, meet with an expert doing a presentation, your options are infinite!

3. Get in touch with people from different cultural backgrounds

Have you ever experienced talking with a person from a different cultural background, where you tried to convince them that your arguments and ideas were correct? In many cases, most of us have been in this position.

If you live in a culturally diverse community, don’t be shy to reach out.  The more you talk to people from different countries, the more you’ll be able to understand how they see the world, you’ll learn to look at things from different perspectives and truly understand what they’re trying to say to you. Most importantly, travelling will help you accept different values, behaviour, beliefs and expectations and see them as important as your own.

If you’re not surrounded by people with different backgrounds, you can benefit from travelling. At first sight, this might seem a bit odd but travelling is one of the best things you can do if you want to broaden your horizons and open your mind to different things in life that you simply couldn’t experience in your everyday life.

4. Overcome your own stereotypes and biases

Stereotypes and biases can be huge drawbacks in creating a diverse and inclusive learning community. Think about one common stereotype and how it affects the way you perceive it. Got it? Increasing self-awareness of stereotypes and biases in everyday situations can help you overcome them and be more open to new things in life. In the end, your attitudes and the way you look at differences, will be projected into the learning community and have a significant impact on your students.

5. Create a collaborative and sharing space to learn

The last strategy encapsulates everything we discussed so far. Creating a collaborative sharing space to learn will help students become more confident and connected learners. Giving them space to express their true selves, what they like and dislike or what their thoughts are, will encourage them to share not only what they learn but also who they are.

An online learning community is a good place to create activities that encourage students to share what relates to their own lives, experiences, passions or knowledge. You might like to ask for a feedback or learning reflections so your students will know that their voice matters to you.

What are your thoughts on diversity in learning community? Share with us in the comments below! ← show less

“Strength lies in differences, not in similarities." — Stephen R. Covey

Have you ever wondered how it would feel to work and learn in an environment where everyone had the same skills, experiences, strengths /weaknesses, and the same preferences in terms of learning topics and projects? How would it make you feel? How much do you think you could grow, learn new things, and develop new skills?

In today’s blog post, we will seek answers to:

• How the human need to belong and fit in af... read more

In an era of educational transformation, as we shift from traditional to more personalised teaching and learning approaches, the concept of voice and choice can significantly improve the way we teach, learn, express ourselves and experience the world around us.

The concept of voice and choice, in essence, emphasises the importance of encouraging students to speak and discuss, collaborate, share, and most importantly, make their own decisions and regulate the process of their own learning. 

The concept is not a stand-alone approach but rather a method which can be easily implemented into any learning environment, including face-to-face, blended and online learning.

“In education, student voice refers to the values, opinions, beliefs, perspectives, and cultural backgrounds of individual students and groups of students in a school, and to instructional approaches and techniques that are based on student choices, interests, passions, and ambitions.” (The Glossary of Education Reform)

What does voice and choice have to do with motivation?

You might ask: “What does voice and choice have to do with intrinsic motivation?” 

Let us give you a simple example.

Imagine that you’ve enrolled in a course ‘Yo hablo Español’. You are excited and enter the course highly motivated to learn Spanish. You envision the course will include role plays,reading and discussing Spanish blogs and news articles with other students, watching Spanish news or TV shows, joining Spanish and Latin meetups and much more! 

However, soon you find out the classes consist of a set of exercises in a Learner’s book, that only involves listening to short recordings and drilling into new vocabulary. By the end of the course, you might have learned how to speak Spanish on a sufficient level but the chances of you enjoying your learning process are quite low. This is in contrast to the amount of learning and enjoyment you could have had from a course that implemented the voice and choice concept.  

As a result, you might drop out of the course or you might keep learning because you already invested in it,  made a commitment, or may have a pay rise at work. 

Now you have an idea how easily intrinsic motivation can be replaced by extrinsic motivators. 

This is similar to what often happens in a restrictive learning environment. 

The aim of high-quality education should be stimulating and maintaining student’s intrinsic motivation to learn by listening to their needs, opinions, giving them opportunities to decide and regulate their learning while letting them experience positive emotions during their learning and reflection. 

Emotions we experience during learning affect our future attitudes towards learning. 

In an era of educational transformation, as we shift from traditional to more personalised teaching and learning approaches, the concept of voice and choice can significantly improve the way we teach, learn, express ourselves and experience the world around us.

The concept of voice and choice, in essence, emphasises the importance of encouraging students to speak and discuss, collaborate, share, and most importantly, make their own decisions and regulate the process of their own lea... read more

In an online course, facilitation doesn’t just begin when the course opens. 

It starts before your students enter the course and works best with a proactive and nurturing approach. 

There are several ways to facilitate an online course and build a thriving community on OpenLearning. 

Seed your community

No one wants to be the first person at the party so get this ‘party started’ by seeding the community before the course starts.

Seeding refers to creating the first talking points, completing some activities and sharing your ideas (like planting seeds) so that when students first enter the course, there is already plenty of activity for them to get involved.

This is also when you should be setting expectations and modelling ideal responses so students know what type of responses they should be contributing.

Engage with your community

In the early stages of a course, it’s up to you to ensure that students’ contributions are being valued and heard.

Particularly for the first two weeks, you should have a strong online presence, posting and commenting or ‘liking’ students’ posts, to welcome them into the course and offer positive reinforcement.

The language you use in your interactions is very important. Using a tone that is relaxed, friendly and positive will help to create an environment where students feel comfortable to share their ideas, ask questions and discuss freely without judgement. This will also help with promoting peer-to-peer interaction.

Promote social learning

With the right environment, students will start turning to each other for help and support. You can also boost this by doing the following:

Engage rather than tell: When complex questions arise within the community, don’t provide the answer immediately. Instead, suggest ways for students to find the answers for themselves or involve peer-to-peer discussion, feedback and collaboration.

Know when to step back: Provide time and opportunities for other students to answer each others’ queries or provide assistance. Over time, students will learn to take greater ownership for the learning community and become more involved without depending on your guidance.

Maintain your presence by continuing to like students’ comments and posts, along with a few key comments and replies!

Keep learning on track

Liking and commenting

Aim to spend an hour each day on the platform, going through the pages and liking or commenting on students’ posts. Check your notifications for interactions that need responding to and have fun engaging with the community. 

You can also observe and manage community engagement using the following tools: 

Student progress

In the Navigation Bar, click Administer Students > Students to see a percentage of the course completed by each student. This can help you locate areas where further support might be needed.

Analytics

You can find Analytics also under Administer Students. This page offers more detailed information on student engagement such as:

• How many comments have been made on each page,
• Which page has the most activity, 
• Average time spent on each page

You can filter the data to Pages, Students or Comments.

Announcements

Creating announcements will send an email and a notification to all students in the cohort. This is great for staying in touch with students on a regular basis, reminding them of approaching deadlines as well as sharing upcoming topics in the course.

Moderating students’ posts: If necessary, you can also report inappropriate comments and flag spoilers. Flagging comments as spoilers hides the comment and gives students the option to reveal it manually. Reporting comments as inappropriate or disliking comments will hide the comment from the community.

You can find these options under the drop down menu located in the top right hand corner of any comment.

Watch the community take off

As the community becomes more active and more self-directed, learning will take place organically. At this point, enjoy watching the community encourage each other’s learning!  

You can stay on hand to provide extra support when necessary and continue to maintain the rapport and connections you’ve made with students throughout the course.   

This is Part 3 in our series on Facilitation. Click here to read Part 1, The Benefits of Facilitation for an Active Learning Community or here to read Part 2, 5 Practical Ways to Enhance the Online Learning Experience with Facilitation.  ← show less

In an online course, facilitation doesn’t just begin when the course opens.

It starts before your students enter the course and works best with a proactive and nurturing approach.

There are several ways to facilitate an online course and build a thriving community on OpenLearning.

Seed your community

No one wants to be the first person at the party so get this ‘party started’ by seeding the community before the course starts.

Seeding refers to creating the first talking points, co... read more

This is Part 2 in our series on Facilitation. If you haven’t read Part 1, The Benefits of Facilitation for an Active Learning Community, check it out here.
 

The online learning experience doesn’t have to be an isolating endeavour.

The beauty of having an online course is that it allows people from a wide range of diverse backgrounds and experiences to come together, share their ideas and gather new perspectives.

The challenge is making sure all students can have their unique voices heard, are able to engage with the content and can consider the differing perspectives to build a richer, more layered understanding.

In this case, having the support and guidance of an inclusive and enthusiastic facilitator can make all the difference!
 

Here are five practical ways a facilitator can enhance the learning experience in an online course.
 

1. Encourage meaningful discussions

Learning works best when students can interact with others to discuss ideas, exchange their understanding and solve problems.

Facilitators can promote discussion by recognising learning opportunities and asking questions that invite a range of possible answers and encourage students’ curiosity. 
 

For example, instead of asking “Did the main character experience a transformation throughout the play?” (closed-ended question), you could ask “How did the main character experience transformation throughout the play?” (open-ended question). 

2. Model ideal practice

Facilitators can show students what it means to have an active and inquisitive mind by taking part in the learning activities with them and making their thought processes explicit.

Instead of providing answers, facilitators ask guiding questions to help students clarify any misconceptions, encourage them to engage in higher- order thinking and seek further understanding.
 

“What do the choices of the main character reveal about his/her changing identity?” is an example of a guiding question as it directs students to use their critical thinking skills (analysis and reasoning) to solve an identified problem (what is the effect of the main character’s changing identity on his/her decision making ability?”)

3. Promote learner autonomy

In facilitation, it’s not about what you know, it’s about supporting students through the process of learning discovery: helping them to form ideas and connect new concepts with existing ones.

Facilitators gradually provide more space and opportunities for students to share their own ideas, discuss amongst their peers and make their own conclusions. Over time, students will learn how to support each other and manage their own learning outcomes.

4. Maintain student engagement

Student disengagement usually occurs when a student does not find the material relevant or feel they are not supported in the learning process.

Facilitators can prevent this by highlighting ways for students to connect the material with their own world, tailoring their questioning to meet students’ needs and encouraging conversation that is open to anyone without the fear of getting it right or wrong.

For example, facilitators can help students connect abstract concepts (force and tension in physics) to real-life problem-solving (building a bridge) to consolidate their understanding. This could be phrased as, “using what you know about force and tension, build a bridge with household items and see how much weight it can withstand without breaking.” 
 

5. Promote a positive and inclusive environment

There’s a big difference between ‘Welcome to the course’ vs. ‘Hi everyone, we’re so glad to have you join us in this course.’

The positive language used by a friendly and supportive facilitator will help students feel more welcomed and valued in the course. They know they are engaging with real people, not just a computer screen, and promote rapport-building within the learning community.  

So, by nurturing a sense of community, modelling good learning practices, and empowering students to take control of their own learning, a facilitator can positively shape the online learning experience for students, to shift from having to learn to wanting to learn! 

This is Part 2 in our series on Facilitation. Click here to read Part 1, The Benefits of Facilitation for an Active Learning Community or here to read Part 3, How to Facilitate an Online Course and Community on OpenLearning. 

This is Part 2 in our series on Facilitation. If you haven’t read Part 1, The Benefits of Facilitation for an Active Learning Community, check it out here.

The online learning experience doesn’t have to be an isolating endeavour.

The beauty of having an online course is that it allows people from a wide range of diverse backgrounds and experiences to come together, share their ideas and gather new perspectives.

The challenge is making sure all students can have their unique voices h... read more

So what is facilitation?

“Education is not the filling of a pail, but the lighting of a fire”

— William Butler Yeats

The benefits of facilitation

“The greatest sign of success for a teacher... is to be able to say, “The children are now working as if I did not exist”

— Maria Montessori

What makes a good facilitator?

 

“Learning is not the product of teaching. Learning is the product of the activity of learners”

— John Holt.

So what is facilitation?

An important concept to think about as a teacher is how people learn best.

Think back to a time when you learnt something. Not when you sat in a lecture theatre and passively listened to an expert talk on a subject, or when you crammed for an exam (only to forget the information immediately after the test). That is passive learning. The student isn’t doing anything but listening; they aren’t involved in the learning process. Passive learning disempowers the student and makes the teacher the focus of the learning environment.

I’m talking about a time when you were curious about something in your world and you wanted to know more. You explored, right?

You pondered the topic and how it related to your current life. You walked down the street and you saw components of the new learning pop up everywhere. Connections were made. Dots were joined. You discussed the topic with friends and deepened your understanding even further. You were in your own learning process.

This is called active learning and it is how people learn best. Active learning occurs through discussion and collaboration, critical thinking, problem-solving, and connecting new learning with one’s own world. 

It facilitates divergent thinking (big-picture thinking, where students develop many different creative ideas or solutions to a topic) over convergent thinking (there is only one right answer or solution).

Active learning promotes a deep, conceptual understanding of a topic that is the hallmark of rich learning as opposed to passively listening to a lecture and cramming for exams.

In an active learning environment, the student is engaged, empowered, excited to learn. Students learn concepts deeply because concepts are made relevant and meaningful to their current lives. They are intrinsically motivated (“I want to learn this topic because I’m interested and engaged!”) over incentive or extrinsically motivated (“I want to learn this topic because I will get a nice certificate at the end.”)

So what exactly does active vs passive learning look like? 

There’s nothing wrong with having course media like lectures and videos that discusses concepts within a module. Just don’t stop there!

Design Active Learning Experiences

When creating learning experiences for your course, ask yourself:

• Will this engage and excite my students?
• Is there a better way I could get them engaging with this topic?
• Will this get my students discussing a topic with each other? (Peer-to-peer learning, rather than just talking with the teacher. Teacher as facilitator, not expert)
• Will this activity help to connect the new information with their current world?
• Is the student at the centre of this learning?
• Am I getting students to think divergently or do I only want one right answer?
• Is this activity getting my students to think critically and synthesise their knowledge on a topic (higher order thinking), or is it just a comprehension exercise (lower level thinking)?
• Am I giving my students opportunities to reflect on their learning process?
• Would I have fun doing this course if I were the student? (If your answer is ‘no’, chances are your students won’t have fun doing it either).

Examples of Active Learning Experiences

Example Topic: Foods of the World

Course Media: Various interesting videos and wikis on foods in different cultures and countries

Some Example Learning Experiences:

• Sharing Space: Share some weird, wonderful and truly unique foods you have eaten in your travels. Upload a picture if you can!
• Choose a country you have never been to before. Find out its signature cuisine and cook it at home. Share the recipe and pictures of your cooking experience.
• What types of food were typical of your upbringing?
• Food Safari fortnightly challenge: Each fortnight, take yourself out for a meal at a cafe/restaurant/friend’s place. Try a different venue and ideally a different cuisine than you’ve had before. Document the experience in a weekly Food Safari log.
• Food Blog: Be a food blogger! Choose 3 of your Food Safari write ups and submit them to our Food Blog. The blog will go live at the end of the course and you can elect to be a regular contributor.
• Reflection (at the end of each module): Write a brief reflection on what you have learnt throughout the module and how you felt about it.

Teaching an online course shouldn’t be a boring experience for either teachers or students. Learning should be active and fun in all learning environments. This will not only result in happier, motivated students but will also lead to increased completion and engagement rates. How could you turn down a win-win!? 

There are countless articles on the benefits of active learning, explore, and feel free to share in the comments below.

References and further reading

http://sydney.edu.au/staff/fye/during_semester/active_learning.shtml ← show less

An important concept to think about as a teacher is how people learn best.

Think back to a time when you learnt something. Not when you sat in a lecture theatre and passively listened to an expert talk on a subject, or when you crammed for an exam (only to forget the information immediately after the test). That is passive learning. The student isn’t doing anything but listening; they aren’t involved in the learning process. Passive learning disempowers the student and makes the teac... read more

Online learning shouldn’t be ‘lonely’ experience. While many people know and don’t like this, very few platforms have been able to solve it. The question then is how has OpenLearning shifted this experience from a lonely to a social experience? The answer is through a focus on community. 

Traditional learning platforms give a sense of a lack of presence or regular activity. They have been built with very little ways to allow students to interact and express their identity, ideas, and opinions. 

OpenLearning, in contrast, has been specifically designed to facilitate student networking by creating in-built sharing tools to encourage group work, self expression, and peer-to-peer interaction that begin to form a safe and positive community. 

Tips to Build A Thriving Social Community on OpenLearning

1. Make full use of OpenLearning’s social media inspired feeds and “micro-interactions” that include features like the ‘like’ button and platform-wide commenting ability. Using these tools as a facilitator to interact with students leads to minimal barriers and maximum encouragement.

A micro-example of a micro-interaction from The Great Poems Series: Unbinding Prometheus

2. Aim to make your OpenLearning course both a meeting place for students with common learning interests (especially in the context of massive open online courses, or MOOCs), as well as an online environment where students can become an engaged member within a community of practice.

3. Build rapport between both learners and teachers, promote social appreciation, and encourage self-expression.

Teacher-student interaction, appreciation, and encouragement - your keys to a happy course community

4. Use the wiki and blogging features to advance the ways in which knowledge sharing, collaboration, self-expression, and personalisation can be used to ensure a vibrant and engaged community within courses.

5. Provide a safe and welcoming space and tone for students to be able to have their own voice. This can be done, specifically, by:

• creating a personal, online identity,
• giving a sense of presence and fellowship,
• promoting a community of sharing,
• facilitating the formation of learning relationships,
• building a user’s reputation within a community,
• fostering collaboration in groups, and
• encouraging meaningful discourse and conversations

How Your Course Activities Can Enhance Interaction In the Community

Online learning systems have traditionally entirely relied on submission drop-boxes or quiz-like assessments. More advanced systems have started to introduce isolated interactive experiences with simulations and virtual environments.

While this is all possible on OpenLearning, the platform takes an additional step of encouraging teachers to create activities that facilitate community interaction. You can incorporate activities that provide interactive collaboration and sharing with the tools provided to keep students immersed and engaged in your courses. 

Sounds too good to be true? Here are some activity ideas to actually make this happen:

• Create/construct and share/exhibit (an activity that encourages self-expression)
  Example: Build something and exhibit it. Experience something and share it
   
• Create/do and then compare, or cluster 
  Example: Build something and then categorise it with things others have built. Discuss pros and cons of each others contributions. Compete, achieve recognition, then help others.
  Note that we refer to competition that fosters an attitude of helping each other to achieve new heights, rather than pitting against each other.
   
• Reciprocal Teaching
  Example: Teach each other something. Let a student teach a topic. 
   
• Discover and Share
  Example: Find something interesting and show it to the rest similar to a show-and-tell.
   
• Crowd Curation, Approval, Feedback & Peer Review
  Example: Decide on favourite examples, praise what's good about what each other has shared.
   
• Append/Extend Discourse
  Example: Write the next part of a story, continue off from where someone else left off.
   
• Contribute/Integrate and combine ideas or collaboratively edit
  Example: Write resources or a textbook together or brainstorm and then compare/filter the ideas.
   
• Pass it on/take a turn
  Example: Find someone to show your thing to, they do something to it, and give it to someone else.
   
• Crowdsource
  Example: Collect people's experiences on an issue/scenario.
   
• Role Play
  Example: Take on a persona, act out a scenario together.

There is no doubt that creating interactive learning activities helps to bring your course community close together.

Create activities to embrace this connectedness and collaboration, rapport and promote dialogue, discovery, exploration, and the sharing of diverse new resources. The whole idea is to make your OpenLearning course a communal online space where the student community aggregates resources and personalises their own learning environment. ← show less

Online learning shouldn’t be ‘lonely’ experience. While many people know and don’t like this, very few platforms have been able to solve it. The question then is how has OpenLearning shifted this experience from a lonely to a social experience? The answer is through a focus on community.

Traditional learning platforms give a sense of a lack of presence or regular activity. They have been built with very little ways to allow students to interact and express their identity, ideas, and ... read more

"For the things we have to learn before we can do them, we learn by doing them” (Aristotle in Nichomachean Ethics)

Let’s say you want to get a driving license. You study all the traffic rules and try to remember all the traffic signs. What’s missing is the practice. Or your own experience. Once you have the know-how AND experience, you are ready to hit the roads with the licence in your pocket. 

Learning happens in so many different ways. Just like getting your driving license, an effective learning process involves motivation, information, reflection, thinking, experimenting, and finally putting new ideas and concepts into practice. This is referred to as experiential learning. 

One of the models of experiential learning was created and presented by David Kolb, an American educational theorist. The model emphasises the following:

• the importance of students’ motivation to learn,
• being actively involved in their own learning,
• students’ ability to reflect on the experience, 
• using analytical skills to conceptualise the experience, 
• using make decisions, and,
• using their problem-solving skills. 

The four stages of Kolb’s experiential learning cycle are shown below.

[image source]

Let’s have a closer look at each phase of Kolb’s Learning Cycle:

Phase 1: Concrete Experience: Feeling

The first stage is represented by the learner’s concrete experience. At this stage, students learn intuitively and according to what they’ve felt when they experienced any random or complex situation. Positive feelings are directly linked to motivation to learn further.

For example, imagine you’re travelling for a holiday and your destination is Costa Rica. You probably don’t have a lot of knowledge before you visit this beautiful country. During your holiday, you learn about people or new words. You learn about their traditions, history, monuments, and much more. This learning was based on your concrete experience and learning was very natural and not intentional. 

Phase 2: Reflective Observation: Watching

The second stage focuses on watching or observing the new situation. This involves evaluating, searching, and analysing connections. Students begin to expand their perspective and develop different points of view, drawing new meanings from experiences. 

For example, you learned a lot of new things during your holiday! Now, you try to link it with your current knowledge, you look at things from different angles. Your new experience had a huge influence on the way you “see things”.

Phase 3: Abstract Conceptualisation: Thinking

At this stage, students think about their experience and the situation. They fit new information into existing concepts. They then go on to create new concepts and ideas or modify the existing concepts.

For example, during your holiday, you experienced a different cultural approach towards work. You observed that people do not just have a 1-hour lunch break, but instead take a  siesta which takes 2-3 hours due to heat. Exciting, right? Your existing concept of 1-hour lunch breaks is challenged by your new experience. You think about the concept and you think about how you can modify the existing concept or you want to create a new concept within your own culture/environment.

Phase 4: Active Experimentation: Doing

The final phase is much more than learning by doing. Students do not only influence other people or change the situation, they also apply new knowledge or skills in a new environment. Students use the theory of an existing concept AND they actively apply the concept. In other words, based on the concrete experience, thinking and doing, they are able to create new concepts. 

In the final stage of your learning cycle, you actively experiment with the new concept of the 2-3 hour siesta – you search for ways to influence people around you, to experiment with the new concept, to create the concept which will be suitable in your own environment and, most importantly, you experiment and implement it. 

You can see that an unintentional experience can lead to a completely new concept of lunch breaks in your own company!

As a teacher, you have all the resources to create an awesome online course and extraordinary learning experiences! Use all the resources – not just Google, or libraries, but also reach out to inspirational teachers around you. Don’t be afraid to create your own resources to build a course your students will never forget and will not want to finish! ← show less

"For the things we have to learn before we can do them, we learn by doing them” (Aristotle in Nichomachean Ethics)

Let’s say you want to get a driving license. You study all the traffic rules and try to remember all the traffic signs. What’s missing is the practice. Or your own experience. Once you have the know-how AND experience, you are ready to hit the roads with the licence in your pocket.

Learning happens in so many different ways. Just like getting your driving license, an eff... read more