How can educators effectively build relationships by encouraging safe communication and interaction in online and open learning spaces?
In 2020, Covid-19 has affected every country in the world. Companies, factories, even schools have to shut down. People start to work and study at home. However, it is hard to build relationships with others.
Before Covid-19, students could communicate with professors anytime at school. Students can ask any questions before the class, during the class, and after the class. Sometimes professors will start group discussions in class so that students can know their classmates better and get closer to each other. It is helpful for building relationships. But right now, everyone stays at home and take online courses through Zoom. Most of the students just lying on the bed during classes and turn their camera and mic off. Moreover, some instructors just post recorded videos online. There is no chance for students and professors to communicate. However, some professors will set some breakout rooms for students to have a small discussion. It is a good way for students and professors to know each other and build better relationships. In my opinion, professors should start more group work and discussion online and open learning spaces like Zoom will be good to build relationships.
What did you already know. What do you know now based on the course readings and activities?
I have started online learning in March. It is a good experience. By the time that Uvic just started online learning, many professors changed their teaching methods and course structure. For example, many professors cancelled the final exams and switch to take-home assignments for instead and changed the assignments weights. At that time, I think that was first time Zoom be known by everyone. For now, there are many methods for students and professors to taking courses and interacting, like brightspace (it was coursespace before), discord, Zoom and so on. According to Johns Hopkins(2015), online learning is definitely a challenge for everyone. It is complex for professors to structure the courses to make courses easy to understand for students. For most students, it will be a huge challenge because they need to comprehend the course structure, course modes, course goals in a limited time; otherwise, it is easy to fall behind. In addition, based on the course reading and quiz, I found out it is not safe to put our personal information online in this era of high technology. We should start to pay more attention to how to protect our personal information.
What do you hope to learn?
I would like to learn how will online and open learning space works better in the future. Due to the Covid, these online teaching tools have been widely used by many people. So, based on online and open learning, there will be more and more tools to come out. We should make sure everyone can understand how to learning online easily. I believe there are still many students are frustrating with online learning. And, how to make online learning as similar to face-to-face learning.
References:
Johns, H. U. P. (2015). Teaching online : A guide to theory, research, and practice. ProQuest Ebook Central https://ebookcentral-proquest-com.ezproxy.library.uvic.ca
Hi Stephen
I totally agree with you that face-to-face communication is an effective way for students to as questions before the pandemic of COVID-19. We are all having a hard time to continue such face-to-face conversation model; instead, we transfer the physical classroom to virtual online learning spaces, and to achieve our learning goals, more effort and skills might be needed when we are talking at different locations.
The breakout room you mentioned is a great idea for students to explore and discuss with each other, but the problem is how do professors encourage students to speak in their breakout rooms. If some students are not willing to participate in these activities because they are not supervised in real-time, how should it be solved?