Documentation:Developing Social Space/Engagement

Participation and Engagement

The primary means of fostering engagement online is to ensure that your course has sufficient opportunities to promote authentic conversation instead of just information transfer. In other words, it is the ongoing exchange and clarification of ideas amongst the cohort, rather than the posting of any single piece of information, that will contribute most to a vibrant learning space. A key educational benefit of using Web 2.0 tools (or even an asynchronous discussion board for that matter) in a course, is that they help to facilitate the 3 core interactions (student-student; student-teacher; student-content) and, as such, offer the instructor greater opportunities to develop a rich narrative within the learning environment as long as learners are able to participate in a meaningful manner. One way to think of this is to consider the difference between participation and engagement; whereas participation might be measured more in quantitative terms (i.e. number of posts), engagement is more qualitative (e.g. posts assessed according to an assessment framework). As Rheingold (2010) argues, the interconnected social media literacies of attention, participation, cooperation, network awareness, and critical consumption underpin more effective educational interactions, and ultimately learning outcomes. In other words, fostering student engagement requires much more than deploying any particular technology. Rather, it requires an increasing awareness of how networked publics impact learning and teaching. To get a visual sense of how the myriad ways social media tools might interact, have a look at the Cool Infographics blog or Pamorama.net

When developing online activities, it is important that they are designed so that no one student can definitively provide an answer to a single problem. Otherwise, it is likely that students will not engage fully with the material or they may experience frustration as there won’t appear to be any meaningful opportunities to participate in the conversation. It is also helpful to outline your expectations on what constitutes an appropriate post well in advance, especially if posting online is part of the assessment framework. For instance, letting learners know that posts such as "I agree", "Good point" and "Me too" will not be credited is just as important as informing them that extended essay-style posts that leave other students little room to participate are equally unhelpful. Doing so will leverage the Zone of Proximal Development(ZPD), defined as "the distance between the actual developmental level as determined by independent problem solving and the level of potential development as determined through problem solving under adult guidance, or in collaboration with more capable peers and, therefore, provide the learners the opportunity to take advantage of the fellow students’ insights and instructor’s expertise.

Reflection

• Are there any elements in your course that might inhibit student engagement?
• How might you change your interaction pattern to foster greater engagement?
• At what points in your course do students most benefit from the Zone of Proximal Development?

References