OnPoint - Guideline 3, Teach the Unfamiliar In Terms of the Familiar

Today, we continue OnPoint, our bi-weekly series from Jason Ohler, an international keynote speaker, teacher, writer, researcher and Professor Emeritus of Educational Technology, who has been teaching online since 1982.

The following post is excerpt from Jason's latest book, and highlights one of the many guidelines for teaching an effective online class and engaging people socially via electronic means. The book, Digital Community, Digital Citizen (you can check it out here), explores how the internet and technology affect the very nature of learning, relationships, and schooling in the digital age.

This is part of a series about guidelines for effective online teaching.

• Part 1: An Introduction

• Part 2: Communication Venues

Want to get in touch with Jason? Email feedback@moodlerooms.com.

Thanks for reading,

- Brad
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Guideline #3- Teach the unfamiliar in terms of the familiar: Use metaphors.

You can tell students to be respectful, but don’t forget that their grandparents told them the same thing when they took them to church. I’m not sure how much it meant to them. Transferring respect from one situation to another is a fairly abstract concept that requires lots of modeling and practice. If we want kids to practice respect in virtual classrooms, we need different strategies. Recall the earlier discussion about how the lack of familiar social cues in cyberspace can confuse virtual behavior. This becomes particularly important in educational settings, where behavioral norms are especially important.

Not only do you want behavior to be respectful but you also want it to be productive. What makes social orientation difficult is that, when we enter digital communities, we enter a mental space I call “mind void.” We really don’t know where we are, and because of that, we tend to go forward as explorers in a new land in which local customs don’t seem to exist. An effective way to address this proactively is to use RL metaphors to describe VR situations. That is, describe the blog, wiki, conference, or virtual reality space you have set up for your class in RL terms. The result is that you can then call on familiar social perspectives, customs, and behaviors that are associated with that space in RL.

Perhaps your online environment is best described as a discussion occurring in a quiet seminar room with a lake view, a newsletter production activity occurring in your classroom after school, group research being conducted in a museum, individual portfolio development occurring in the privacy of each student’s room . . . whatever it is. Be sure to mention both place and activity in order to fill in as many mind void blanks as possible and thus imply as many kinds of behavior as possible.

- Jason