OnPoint - Guideline 4, Use Many Social Setting Metaphors

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

• Part 3: Teach the Unfamiliar In Terms of the Familiar
  

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

Thanks for reading,

- Brad
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Guideline #4- Use many social setting metaphors. This provides practical considerations for using as many of Hall’s (1966) communication venues as possible, which I discussed in Guideline #2. Consider the communication that transpires in an average day at school. Some of it happens in classrooms, but much of it happens in hallways, after school, in between classes, via twitters, texting, or good old fashioned gabbing. In addition, students work in small groups, confer privately with teachers for help, and maybe talk to resource teachers alone or in groups. The fact is that when we characterize education as something that occurs just in the classroom, we miss a good deal of what actually happens at school. Beyond the obvious virtual presence for your online class— like maintaining websites and discussion groups—here are a few other suggestions:

Set up “hallway” venues. I used to set up conferences for my student teachers to which I did not have access. I would then encourage them to use it to talk about me, the class, life in general . . . whatever they wanted. I called it a “hallway conference” because it reminded me of the way students confer in the hallways, informally and out of the watchful eye of authority figures.

It is a good example of Hall’s (1966) private form of communication in that it was a closed conference, open only to certain people. As always, make sure that activities like these conform with school policy.

Hold virtual office hours. I also set up virtual office hours, which is easy to do these days with Skype, virtual environments, and even simple texting. In Hall’s (1966) terms, I used an intimate communication venue so that students could talk to just to the instructor. In addition to scheduled office hours, I held rolling office hours via e-mail. Wikis and blogs are ideal to use as social space for ongoing class “maintenance” discussions about where to find resources, resolve technical issues, and so on.

Use small groups and whole groups. Divide the class into small groups to tackle particular issues, which they then report back on to the whole class. This is easy to do with a number of social media and blends private and social space nicely.

- Jason