Building Community in a Remote Course

Whether it is through discussion and dialogue, brainstorming, problem-solving, roleplays, or group presentations, interactions with peers create learning spaces where students can practice, refine, and deepen their ideas, their skills, and their growing understanding of new concepts and materials. When students have structured opportunities to collaborate, it often means they are sharing their own learning process and teaching each other. It also requires higher order thinking skills and application (Darabi et al., 2013; MacLeod et al., 2019). 

When it comes to remote learning environments, here are a few key strategies (and lots of great tools!) for designing effective and inclusive synchronous and asynchronous peer-engagement opportunities for our students:

• One of the important aspects of facilitating peer learning is student agency. There should be a balance of highly structured peer learning activities and activities and opportunities for students to take more ownership of their learning.
• Strive to create a culture of shared responsibility for learning by integrating collaborative learning in remote settings. Create ways for students to get to know each other, connect with, and draw on each other’s academic interests and strengths. To do this, design ways to bring small group structures and low-stakes engagements into online learning spaces—perhaps through study groups, collaborative assignments, or individual assignments that connect students to each other, such as peer-editing. 
• Structure group work for a balance of accountability and flexibility. Scaffolding assignments for deliverables in stages and assigning roles for each member of a group can be a helpful tactic to bring in multiple voices and create different ways for students to see a range of expertise in each other. In remote settings, we may need to allow for greater flexibility in teams, allow students to choose their own teams, or create smaller teams to aid in scheduling and getting the work done.

Here are a few tools to consider for facilitating student-student engagement. The tools shared below are presented in order of increasing agency and flexibility.

Discussion boards

Discussion boards are probably the most commonly used but also most maligned forms of engagement and peer learning. It’s important to note that the empirical research indicates that not all discussion boards are created equal and that there are strategies that instructors can employ to improve engagement, interaction, and learning (Darabi, A. et al, 2013; Oh, E. et al, 2016; Lieberman, M., 2019.). This research highlights that there are a number of ways to make discussion boards more effective, including (this webinar offered by CNDLS.):

• Provide clear and engaging prompts
• Be an active participant
• Model the responses you want to see
• Provide feedback and guidance, especially in ways that help students see the range of expertise of other students 
• Be creative and design a variety of activities

Also keep in mind that the discussion boards in Canvas support multimedia responses. So students aren’t limited to responding with just text; they can incorporate images, videos, sounds, animated gifs—if it can exist on the web, then it can exist in a response on a discussion board. Consider allowing and encouraging students to change up their types of responses.

Annotation tools

As we saw above, VoiceThread is also a tool that can be integrated into Canvas, which allows even richer multimedia responses to a discussion prompt. Faculty can record themselves and annotate a document or other artifact, and students then respond with voice or video annotations in turn. The same guidelines apply as in a “regular” discussion thread, but VoiceThread allows for a bit more flexibility and space for creativity. The learning curve is more significant for both the instructor and the students, but not insurmountable.

Collaborative or common work spaces

Google Docs is an excellent collaboration space for students to take collective notes, work on projects or assignments, share resources, and other peer learning and engagement activities. Students can also collaboratively use Google Slides, Google Sheets, etc, for projects, resource sharing, and other collaborative activities.

There are also a number of tools that integrate with Google Apps. One such tool is Timeline.js, where students can create a collaborative, multimedia timeline using Google Sheets. Google Maps can be used to create simple, collaborative, interactive maps. And Jamboard on Google can be used for collaborative mind mapping, brainstorming, and drawing. Students can work synchronously or asynchronously with these tools. 

Students can also use Zoom on their own to organize study groups, synchronous collaboration time, and even record presentations. While time zones are challenging, consider polling your students to facilitate the creation of groups with similar schedules and time zone limitations. You can also poll students to find out which platforms they are most comfortable using to keep in touch with one another, and create space for them to share contact information for working together synchronously. 

Another platform that GU supports for peer-learning is Georgetown Commons Blog. Instructors can create a single course blog in WordPress that everyone can contribute to, or one central class blog with each student getting their own blog. This is great for longer-term projects, weekly reflections or research journals, or a collaborative space to be able to share research, resources, and have discussions. Students can also create ePortfolios or exhibits on their Commons Blog. You can limit access to just students in your class or make them public. 

Georgetown Domains is a more robust way to create websites for a course or for students to create their own web presence. With more options than just WordPress, Georgetown Domains allows for different ways to share scholarship and work on the web. Installing a platform like Omeka can allow for the creation of robust online exhibits, certain WordPress themes not available on the Commons Blog facilitate multimedia portfolios, and students can even create their own website via coding. 

Engaging students through presence and community

Another key factor for student success is engagement with faculty. There are many ways faculty can engage with students and, while there is no “one size fits all” approach, there are two key interrelated components: establishing and maintaining a positive faculty presence and building a learning community. Rather than waiting until the first day of class to begin establishing presence and building community, you can begin to develop your presence during the planning phase by doing the following:  

• Craft a welcoming, engaging, and inclusive syllabus. Consider using second person rather than third person. For more information on syllabus design visit the Teaching Commons website.  To learn more about designing an inclusive syllabus visit the LGBTQ Resource Center and visit the CNDLS Inclusive Pedagogy toolkit.
• Send out a welcome email or announcement in advance of the course.
• Develop a communication plan in advance so that students know how to best reach you, what your turnaround time will be, etc.
• Build an Orientation in your Canvas course, make it available to students before the course begins, and require students to post a video introduction. This will give them a chance to read the syllabus, get required books and materials, and become more acquainted with you and their classmates.
• Follow Universal Design for Learning (UDL) guidelines when designing your course.  Design your course with variability and some flexibility in mind so you can reach all types of learners.
• Make yourself visible. Pre-record a Canvas-posted welcome video where students get to see you and learn more about who you are, and build in opportunities during the first week of class for students to see and get to know you and each other.
• Learn your students’ names.  In Canvas you can see who your students are by selecting “People” on the navigation bar. 
• Require video introductions on the discussion board during the first week of class. While this is a low-stakes, ungraded assignment in most online learning environments, it can also be a high impact one in that it allows you to establish your presence, begin to foster a community of learning, model the appropriate tone and content, and set the norms and expectations for the discussion board that you want students to follow for the duration of the course.

Once the course begins, you can continue to establish presence and build community, both synchronously and asynchronously.

Synchronous engagement: Office hours

In addition to class sessions, you can offer scheduled Zoom office hours just like you would on campus, set up additional office hours by appointment, require one-on-one meetings with students (e.g., to discuss their ideas for a paper or provide feedback), put students in breakout rooms during live class discussion, and schedule Q&A Review sessions at different points during the semester (e.g., before an exam). 

• For office hours, it is recommended that you schedule regular office hours, stagger the times to accommodate different time zones, and that you enable the waiting room so that you can meet with students one-on-one. Keep in mind that offering additional office hours by appointment may be helpful for some students, but not all are likely to initiate appointments and many may be more likely to drop into regularly occurring sessions.
• Where feasible, consider requiring at least one one-on-one meeting with students to encourage engagement, and offer office hours by phone or chat for those who may have bandwidth issues or are more comfortable talking by phone or text (Zoom also has call-in option). For other synchronous Zoom sessions (e.g., review sessions), consider recording (in the cloud) so that those who are unable to attend can watch it on their own. 
• Follow Georgetown’s security recommendations on Zoom.

Asynchronous engagement

Three common ways to engage with students asynchronously include discussion boards, announcements, and feedback. Some advantages of asynchronous learning are that it provides students with more flexibility and students don’t have to think on the spot and will have more time to think before responding.

• Discussion Boards: When you engage in the discussion board, students will notice and be more likely to see value in the activity. In addition, asynchronous online discussions provide you with an electronic record that can be used to evaluate student progress over time, get a “temperature check” of engagement levels among students, and also can be used to identify what worked and didn’t work in class discussions. Also, consider a one-to-many approach, such as recording a video that responds to the discussion board as a whole rather than engage with individual students—this can both save time and avoid bias in choosing to whom you respond.
• Announcements: You can establish your presence by communicating with your students on a regular basis. If you use the Announcement feature in Canvas, you can modify the settings so the announcement appears on the homepage of your course. By default, the announcement will also be sent to the students’ email as long as they do not change their notification settings in Canvas. Announcements can be used to provide updates, inform students about current events that relate to the course, provide global feedback, and remind students about upcoming deadlines, and can be text, audio, or video. Researcher Patrick Lowenthal reports that video announcements can increase the connection between students and their instructors. 
• Feedback: As with announcements, feedback can be provided by text, audio, or video. Create rubrics that clearly communicate what the expectations are for assignments and consider using Speedgrader in Canvas to add more personalized feedback. Speedgrader also allows you to annotate, draw, and mark up student work, which can also be images, graphs, charts, text, audio, or video.