This is the Transform Your Teaching Podcast. The Transform Your Teaching Podcast is a service of the Center for Teaching and Learning at Cedarville University in Cedarville, Ohio.
Hello, and welcome to this episode of Transform Your Teaching. In today's episode, Dr. Rob McDole and Dr. Jared Pyles continue our series on online teaching practices by talking about community. Thanks for joining us.
Thanks, Ryan.
Yes. Thank you, Ryan. Welcome, Dr. Pyles. Welcome, Dr. McDole. It's unbelievably hot outside.
Yeah, I got in my car to come over here and it said 99 degrees.
That's as high as your temperature gauge goes on your vehicle, I'm sure. It was hot. It's miserable.
It was hot. Well, today we're talking about community. One of the things that you and I've gone around the barn, if you will, many times is this idea of just defining community. Yes. So why don't you give our listeners a little peek into our conversations and how we kind of came to how we're going to define community for our conversation today.
Yeah, so community as we have defined it, is not by our definition. So it's someone else, Knowled and Keller, 2018. Their definition is a network of interaction between individuals who have congregated for a common purpose. I guess not really limited to online. Community in general is a network of interaction between individuals who have congregated for a common purpose.
And something that we did add to it was it's a shared goal and a shared meaning. So the people if you if you are in a group of people that have a shared goal and a shared meaning or adding on to Nolan and Keller in which they say common purpose, then you are part of a community. That's how we're defining it for this.
And we went beyond that a little bit because then we started talking about limitations.
Correct. Right. So And that specifically for online community.
Then we started to drill down a bit. So when we think about community online, distance doesn't seem to be so much of an issue as what we would think of as a community.
Mhmm.
We would often think of like for us, Cedarville. Cedarville is a small little community, small little village in Ohio. And it's got restaurants, gas, schools, you know, obviously college, university, medical, some medical offices, all these things, coffee shops, cafes, all these things that people would come together and
A library.
A library. Mhmm. Right?
Two, actually.
That is true. And a thrift shop. Yeah. I mean, I Along with an old theater. Correct. Yeah. So there's like all these things, you know, that people use together, a certain group of people. Not everybody in the world comes to Cedarville to go shopping. So
You're right.
Right? So there's a certain number of regulars, those kinds of things. So this community is limited to geography. It's limited to whether you're traveling in or through Cedarville or you have a job here. Yeah. When we talk about online learning, that kind of like blows up. Yeah. You know, when you start talking about community. Well It really gets down I mean, because it and there's difficulties with it, limitations in terms of time zones.
Right.
Right?
Yeah. Like, for example, when I was going through Boise and we would have these optional synchronous meetings, someone who lived over in The UAE would log on and it was like three in the morning for them when we'd have
to.
So was a bit of a limitation. I mean, clearly that's not the ideal time of doing that, but it is an optional thing. But there is limitations as far as time zone and geography goes.
Yeah. We also talked about motivation, depending on the course.
This one's so big. And like, this one keeps coming back to us in various capacities. This is probably the most common, I wouldn't say frustration, but common pain point, I think, of online education for me. Because at the very beginning of this podcast, I was very much a, Hey, we got to build community, and here's how you build community. And this, this, this, and one of the things was like students and student student interaction, having those discussions and icebreaker and stuff like that.
Then we've had students on though that have said, Yeah, we don't like doing that. And I'm like, Well, then how do you But then it comes back to motivation. And motivation to me is just one of those things where you and I have had so many discussions on this podcast and off this podcast about how to stoke that motivation and what kind of motivation can you actually drum up in students. Had like Quentin Schultz has been talking about motivation. Other people talk about motivation.
Like it's just trying to stoke that fire. And the fact remains within a community in an online course, have students who are just give me the A, I don't care what you have to do, just give me the A. I don't care what I have to do, just give me the A. Others are like, that see the social aspect to it and want to build a community. Then you have others who don't show up at all and fail the class. There's just different levels of motivation it seems like. Yeah. So that can be a limitation.
Right. And I think that's where self determination theory can come in. Maybe, you you can explore the idea of community in terms of SDT. And, you know, we don't have all the time in the world to do that today.
Yeah, unfortunately. That's a whole series on itself.
It is. Maybe something we'll get to in the future. So let's just talk about types of community that that, you know, we usually experience in online learning, even in courses and face to face. So one of them, we I think we both agreed to this, is that they tend to be ephemeral.
Mhmm. In other words,
you know, especially with your foundational or lower level courses, you don't tend to get as much, maybe, unless they're gatekeeper courses online and face to face. They're gatekeeper courses, then oftentimes you might be able to build a little bit of a community around studying together, and some of those study groups might occur.
Especially if there's a cohort as well. Mhmm.
Right. Yeah. I could see how cohort would give you an advantage. Yeah. Across the curriculum, across the program, that you would build that over time.
You do do that in a face to face community a bit because you have the same peers in your major and you come in together and you take those courses together and you sometimes you take the gen eds together depending on your and how rigid they are. In online, unless it's a set in stone track, you still tend to differ a bit. You may have some commonalities between some other people in your cohort, but sometimes it's very splintered from the very beginning.
Yeah. And that's where we were talking about their ephemeral and disconnected from the content. Right? From the course itself is like a lot of times, you know, people might find one another if they all happen to love Marvel movies.
Right. Or f
one. Or f one. Yeah. Video games, that's a big one. That tends to be one that's for the past few generations kinda cuts across generational lines as well. Yep. So, you know, like Fortnite. So those are what I would say non programmable ad hoc kinds of community.
Mhmm.
Where you may not see them coming, but they do occur. Right. Right. What's another one? Here's one.
My statistics course, I think I've talked about it before where the professor would set up two week assignments, and then the first week we could share our findings in a discussion and then we would reply back and forth. Well, built a community from that and one of our guests, Ariel Horan, was one of those people in that course and we built a friendship there. But then when there's also a common community between all of us as stat students that then went past that course and lasted all the way to graduation. I mean, were not as many of us, like there were seven. It was like a dwindling away as they graduated or they went different directions in the program.
Then it was me, Ariel, and Jamie that we've all had on the podcast that finished together. But it wasn't without that stats course that was a trial, it was a struggle, which I think also where communities can be born as well is through that shared struggle, especially in an online course. And then so we came out of that with that. So that could be one as well. That's also social. It started out as learning, but then it morphed into a social community from there.
So as we've thought about the limitations, we thought about the types of community a little bit here. I'm sure our listeners may have some other insights. Love to hear what they have to say in feedback, so drop us a line there. But one of the things we also thought about were the quality, you know, the types of quality in terms of defining an online community. And one of those was a strong student to student community.
Right.
That's student driven.
Right.
Goes back to self determination theory, STT. And this idea that ownership by the student of the community. So it's not just they have to be there. They want to be there. Right. And they go out of their way to connect with others and make it meaningful, not just for themselves, but for others as well.
Sure. But that relies on someone to be motivated to do that as well and sees the value of it. The one reason that my community flourished the way it did is because I keep name dropping people, but Kim Woodruff, who's been on this podcast many times, she is the one who orchestrated and started that we talked about in the back channel episode. And it was because of her motivation and her desire to build a community outside of the courses we were taking. That's the reason it took off.
If you don't have someone to do that, it's difficult. Even with an instructor who wants to initiate that, and we talked about this as well in the back channel, even with an instructor involvement, it seems like more the instructor is involved, the less likely it's to happen because it feels like it's part of a course or part of your instruction.
You feel like you're being assessed.
Yeah, you feel like you have to be guarded a bit.
Well, think that does go to this idea of each student looking for different things and depending on, you know, depending on it goes back to that limitation, right? It's depending on where they're at, who they are, what their personality is like, and what they're looking for. Because that goes back to what we were talking about in terms of how they get in a course, right? Do they get in a course just because they're wanting to get done with this particular course, have it done? Or is it a gatekeeper like the the statistics course that you went through?
Right.
And then you have this common you and I have talked about this many, many times. It seems like, and we'll probably get into this to some degree. It seems like the more stress and struggle that is common to all in a course can help. I'm not saying it I don't know if there's one single catalyst that we've been able to find in our research, or even in our own experience where we look back and we say, yep, that was present there, that that was present there in that community that I had. It's usually a connection of lots of different little areas.
And I think as we consider this and we move into talking about why is this important, especially for online learning, is we just need to be cognizant of the fact that community, I think, cannot be forced.
That's correct.
It can be fostered. Community can be fostered by instructors. Like, your instructor maybe said something that might lend you all to think, oh, we can have back channel communications or maybe we should. Or, you know, he didn't say, well, you have to do this,
he He said also didn't set it up for us.
Right. So, left the ownership in your hands. Correct. But I'm sure there was something that he said that maybe at least lended itself to you going,
Well, mean, the guy who suggested it, and it was also Kim's adviser, is also the guy who teaches all the online learning courses. Doctor Lowenthal, we've had on before. Right.
Yep.
So he sees the advantage of it, but he didn't push it. He just said, if you guys want to do that, and then Kim was like, yeah, I'll totally do that. But I think that it's like some of the especially with the stats course, the intention wasn't for us to build a community. I think it was a byproduct of it, which is interesting as well because you can plan for something and it never happens. You don't plan it and all of a sudden it becomes either the shared struggle or whatever it is.
It eclipses the course. Yeah, it really does.
Yeah. Well, I think we've talked enough about the limitations. We've defined roughly where we're looking at in terms of community. Yep. I think we've concluded the fact that, yes, you can program it to some degree.
But I think everybody senses the same thing is I can do the same thing in in another section of the same course and not get the same results. Right? Yep. And it's because relationships have to be owned. The degree to which I think relationships are strong, have to be owned and there has to be a significant amount of trust Sure. As as we go back to that that that idea of shared goals, shared meaning, common purpose.
Mhmm.
So why? Why is this so stinking important? Jared, you know, you've I've struggled with More so than More so than me. Uh-huh. Because I'm happy to just go learn on my own. You know that. Yeah.
Well, to me, that was part of the not I wouldn't say the joy. It was a sense of relief when I was taking an online course and I didn't realize that there were other people struggling as much as I was. So again, the shared struggle that we talk about. Yeah. It was such a relief to me to find out from someone else that, yeah, I'm really struggling with this too.
Because there are oftentimes where I would, especially in the stats class, where I would struggle because I am not a math guy. And I would be like, I don't get this, this is useless. What am I doing? And then sure enough, someone was supposed post the exact same issues that I had. And then I realized, no, wait, they're doing worse than I am.
So I have a better understanding of it than they do. And I ended up like teaching others about it, which is, are you kidding me? But like, it just felt like if I didn't have that shared struggle with others that they were struggling as well, I would have felt stupid and isolated and I would have given up. So to me, it's more important to have that community and have that difficulty together to know you're not alone, that you're not stupid, that everyone is struggling with this as well.
Sure. I hear you. So that goes to that whole question of why. So, from your perspective, and you know, from what we've looked at, I know you've done a lot of research on this. I know you've gone back and forth with a lot of your peers as well as, you know, now colleagues who were your professors. Yeah. They've touched on this whole thing. And we've mentioned it before in the podcast. Yeah. But why? Why is it why is it so important?
Don't think it's all the time. Okay. And that's what I've come to the conclusion. If you have to force a community in your online course, especially like we talked about with gen ed courses where the vast majority of your students, let's be honest, I don't have the data, but I'm sure I could find it pretty quickly, the vast majority of the students in your ged ed course are there to get the grade. They're not looking to communicate with anyone else.
Or expand their knowledge
based on their interactions with their peers. That's why your discussions are, I agree, Robert, and then two generic points afterward. And then, I agree, Jared, and then maybe a point or a question that you fabricate at the last minute because you have to get this in. I think that's a symptom of just, my motivation is to get the grade. I'm not here to communicate.
You're jumping through a hoop.
You're jumping through the hoop. But it's when you get into those higher level courses where you have kind of a more of a, I won't say refined, but more like condensed student body that are there for a common purpose, a common goal. They have about the same level of motivation. I think the community there is really important. And based on the informal cohorts they've already formed by being in the same major together, I think that's where you can really foster the community that may already be there.
So you want to stoke that fire and get people more involved there. And it's all about those high quality connections that have an influence on a person. You know, we started talking about this, how does this look practically in a gen ed course? If you were to find a way of doing high quality interactions with others in a course, You know, would you change the generic icebreaker that you do in your Course where instead of it being like, what's your name? What's your hometown?
What's your favorite candy bar? Is it something along the lines where you were talking about, which I thought was interesting, it's still been bouncing around in my noggin, that Octopus is still throwing it back and forth, is what if you change it to their level of motivation for the course? Like what if it's, Hey, what's your name? What's your major? Is this your first class?
How motivated are you to take this course? Are your expectations? Is it to get a grade or is it to learn from others? And do you see the application? Something along those lines.
And if they say, I'm just here to get the grade, totally cool with that. But it lets you know and lets them know that it's okay, and that they start to build these common bonds between each other about saying, you know, the whole idea of this is just to create some sort of transparent community where the students feel like they can share things like that, because that's really where the community part is starting to build is where the guard is dropped and they're willing to be transparent. That could be very simple. It could be, Look, I'm just here to get a grade in this course, or It's a requirement for my major. I really don't care about the content, but it says I have to take this.
And that could be a way of doing that. I mean, you have to be real with yourself as an instructor as well, because your students may be there just to get the grade, and you have to be okay with that, and you have to recognize that. You just have to be real with them about it. So the why to me, yes, it does foster some community and it does foster some interaction. In most cases, it will help students learn because they feel like they have some common bonds and they're struggling or they can help others.
But sometimes it can feel forced, so maybe it's not necessarily useful or worth the time.
I think I would answer it this way. I would say, you're better together than you are by yourself. What I come to anyway is, it's better to try to have connection in some way. Than to not at all. Correct.
So let's talk about the how of building the community. One of the things we would recommend, and it's something we've already talked about in this episode, is the idea of an icebreaker and maybe a water cooler talk. That's something that one of my instructors did that was a constant dialogue going about just off topic stuff. And that did build a bit of a community. His course also was very open with discussions and everything else.
Course in itself was a really good way of building community. But like changing the icebreaker a bit to something that's more motivated or more reflective, we talked about reflective practices earlier in this series, An icebreaker could be a good opportunity to do that. And it's also important to just, as an instructor, to be active. Like I just mentioned, the course that I was in, the instructor was very active in the water cooler talk, would often start those conversations and then keep them going. And then it was very active in our classroom discussions, classroom quote unquote, because it was an online course, discussions as well.
So being active in that, students seeing that you're in there and then having those meaningful conversations, not just doing the I agree with that, and then encourage students to be more meaningful in the dialogue. But again, to me, that's later on in the course. Before you can even get to that point, you've got to start building that community early. I think that's where maybe changing how we do icebreaker or having a water cooler talk helps with that because later on down the road when you're expecting students to collaborate or if there's any kind of student student interaction, they're going to be more apt to do those since they've already built a relationship or built a community together in some capacity.
I think one of the things we also talked about, we've kind of hinted at it as we've been having this conversation is keep things balanced. Yep. Don't avoid driving the icebreaker into the ground. Yeah. Which also goes with that whole idea of paying attention.
Right. Be active.
When you say be active, what what are you thinking? What are you meaning?
As the discussion is going on during the week, read and reply.
Okay.
Don't wait until the end of the discussion and then realize, wow, they completely missed this, but I'm already in the next unit. Yeah. If the only time that you're looking at the discussion is when you're grading it, it's not good. It's way past the point. Why are you even there at that
point? It's not really a discussion, is it?
It's not a I mean, it's a discussion between the students, but you don't know if it's a fruitful discussion or it met the objectives, if you even have objectives for your discussion. Be active throughout the entire duration of the discussion.
Oh, and that is so tough. That is probably one of the hardest things to do for faculty. I get it. Right? How do you guide, but not just go ahead and give everybody the answer Sure. From the get go, but you just keep fostering the communication, asking questions. That's the best way I know how to do it. Instead of giving answers, I ask questions. Ask, you know, just probing questions about something somebody says, you know, what do you mean by that?
And then the online discussion, the idea of fostering an online discussion isn't a foreign concept. There are plenty of resources and books that are available to lead instructors in that direction, so that it's not that difficult of a task for them. It's something that they can learn from others on how to there's a great chance to collaborate with another person in your department. If you know someone who is really good at those discussions, online or face to face, reach out and say, Hey, help me with some questions that are not leading questions that give them the answer, but to foster that. And it doesn't have to be reply to everyone's posts, just reply to one or two people.
Also, it lets them know that you're actually paying attention. Because I got burned at one point when I first started teaching No, online no, I didn't reply at all until someone actually said in there, hey, is is mister Piles even reading this? And I discovered it a month later. And I was like, oh, that's bad. So I lost that trust that I was building with my students as well.
Yeah. Yeah. I think we could go on and on about community. There are so much here. As you've pointed out on several occasions, there is a ton of research Yeah. In this area. And every single one of your, you know, people that you know who this is their area would say, it's important. It's important. But then they're like, yeah, but nobody really likes to do it. Yeah.
It's it's so weird. It's yeah. All the all the research says do it, and then you talk to people, they're like, yeah, but I don't really like doing it.
So I think if I could sum it up today would be one, define it well for yourself. You know, use research to be helpful in that. Make it appropriate for your course.
Yeah. Don't overdo it. Don't expect more than you actually will get.
Right. But also provide opportunity. Sure. You know, encourage things. You can encourage interaction just by small little phrases or even questions. You don't know until you try it. Right. Right?
Mhmm.
And then, because your course can be better than not trying at all in terms of connection and community. And then, just keep it balanced, pay attention, stay plugged in, but don't overdo it.
Yeah. It's something that I'm I will constantly go back to because I'm still not satisfied with it. The way it's currently being defined, the best practices, and then comparing that with what's actually happening and the attitudes and motivation to do it. It's just something that's always, I'm always going to wrestle with, I guess.
Thanks for joining this episode of Transform Your Teaching. If you have any questions or thoughts about this episode on community, feel free to send us an email at CTLPodcastcedarville dot edu. Don't hesitate to connect with us on LinkedIn. Also, forget to check out our blog at cedarville.edu/focusblog. Thanks for listening.