The development of an online community takes an investment of time and energy. I call this an investment because it does pay dividends through the sharing and collective knowledge of the crowd. In #HumanMOOC, we explored building a community of inquiry by focusing on presence (teaching, social, and cognitive) and Dr. Rena Palloff specifically talked about the need for the instructor presence to be very strong at the onset of community development in order to set the stage for more social presence.
I had the privilege to attend Tekeisha Zimmerman’s dissertation defense “Testing the Psychometric Properties of the Online Student Connectedness Survey” yesterday. First of all, she was brilliant as she made many of the points that rang true during the #HumanMOOC and that Dr. Palloff talked about in her Google Hangout. However, she also made the point that the instructor cannot simply be an observer. ~ Think about that for a minute…
Have you had learning experiences where the instructor wasn’t present? Where the community of learners didn’t pull you back into the conversation? Where the community wasn’t a community but rather a disjointed, fragmented social organization?
I am already having a very different community experience in #rhizo15. The community is pulling me in simply because I mentioned that I really wanted to participate this time.Thanks to Sarah and Chrissi for the nudge!
I love a good messy learning experience and I thank the community members for pulling me into the fold. I’m going to focus my next few blog posts to my learning in #rhizo15 and I hope that some of our #HumanMOOC friends join us there too.
Where is there you may ask? Here is rhizomatic learning’s facebook group and use the hashtag #rhizo15 to find the conversation and join in! For more details see Dave Cormier’s blogpost: http://davecormier.com/