In my opinion, community is essential to the success of all courses. This week, the chapter readings and the videos provided very practical information about “building a community” within an online course. However, I do plan to apply some of the concepts and strategies that I learned from Pilar to the f2f medical terminology course that I am currently teaching. The concepts include sharing, feeling safe, and closeness. The strategies include having students invest in what they are learning, using polls, sending “check-in” e-mails, providing personalized feedback to students, and being more of a participant than a facilitator in the role of instructor.

Building a sense of community fits very well with nursing and allied health courses. For example, as nursing students move into the hospital setting to take care of patients, there is so much pertinent information that they can “share” with each other about their experiences in an online environment. With students in the medical terminology course, a sense of community can be facilitated by students speaking to each other using medical terminology.

In moving forward, I realize that building a sense of community in online environment will require the use of technology. So, once I have completed my doctoral dissertation, I am buying myself a new computer. However, before I do so I will be asking the POT facilitators and my fellow POT learners to provide me with input on what “bells and whistles” should come with the computer for the purpose of online teaching.

Oh, before I go…….I have a quick question. I am curious to know how you greet your students (collectively) in both an online and f2f environment. For example, do say “Hello class,” or “Hello everyone?” I get the sense that younger generation students find the term “class” to be too formal.