This week linked with many learning objectives from the past few weeks; the online syllabus, the online classroom, and the use of new tools from a LMS or Web 2.0.  I love the idea of creating a community, but realize that it does take quite a bit of thought, planning, and careful implementation.

Here are some of the thoughts that I had after reading Ko and Rosen and watching the videos:

I’m all for creating a very comfortable environment at the beginning of the class through introducing myself and having the students get to know one another. I think that VoiceThread would be an excellent tool to use for introductions. It seems to be very flexible in that you don’t have to share your picture and you have a choice of voice/video/text to respond. This should give everyone some way to respond that they would feel comfortable with.

Student Lounge. Has anybody had any experience with using one on Blackboard? What tool would be best for establishing one?  A wiki? discussion board? Should you set up parameters for how students should behave (what can be discussed) in the lounge?

I’m definitely going to have a FAQ page for the course with tutorials covering the major components of the class such as how to navigate the class on Blackboard, how to post to a discussion board, etc. I think I’ll start a FAQ page for my Blackboard sites that support my f2f classes.

Pilar’s lecture was very informative. I can see that online courses require a lot of monitoring. As she said, we need to “keep engaging” the students. I was imagining myself a student who spent time writing a great discussion board post and then have no one post a reply; very discouraging. I like the idea of recording audio/video messages to the students with comments/words of encouragement to keep students engaged in the class. I realize that this does take time, but it would result in better retention rates and greater participation. Pilar also stated that students really like to create their own content for the class. I was wondering if the historians –Lisa & Bethanie– might have specific suggestions on this topic.