http://newsroom.opencolleges.edu.au/features/15-ways-online-educators-can-light-social-engagement-afire/

Social engagement may help eliminate the student  retention problems that have plagued higher education for many years. Stephen  Abram, author of the Stephen’s Lighthouse blog on library trends, pointed  out that,

“For decades, research has been pointing to social engagement as a key factor  in helping improve student retention. While much progress has been made in  working toward easing students into the college experience, supporting them, and  getting them active with their peers, there’s still much more that can be done,  as social engagement can be a pivotal factor in whether a student sticks around  to finish his or her studies.”

This is great news for educators at all levels. As the number of students who  abandon their education increases, educators have grown increasingly desperate  and disheartened. But social engagement may offer a solution.

What is Social Engagement?

Social engagement is defined by one’s involvement with a social group or  community. In the old days, social engagement was evident in church suppers,  town fairs, and community group meetings.  Before the advent of online  education, social engagement was something that educators probably took for  granted because it occurs naturally for students on traditional campuses, where  face-to-face courses, extracurricular activities, and dorm life provides many  opportunities for students to get to know their new community and their fellow  students.

But for online students, who generally work alone from home computers, the  chance to make connections with other students or their larger community is  severely limited. It’s up to educators themselves to become creative and provide  options for students.

This is especially important given the crucial impact that social engagement  can have on a student’s academic success. In my own experience, Twitter  reminders about upcoming exams and paper due dates have helped many of my  students stay on track and prepared to meet their academic responsibilities,  especially those who struggle with chronic disorganization or ADHD or other  disabilities.

All over the world, online educators are exploring a wide range of new  instructional techniques involving social engagement. Today, social engagement  comes in many forms, from volunteer work to online chats. For example, online  media is accessible, free or low-cost, easy to use, and offers multiple  variations and applications—enough, perhaps, for online educators to find  something that can work for a variety of different students.

There are countless ways teachers can use social engagement to help  their students and enliven their classes, but here are fifteen ideas to get you  started:

1. Build Relationships Through Online Or In-Person Chats

For many students, connections with faculty members can make  all the difference.  I have always noticed that students who make the extra  effort to attend office hours, submit rough drafts for comment, or simply  discuss course material with me perform better. When I personally encourage  them, they become more invested in their work. Online instructors can hold  face-to-face vide chats to make the interaction more personal.

2. Assign Group Activities

Much new research contradicts long-held beliefs that  students learn best through solitary study. According to studies  by scholar Alexander Astin, individual students’ academic achievement is  bolstered by supportive relationships between students, which are “the single  more powerful source of influence on the undergraduate student’s academic and  personal development.”

3. Create Study Groups in Your Courses

Law and medical school students have long known that study  groups can be an effective tool for academic success. Assign students to small  study groups held through Google Hangout or  another live  meeting application to help them learn how to work in groups, meet their  fellow students, and discuss course materials.

4. Start a Course Facebook Page

West Virginia University professor Dr. Nicholas David Bowman  teaches and uses new media in the classroom, and he reports  that on his class Facebook pages, “students interact with each other faster  than I interact with them.

I move to more of a ‘guide on the side’ than a ‘sage on the stage’ and that  brings me closer to their level (to borrow an old teaching adage). This is a  good thing, as it fosters a trust environment conducive to learning.”

5. Incorporate Service Learning

According to the National  Service Learning Clearinghouse, service learning is “a teaching and learning  strategy that integrates meaningful community service with instruction and  reflection to enrich the learning experience, teach civic responsibility, and  strengthen communities.”

An assignment that involves community service, such as volunteering, will  provide students with the opportunity to interact with their communities in  meaningful ways, and share their experiences with each other online.

6. Assign Professional Mentors From Area Organizations

Build a database of contacts at companies and non-profits  that would be willing to answer student questions, via email or in-person, about  different fields and careers. Students can lay the groundwork for their own  career network while they get to know community leaders, and share what they  learn with their fellow students.

7. Assign Student Mentors

Similar to the professional mentoring explained above,  student mentoring is a helpful way to bring new students into a field or major.  Graduates of the course or program can provide valuable insights to new  students, expanding their opportunities to learn about their course of study and  develop connections that might be helpful after they graduate.

8. Encourage Collaboration In a Course-Wide Project

Students can work together to build an archive of documents,  create a poll, or track an experiment on a collaborative website, such as Google Docs, which gives them the chance  to work together, confront and solve problems, and interact through interpretive  comments.

9. Tweet In The Classroom

I mainly use Twitter as an announcement service to update  students, but many instructors have incorporated Twitter in other  effective ways.

For example, professors at the University of Texas and Purdue University ask  students to post questions on Twitter during lectures, so that even shy or  reticent students can participate in the course community. This can work  during online synchronous courses as well as in-person courses.

10. Involve Students In a Class Volunteer Project

Nothing brings people together more than shared altruism.  Whether it’s holding a car wash to raise money for a local charity or responding  to an international disaster by working with the Red Cross or other community  organization, volunteer activities allow students to help other people and in  the process develop a broader outlook on the world.

Online fundraising is one way to do this, and there are many online  applications that students can use to process payments and donations.

11. Create Community Through Pinterest

Students often yearn to be seen by their colleagues and  instructors as more than just seat-filler material. On Pinterest, they can post  photos that express who they are, their values, their responses to course  material, etc.

Some art teachers use Pinterest as a forum through which students can  showcase their artwork.

12. Use ePals For Collaborative Activities

Seeing the foreign stamp on the letter my middle school pen  pal sent me once a month told me that I was connected to the larger world and  added a bit of exoticism to the humdrum routine of school, chores, homework, and  TV.

Troy Tenhet of eSchoolNews reports  that his incorporation of ePals into his courses has given students  a similar opportunity to interact with students around the world through  collaborative activities.

13. Sponsor an Online Event

Invite your students to join you for an online film  screening and chat about the movie. Play an online game with your students,  especially one that relates to your course material, such as This  Day in History or CEOonline.

A little healthy competition can spur students to stay on top of their course  materials and get to know each other.

14. Start a “Social Reading” Activity

Social reading is one of the new buzz phrases in pedagogy,  but it is not only a new way to teach material, it’s also a great way to build a  course community. As New York University Professor Stephen Duncombe explained to The  Chronicle of Higher Education, he used Thomas More’s classic book Utopia to create Social Utopia on Social Book, an online  social reading application.

His students annotated and commented on the book as they read it, sharing and  exchanging new information and learning from each other. The result was a  rich textual interpretation and a new way for students to engage with one  another intellectually.

15. Hold an Online Focus Group

Borrow a page from corporations that test products through  paid focus groups, and ask your students to provide feedback on assignments and  then work together to create new versions.

These are just a few of the many options available to online educators who  wish to bring their students out of the isolation that is both a benefit and a  drawback to online learning.  For online educators, it’s important to be  creative and find ways to deliver curriculum to meet multiple goals, beyond the  content-driven needs of instruction.

This will not only enliven your curriculum, it will benefit the social,  emotional, and psychological development and needs of your students.

About Andrianes Pinantoan