B4 - Student-Initiated Contact with Other Students

Student-to-student interaction is a vital part of any course experience. Designing for a high level of student-to-student interaction in the online learning environment is so important that California accrediting bodies require evidence of it in online course and program design.

In the face-to-face classroom, students often interact with one another as a natural part of the learning experience. They chat as they enter and leave class, they participate in informal discussions, and they build relationships through study groups and other interactions. 

These off-the-cuff (voluntary and informal) interactions where students are sharing in a more social, impromptu manner—sometimes termed "proximal discovery”—can get lost in an online course when students aren’t physically in each other’s presence. This rubric item is asking you to explicitly include course design elements that encourage meaningful student-initiated interactions for the purpose of building a sense of community.

We've noticed that every class group is different. Some really make use of the informal communication opportunities, some aren't as engaged in that way. Try out different strategies, and it helps if you regularly encourage students to make use of the opportunities.

Here are some activities to try. You could ask students for their ideas as well: 

• Set up “Student lounge” or “Class Q&A” open discussions
• Arrange voluntary “study buddy” pairings
• Promote a class blog or wiki page
• Create a class hashtag for Twitter posts (one biology instructor had her students tweet whenever they sighted a new bird)
• Enable the Chat feature in your course navigation (and let students know how to use it for real-time communication with each other)
• Set up voluntary special interest groups or "get ready for the mid-term" study groups
• If your college has Pronto, provide students with tutorial information and encourage them to use it

Where to Look

Discussions is an obvious place to look (for the Student Lounge type of discussion) but you may need to do a little exploring in the Syllabus and Orientation module as well since some opportunities for informal interaction (Twitter, Pronto) may not be immediately apparent.

What to Look For

Look for opportunities for interaction that are not directed by the instructor and are not a required part of the course.