As we know, discipleship is key to any biblical student – teacher relationship. Can natural and frustration-free discipleship take place online? Can mediated communication such as Populi really take the place of face-to-face classroom interaction? Perhaps not perfectly, no, but social interaction online does have strengths that the face-to-face classroom lacks. For example, it is easy in an online discussion to require a main post and follow-up comments from each student and to track whether or not each student is participating. In the physical classroom, it is much more difficult to track this individually.
It gets better. Lowenthal and Dunlap (2009) looked at whether or not storytelling can enhance online learning. They concluded that digital storytelling such as explaining a photo, narrating a video, giving a PowerPoint presentation, or disclosing personal information and relating it to what is being learned helped students retain more information, feel more involved in their learning, and humanize the teacher. Bottom line: we can be relational online.
What does it really mean to be relational in an online context? Bentley (2011) defines social presence as “an individual’s ability to demonstrate his or her state of being in a virtual space”. This would include the level of connectivity and communication taking place on a personal level between a teacher and his or her students. It would also include the individual’s “level of availability” for interpersonal interactions.
Bentley says, “social presence may represent the degree to which experiences seem unmediated.” Oddly enough, an experience that seems unmediated will almost always occur when teachers and students are comfortable and familiar with interactions in the online environment. This kind of natural social interaction takes place best when people forget that they are using a learning management system or a tool to communicate at all.
With that in mind, here are a few questions to get a conversation started today:
How comfortable are you communicating with students online? How comfortable do you think students are communicating with each other (or with anyone else for that matter) online? Is your interaction with students on Populi important to you? Is it important to our students? Do you seek opportunities for online interaction or avoid it? Do you view Populi as a way to serve our students or as a simple grading and correcting tool? Is an online class or course shell that is devoid of all personal information and human interaction ideal? Can we do better?
Thanks for thinking with me. As usual, leave any comments below. You can click the drop-down box and select “anonymous” to make a comment anonymously.
Works cited
Bentley, Kia J. (2011). The centrality of social presence in online teaching and learning
Lowenthal, Patrick R. And Joanna C. Dunlap. (2009). From pixel on a screen to real person in your students lives: establishing social presence using digital storytelling
I have had one professor in particular that has engaged with his students personally. He would give little talks in his basement and mention that he was praying for us his students. The class was actually on prayer. He also confessed some very serious habits he had preciously been involved with. From my generational perspective it was too much information. So I'm wondering if one can be too personal online and actually hijack the learning process by damaging testimony. I like the short video idea. What do they mean by "unmediated"?
ReplyDeleteNice. Mediated communication is communication like this. It takes place asynchronously in an artificial context. Unmediated communication is face-to-face communication. So we try as much as possible to make communication online natural, frustration-free and personal. That's how mediated communication becomes (or feels) unmediated.
DeleteYeah, the normal rules of human interaction apply online. If something would be a violation of normal human communication then it's probably doubly so online. There's a permanent record of our Online communications that raises the stakes and makes us even more uncomfortable when people share more than they should with us. Good thoughts anonymous. Thanks for the comment.