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CTL COLUMN: Using Classroom Awareness to Help Foster Online Community Susan Ko, Executive Director, CTL

UMUC's online courses are primarily asynchronous, with communication centered around the Conference area. Use of the chat function of WebTycho is governed by the UMUC guideline that chat should generally not be a required instructional activity since it is often difficult or impossible for certain students to participate, due to the global nature of our student body and the barriers that synchronous communication may pose to working adult students. Yet as convenient and flexible as asynchronous communication is, there is evidence that for at least some learners, a sense of immediacy through synchronous communication tools can contribute to a sense of connectedness and community. This article addresses some options for casual synchronous communication within WebTycho apart from any formal instructional use of such tools.   In WebTycho, chat is a feature that is automatically enabled as the default status in the classroom. That means when you receive your new online classroom, chat is automatically "on" and usable. When other people enter the same chat room, a user can also double-click on any of the names listed in the "People Here" list, and open a new chat window accessible to only to the user and the person whose name is clicked to create an Instant Message-like environment. The feature called Classroom Awareness (also referred to as Class Awareness) allows the classroom user to see who is accessing the classroom at the same time, whether or not the user is in the chat room. Again, the user can click on a name in a "People Here" list to open up an Instant Message-like window. But unlike the chat room, the default setting for this feature is that it is disabled. So unless a faculty member turns it "on," students will not be able to make use of it. Statistics (courtesy of LeADS) from Spring Semester, 2006 show that nearly 86% of the undergraduate classrooms and 81% of graduate classrooms had a chat room enabled in their classrooms while only 14.7% of undergraduate classrooms and 18.7% of graduate classrooms had classroom awareness enabled. Obviously, the different default positions of these two features may have an effect on their availability. It is also the case that some faculty may not be aware of how these settings work in conjunction with Account Preferences or how their availability might foster a sense of student community and personalization of the online classroom. Controlling Settings in WebTycho In WebTycho there are options that can be set by the faculty member for the classroom (through the Faculty Center), but all users, faculty and students also have their own options under Account Preferences. It's important to remember that faculty settings in the classroom override those chosen by individual students under Account Preferences. So no matter how many individual students have Classroom Awareness turned "on" based on their own individual Account Preferences, if their instructor has turned off the classroom option, then no-one in the classroom will be able to take advantage of Classroom Awareness. If the Classroom Awareness is "on" then it permits students to contact other "visible" students (or a visible instructor) for an Instant Messaging type of private contact. By double-clicking on any of the names listed in the "People Here" list, a user can open a window accessible to only him or her and the person whose name is clicked. Accommodating Faculty Concerns Some faculty are concerned that students will unnecessarily distract them while they are working to post materials or read messages in the classroom and at the same time faculty are anxious not to appear to rebuff the students. Therefore, they hesitate to turn on Classroom Awareness in the classroom. What they may not realize is that they can achieve the same result of "invisibility" by turning the feature off only in their own Account Preferences, and enabling it, when, if at all, they wish to be approachable to students via Classroom Awareness. Benefits of Classroom Awareness Feature Even if faculty do not intend to use chat for instructional purposes, they should be aware that students might want to use it to socialize or confer with other students. In addition, students of all ages, but especially younger students, are accustomed to communicating through Instant Messaging. Many such communications are not only to share information but also can often be affective in nature. Classroom Awareness imparts a sense of immediacy to the classroom and allows one to know who else is present in the classroom at the same time. Many students and also faculty enjoy seeing that another person is present in the classroom at the same time, especially when it may be late at night or early morning. Students are apt to strike up a conversation or even partner on a project with a student he or she recognizes as sharing the same late night or early morning study schedule. Since each student can enable or disable Classroom Awareness in his or her account preference setting, those students who do not want to be "seen" in the classroom can opt out. Faculty who enable Classroom Awareness can be helpful by pointing out these rules from the start of the class so that students have an understanding of the choices available to them. Considerations for Faculty Use For faculty who make themselves, however selectively and cautiously, visible under Classroom Awareness, there are added benefits of potentially reaching students who may not engage with the faculty member via other means. My own experience while teaching a course last year was that there were a few students who seemed reticent about asking questions via the conference discussion or even email. It was as though those two methods were too deliberate and freighted with formal intentions, seemingly requiring special preparation that seemed out of proportion to their humble questions. One of the students contacted me via Classroom Awareness to ask what turned out to be important questions that revealed a lack of understanding about the requirements of several assignments. On one occasion, he was on the right track, but simply lacked confidence. In that situation, the casual encounter aspect of using Classroom Awareness made him feel more at ease in addressing such questions to me. It also provided an opportunity for me to quickly confirm a fact, but also to remind him to follow up by re-reading the assignment instructions. Yet another student, seldom active in discussion during the first weeks of the course, seemed to enjoy clicking on my name in order to simply say hello, signal that he was enjoying the class "despite all the work" or otherwise trade seemingly inconsequential remarks with me, his instructor. These exchanges were neither lengthy nor overly distracting to me. They seemed the equivalent of passing a student in the hallway and stopping to exchange greetings. But I was pleased to discover that the student began to participate more actively in the official conference discussions.  Such informal, serendipitous exchanges, whether between faculty and student or between students can provide a much needed opportunity for personalization and community in an online course, adding interest and motivation for further participation. While not every student needs such contact, it may be worthwhile to provide it for the few to whom it may mean the difference between a cold, alienating classroom and a warm, supporting environment.

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