Creating an online community

After reading the article about blogging by Williams, I saw the similarity between the discussion board as used in online courses and the blogging used on the web. Location and accessiblity may be the only real differences. While I found the article educational, I was most interested in the student responses to the questionaire from BGSB-MBA program. Group work in both face to face and online courses is controversial among students, and I found the results of their questionaire regarding blogging to be reflective of that. Many of the students did not participate at all, siting reasons such as not seeing it as worth the effort given the points earned, or that their contributions were not valuable. From those students who did participate, many agreed that the blog helped them learn and connect academically with other students. I would love to see whether or not those students who participated in the blogging earned higher scores on the other assignments for the class. The reason I say this is that I have found in most of the online courses that I teach that the students who are most active in the class's discussion board tend to earn higher scores on the quizzes and exams than those who don't. Sometimes participation depends upon the unique personality of the students. We've all had face to face classes that just didn't respond to discussions, questions, or even jokes! But I have found in my online classes that students who were involved with other students were more likely to continue taking online classes and tended to learn more of the material. There is a sense of accountability when others are looking for you to participate, whether that means showing up in a face to face class or "showing up" online. This creates on online community within a class that depends upon those within the community for success. I have found that those students new to online learning who attach themselves to an online community are much more likely to succeed than those who try to "go it alone" and don't participate. There are a variety of reasons for this, I think. First, students are held accountable by others, even if they aren't engaged in group work for a grade. In a face to face class, students notice when someone is absent. In an online community, students notice when someone is not participating for a while. Students learn from one another, whether it's the material for the class or college survival skills. On the discussion boards for my classes, students point out information to one another that may not have been obvious. With so much diversity in any college classroom, there are many different points of view to be examined. Even without this, when discussing material from a chapter or article, students are bound to notice different things and can share that knowledge with others. Discussing the material is very important to the learning process, and this is what a blog, or a discussion board, can accomplish.