There is nothing normal about the experience happening on campuses around the world as entire courses are moved online with limited formal planning. This is a crisis. Normally, developing an online course normally takes months and requires a team, including professors, learning designers, media personnel, and possibly software programmers. This team ensures that the student experience is thoughtfully designed and learning outcomes are clearly stated and aligned with teaching practices and assessment. Most of you don’t have that luxury currently. However, you can still provide simple activities to create social presence and interaction with your students. We list several approaches that you may wish to use.
For those of you that are beginning to prepare for summer and fall courses, we’d like to introduce Terry Anderson’s Interaction Equivalency Theorem (2003) to guide your planning. Anderson states:
Deep and meaningful formal learning is supported as long as one of the three forms of interaction (student–teacher; student-student; student-content) is at a high level. The other two may be offered at minimal levels, or even eliminated, without degrading the educational experience.
High levels of more than one of these three modes will likely provide a more satisfying educational experience, though these experiences may not be as cost or time effective as less interactive learning sequences.
As you begin planning for fall, you may find value in considering the nature of learning that isn’t exclusively, or even heavily, centered on instruction. There are promising ways to provide a rich student experience that promotes social and content interactions. Now, onto some icebreakers and activities!
Next: Sample Activities