Seven Principles for Good Practice

I took one hybrid course when studying for my MDiv, and I absolutely hated it.  It was an exercise in frustration and futility. 

This was not the fault of the professor or the content. In fact, two of the major reasons why I took the course was because of the professor and the content:

1. I knew students who had taken face-to-face classes with the professor during their undergrad studies, and they highly complimented his intelligence, connection with his students, and mastery of his content.
2. The topic was Luke and the American Road Movie. I absolutely LOVE analyzing, digesting, and discussing movies, so I was super excited.

I was not super excited about the hybrid format since I learn better in a classroom setting, but I was willing to give it a try.  After all, half of the class was going to be in the classroom.

And that half was pretty good. The professor was everything students claimed he would be: intelligent, good at connecting in the classroom, and knew his material. I still remember my final project and some of my take-aways, even though I took this class years ago.

Sadly, I also remember the thwarted attempts at conversation and connection.  There was a small number of students in the class, and no one took the time to engage online.  I was constantly replying to people with open-ended questions and discussion starters, and no one would reply. I even started writing some more off-the-wall assessments of movies to see if anyone would counter my thoughts.

No one ever did.

The professor engaged online. He encouraged people to participate. He sent me notes thanking me for my contributions. Basically, he followed a lot of the insight in the articles we read about fostering collaboration and building community in an online classroom.

To no avail.

And I eventually found out why.

After one of our in-person classes, I spoke with one of my classmates and asked her if she had trouble reading my posts. She said something like, "Oh no!  You sure write a lot of interesting comments. But I don't have time for this, so I'm doing the bare minimum to pass and moving on."

I spoke with some other classmates, and they had the same attitudes.

One of the seven principles for good practice in the online classroom was listed as, "Develop reciprocity and cooperation among students."  But what do you do if the students have no desire to reciprocate or cooperate?  And what do you do with that online, which I believe can be even harder to monitor and correct than in a face-to-face classroom?

My personal experience has caused me to wonder how much we can control and how much is out of control when it comes to fostering community in an online course.