Higher Education

Creating a Community for Online Students

A short video clip about how GoReact not only helps with skill development, but also fosters a sense of community for online students

Hear how a sense of community is created for students at University of Alabama Online. 

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Matthew Short:

From your perspective, particularly with your online, whether it’s fully online or hybrid, do you feel that GoReact has, through its inclusion, and I know you mentioned before some of those student-to-student feedback scenarios. Do you feel like the tools help reinforce almost a classroom feel or a community learning environment through some of those shared activities, where it’s not just like I’m off in my office all by my lonesome doing my video submitting to help enforce or reinforce, instill is the word I’m looking for, that sense of that learning community around them?

Alison Lewis:

Yeah, absolutely. And one of the first complaints you hear is that a student doesn’t feel like they’re part of a community if you don’t have any kind of video in the course as far as student-to-student. So it definitely, and we became more mindful of making sure there were those opportunities for the online students years back because of that complaint. They felt like they really didn’t know who the classmates were. They never got to meet them. There may not be any group work, so they didn’t have an opportunity to interact.

Yes, they’re answering discussions in the LMS Black… We use Blackboard, Blackboard section, but they’re not really getting to know someone. So the video discussions and student-to-student peer review, those type things have really added to that community feel, as well as giving that instructor the outlet. Students want to know who their instructor is too. So giving them that small group session allows the student to know the instructor and see the instructor, know the exist. So all of those things, GoReact supports