Written by Teaching is a social practice. We learn when we engage, discuss, and participate. Teachers find it hard to keep their students involved and engaged as sometimes they interact and sometimes do not. A community for Online Courses acts as a medium to strengthen their bond so they can mix up easily and share their doubts.
Online courses are the most popular ways of building a community where students connect and interact. However, building a community for online courses is more challenging than a physical community. As students communicate hardly apart from texts and activities, it becomes difficult to identify whether a community is built.
Online communities play a significant role in shaping the future of students who want to inspire, engage, involve, and act. However, it isn’t as simple as it sounds. Building an online learning community is a challenging task that requires great brainstorming, ideation, and strategy.
In order to build a strong community, you need to understand every single aspect of the online communities and how it promotes e-learning. Below we have a list of the top 5 strategies for building a community in online learning. Let’s start!!
What is an Online Learning Community?
An Online learning community is a platform that unifies people with the same interest to connect, inspire, engage and grow They are built keeping in mind the goal of online learners to encourage collaborative learning activities and find more ways to explore, innovate, understand, and evolve.
In general, an online learning community allows people with the same interests to connect and discuss related topics or assignments. For example, ResearchGate is an online community that brings people with Scientific interests together so they can learn about discoveries in the world of science.
There are several challenges that teachers face to make their community more interactive and collaborative. If you are planning to start your community to promote online learning, we are here with the solutions.
5 Strategies for Building a Community For Online Courses
- Community For Online Courses
Create enthusiasm
Everyone knows how important first impressions are and you need to focus well on that. Remember people don’t like being in a place where they don’t feel welcomed. A well-designed welcome page for your members can make a big difference.
Suppose you visit an online learning community and can’t find the details about instructors, their roles, the reasons to join, and the options to connect and communicate for any issue. Would you like to be a part of that community?
Defining your community goals and creating enthusiasm among students is a great way to attract and inspire your audience to be a part of the community. Give a brief introduction of the instructors, personalize and include some information about your availability so they can easily reach you .
Social Presence is the Key
While promoting a community for online learning, many instructors fail to recognize the importance of social presence. Nowadays, your audience wants to connect with real people and prefers personalized touch more than ever.
You need to indulge in social activities that help you connect with your audience on a more personal level. Make short introductory videos, ask for their suggestions, and get into quick Q&A sessions to build real relationships.
Go for a Collaborative Learning Approach
A collaborative learning approach is an excellent way to build team spirit among students. There is no better way of increasing enthusiasm among your students. When you ask them to complete tasks or assignments in groups, they will learn the value of teamwork and in addition, your community develops.
There are several collaborative learning approaches available such as group discussions, problem-based learning, case studies, think-pair-share, and many more. These activities will not only help encourage team spirits but also build a community for online learning.
Focus on Ice-breaking activities
Ice-breaking activities can increase engagement among the students significantly. These activities are basically aimed to create enthusiasm and encourage participation among members.
When an individual joins an online course, the instructors arrange some ice-breaking activities to welcome the students and warm up conversations for better learning. It basically includes all the activities that make individuals interact comfortably.
Suppose you have a batch of new attendees in your online community. Now you can engage them with the “Introduce Yourself” activity. This will allow them to know each other for better communication and understanding.
Real-time Discussions and Webinars
Webinars and real-time discussions act as the backbone of online communities. When educators ignite real-time discussions, it helps them to build a community for online courses. These kinds of activities help ignite responsiveness among students.
Participants can easily spread their thoughts during the discussions and help each other learn better. You can also arrange some rapid-fire rounds to create enthusiasm and a sense of immediateness among them.
Building Community For Online Courses: A Step-By-Step Process
As you learn what is an online learning community and how to make it successful. You must be thinking about the top strategies for building your community for online courses. But how to build a community for online courses? You will get the answers below. Have a good read of the following steps to learn about the community building process. BuddyX is a free solution to build your online community in only a few steps. Let’s walk through these steps given below to build a successful community:
- Identify Your Goals: Do you think you can grow your community without evaluating your long-term and short goals? While an online community can have several goals. It is best to evaluate the primary goals and purposes for better growth. This will allow you to set some key performance indicators (KPIs) to measure the success and downfalls.
- Suitable Community Building Platform: Your next step is to decide on the most suitable community platform. Choose a platform that fulfills all your community goals effectively. Apart from that, a theme is the next most important thing that allows an easy community-building process. BuddyX theme can be your go-to option for a fully-functional theme that works well across all major platforms.
- Setup Your Community: As you choose the BuddyX theme for building your online learning community, it is time to set up your community. The number of features you get will vary depending on the theme and platform you choose. Setup and customize each feature according to your community goals and get started.
- Create Guidelines and Rules: It is crucial to have a well-drafted policy of guidelines and rules to prevent your community from spamming and abuse. You need to prepare the general guidelines for all your members to let them know the kind of behavior is appropriate or not. Also, state the actions that can be taken for violating the rules of the community.
Over to You
Building a community for online courses may sound like a daunting task. But it is not an impossible task. All you need is the right guidance and strategy for building a community for online courses. The extraordinary features of the BuddyX theme allow you to eliminate the hassle while building your online community.
Build a community for yourself without having the fear of lack of ownership and control. Create your professional network like Facebook and LinkedIn to nurture professional relationships smoothly and at the same place.
Choose whatever platform and plugins you want and BuddyX is here to support you. So what are you waiting for? Start building your community using the excellent features of BuddyX and start growing!!
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