How to Build an Online Learning Community (In 2022)

Learning is a social activity by itself.

We learn through contact and discourse with another person more competent in the field.

Speech and conversation with one another generate knowledge negotiated and subjected to endless talk.

However, building an online learning community is neither automatic nor simple to achieve. We have to understand the structural elements of social learning and learners’ motivational layers.

There are eight ways you can use to build your online community successfully.

Before you go on, are you looking to create your own learning community? You can do that with LearnWorlds, starting building your learning community within the first 30 days free.

You can even create a membership-only learning community for your students.

What is an Online Learning Community?

Online learning communities are essential to achieving a productive online learning environment. This is why they are so popular, especially in higher education.

In online learning, community participants create an interactive canvas of diverse reactions and feedback.

They find ways to explore, think, innovate, develop skills, and seek conceptual understanding- things they wouldn’t achieve on their own.

These learning experiences instill a sense of belonging and camaraderie that keeps online learners engaged and motivates them to persevere.

However, most instructors struggle to make learners participate in the discussion board because learners attend the courses in their time space.

However, there are ways that you can use to gradually establish participation and, in the end, a real sense of community.

What you need is to make changes in your course design and include collaborative learning activities. Let me show you ways to do that:

Way #1: Establishing the Instructor’s Presence

In this example, you can see what our initial message should look like:

An example of establishing an instructor’s presence

1. 1. Convey a sense of enthusiasm about getting started on the course. For example, you might say:

1. 1. Personalize and provide some touchstones about yourself and encourage learners to do the same.

1. Indicate your availability for questions and communications.

Don’t forget that your initial postings in the discussion forum, your first messages sent to all by email, or the greeting you post on your course home page will do much to set the tone and expectations for your course.

Way #2: Making Announcements

Announcements help us build a stronger rapport with our learners.

News and announcements make you seem active. You are the half part of the equation.

Depending on your preferences and those of your learners, you can also send emails, texts, or social media messages that repeat online announcements or merely remind learners to log in to view those announcements.

If you send a weekly message via email or some other format (eg., Twitter), make sure these are identical to any announcements in your online classroom.

Let learners know from the first day of class that each time they log in, they should check for the latest announcements. So, having a uniform announcement area in your course platform is essential.

Here are some examples of announcements:

1. 1. Remind learners about due dates and stages of the course, for example, if a new section or activity is going to be released in your course.
   2. Underline progress and encourage learners.

1. Remind learners about special events (eg., webinars, or introducing new presenters in videos).
2. Bring in authentic news from the outside world when relevant to demonstrate your active interest in the class topics and to involve your learners.

Way #3: Promote Ice-Breaking Activities for Making Class Introductions

During the early part of an online course, it is critical for class members to get to know one another, and learn to share things from an online class community.

A good idea is to create a discussion thread called “Introduce Yourself.” It’s also fruitful to present yourself too.

These discussion threads enable the teacher to identify learners with similar interests and help her to group learners for collaborative work later on in the course. This tactic is even more effective in cohort-based courses where a close-knit community is essential.

Way #4: Urging Learners to Ask Questions

Learners must feel free to pose questions either via email (directly to the teacher as a private communication) or by posting on a discussion forum (publicly).

The drawback of the email approach is that the learner is relying on the teacher as the sole provider of information.

It is advisable, therefore, to set up a Q&A discussion thread for the duration of the online course. This saves time for the teacher and encourages communication:

Way #5: Igniting Synchronous Discussions

Synchronous communication provides a sense of immediateness and cultivates the feeling of responsiveness among participants.

It also results in quick problem-solving. Real-time chat is probably the most exhausting and intensive activity you will ever encounter in online teaching.

Your attention must be attuned to rapid-fire comments and questions from several learners.

It is best to plan a live collaboration chat with your learners early on.

That can be achieved with a live class or webinar.

Way#6: Igniting Asynchronous Discussions

Asynchronous discussion allows time for reflection and encourages more careful consideration of the answers given.

Learners can reflect and think about their responses rather than having to respond immediately.

The shaping of discussions takes some proper forethought.

A discussion based on specific readings in the textbook, coupled with your guideline questions, will likely be more productive.

One way of promoting meaningful dialogue and questioning is to provide a set of rubrics of the kinds of questions students may want to ask each other:

Tips for great asynchronous conversation:

• • Start the significant topic threads yourself. It’s a good idea for the instructor to start all considerable topic threads unless you have designated a forum for learner presentation.
  • Address learners by name and encourage them to signal topics and clarify responses.
  • Mention the learner’s name in response to their message.
  • Clarify the portion of the message to which you are responding through the copying of the statement.
  • Engage yourself actively. When they see that an instructor rarely participates, learners are discouraged from posing questions and comments and may even not buy another course from you.
  • Contribute comments which summarize what learners have posted, as well as follow-up questions that stimulate further discussions. In some cases, it might be appropriate to invite learner’s responses to their classmates’ ideas:

• Provide follow-up responses that ask for more information or more in-depth consideration.
• Prepare a strategy for potentially controversial discussions. Especially in asynchronous discussions, it is more likely to see a broader range of learners posting.

Way #7: Promoting Peer learning

In your discussion board, you can create group conversations where smaller groups of learners can interact and also produce crafts.

Here are a few strategies for promoting group work:

• Ask community members to summarize how they have solved a problem in text or audio format and then share it with other groups. This is a way to begin problem-solving and challenges from the learners ’ respective life or work environments.
• Design pairing or teaming activities and ask learners to review others’ postings and discuss their mutual reviews.
• Provide frequent feedback to each learner, perhaps a weekly grade, on discussion contributions, or a related certificate.

Way #8: Online Journaling

As an extension of your course topics, you might like to create a blog outside the course platform, where learners will post articles, reflections, diary entries, images, links to websites, audio, or video clips, etc.

A community of learners can co-exist and co-develop in several social means concurrently. That will make it even more coherent.

On this special website you can:

• Introduce a new assignment you want your learners to get involved with.
• Let or invite learners to post entries on the blog.

In LearnWorlds Academy, for example, we provide a community page where students can follow each other, create posts or comments, participate in polls and also interact with others’ posts by highlighting the best, filtering them, star them, and much more!

A glimpse at LearnWorlds Online Learning Community

Over to You

Sharing is caring. Sharing is thinking together, negotiating, collaborating, and co-creating.

These are the main elements of productive communities of learning.
The cycles of sharing, commenting, responding, and synthesizing among learners promote community-building emotions since learners no longer focus solely on their understanding.

Give it a try to apply the techniques I describe here and give me feedback on how it goes.
Also, take a look at how you can interact socially with learners inside LearnWorlds and get some ideas on how comments, messages, posts, and course discussions come alive there.

If you want to create your own learning community, you can get a 30-day free trial of LearnWorlds.

Kyriaki Raouna

Content Creator at LearnWorlds

Kyriaki is a Content Creator for the LearnWorlds team writing about marketing and e-learning, helping course creators on their journey to create, market, and sell their online courses. Equipped with a degree in Career Guidance, she has a strong background in education management and career success. In her free time, she gets crafty and musical.