Weekly Check-in Check List

Weekly Check-in Check List

by Leonne Beebe -
Number of replies: 8

Building and Sustaining the Online Course’s Learning Community

Having taken several FLO workshops, we talk about the importance of facilitators building the online course learning community. This topic has intrigued me for some time, so this term, I decided to shadow the Fall FLO Fundamentals workshop while at the same time taking two hybrid online courses for the first time as a student. Both teachers started with the standard, “Post your introduction and reply to three to five other students’ introduction posts”.  But, what happens after this?   How do we maintain and sustain this newly-forming online community for a term in classes with about 36 students?

This is the question, I would like to explore. Two weeks after my online classes started, I experienced a personal medical situation, which resulted in me not being able to be involved in my online courses at all, although I did keep looking at my course shells. After the second week, I felt bad being a teacher and not participating, especially in the group work; I felt like withdrawing. Nobody even noticed I was not participating online, and I didn’t want to let on that I was not capable, so I didn’t email anyone, either. However, I started the team project because I didn’t want to let my team down, but by now, I even started avoiding looking at my course shell. “Who cares anyway? I should just withdraw.”  Finally, the day before the suggested project due date, I received an email from a team member asking about my contribution. I replied back saying I would look over the project and add my part to it the next day, and I thanked the emailer for the nudge. Another team member replied to my email with a blast highlighted in red saying it wasn’t a nudge, insinuating where was my contribution, and asking what happened to me. I felt attacked, so I replied back, “health, work, and family”… and again, considered withdrawing.

Fortunately, we had a F2F class after the 4th week, so I showed up, not sure what to expect or how I would feel.  The teacher started the class by discussing problems that could arise in online team work.  She emphasized suggested due dates were only a guideline, and if the team or a team member needed more time, for whatever reason, the team could agree to submit at a later date. Because of what the teacher said, I stayed for the class, and I stayed in the course.

During the time I was offline with my courses, I was also shadowing the FLO Fundamentals workshop.  I didn’t participate in any of the activities, but I was lifted up and encouraged by the numerous supportive and positive ongoing posts between the two FLO facilitators and the participants, between the weekly team participants and their FLO facilitator, and among the team members as they planned their week.

From experience, I know FLO may be seen as the “ideal” world, and somehow, I wanted this ideal FLO community-building injected into my “real” world online courses. So, how can this happen?  What can we do as facilitators to sustain and maintain the online community? During this offline time, just one email checking in with me would have helped bring me back sooner.  So, here I am taking this Micro FLO about community building

During my offline experience, I kept thinking about what would help me if I were a student.  I kept going back to the Micro FLO Rubrics workshop, when I designed a rubric, which could be used throughout the course specifically to help students reflect on their learning. So, my goal for this Micro FLO workshop is to adapt this rubric to use in online courses for building and sustaining online communities. This is a work in progress, so all comments and suggestions will be gratefully appreciated.

Out of confusion comes clarity.

Leonne


In reply to Leonne Beebe

Re: Weekly Check-in Check List

by Colleen Grandy -
I'm nodding in agreement!  I'm currently facilitating an online course with 25 students (I can't imagine 36!). Many of my ways of checking in with participants are reactive. I watch for missed work and check the participant list for last log-ins and watching for lapses (which aren't always visible) and then I follow up with personal messages. 

This checklist seems like a proactive way to build a culture of personal reflection, transparency, accountability, and connection between you and each individual student. Your support-focused, plain language instructions: "We can see who is doing well and who needs help" could help students see the value in the activity. I wonder if an adapted version of this check-in could work for students to share with members of their groups, too? I'm wondering if there are ways you would share back general trends or acknowledgements with the group; for example, "Almost everyone commented that they aren't up to date with the weekly course task list because the workload is heavy this week..."

This kind of check-in reminds me of a tool that has helped me notice where/why students are struggling: Stephen Brookfield's "Critical Incident Questionnaire (CIQ)." Brookfield suggests asking students five questions at the end of each week to help give feedback to the instructor. There's been some research suggesting adapting these types of activities can help build community in asynchronous, online courses when the feedback is collated and re-shared with the group.

This is different from the individual check-in you suggest, but I can see the two types of check-ins being complimentary.  


Stephen D. Brookfield. (1995) Becoming a Critically Reflective Teacher. San Francisco: Jossey Bass.
In reply to Colleen Grandy

Re: Weekly Check-in Check List

by Janna van Kessel -

Hi,

Leonne, I appreciate your checklist as a self-evaluation tool as well as a way for instructors/facilitators to gauge the need for support. I wonder if it would be helpful for learners to also see an invitation to ask questions or list any supports that they need in the comments section? I am new to online instruction, so am looking for ideas on how to support students in a proactive manner!

Colleen, thank you for sharing the CIQ. In f2f classrooms, I like to use a number of one-minute papers/muddiest point tools for feedback so I appreciate ideas for asynchronous, online courses!!

Janna


In reply to Janna van Kessel

Re: Weekly Check-in Check List

by Leonne Beebe -

Jana,

Good suggestion.  I could say, "Comments and Questions" and students could ask questions there.

Out of confusion comes clarity.

Leonne

In reply to Colleen Grandy

Re: Weekly Check-in Check List

by Leonne Beebe -

Colleen, 

When I had my F2F math students post weekly reflections answering what was easy, hard, confusing, and how successful was their study process, those who liked to write, wrote good reflections and those who didn't like writing didn't submit reflections, so I thought a simple rubric/check list would still get them to reflect but in a very easy format .My goal with this check-in check list is similar - something quick and easy for students to complete and me to read,  so I would have a sense of their participation or lack of..  At first, with online, I thought I would set this up as a group task during the first week of the course where I would start with the list of characteristics of successful online students and the common challenges students often face and then have the students create their own check list to send in to me weekly. However, for the first discussion , I thought maybe I should give them the check-in check list to form the basis of their discussion, so they would become familiar with the expectations of online learning and use of the check list. I also think this could be adapted to a group check-in check list where group members sent in their own weekly check list. I thought this might be too much with two check lists, so I combined the group work with the individual work.

Similar to Brookfield's five questions at the end of the week and collating the results is having students reflect on what are the most important learning experiences and/or content  from the week's tasks., After, these reflections are summarized for the students to use for studying. In one of my course's group activities, we had several chapters to read. Teams were assigned sections of each chapter: Asynchronously, two members summarized the section and one member presented a question for the other students to reflect on and respond to. Then, two mentors responded to the other students' posts after which one mentor synthesized the content of the posts. This process made it easy for the facilitator to see who was doing what and if a student were offline. It also reduced the amount of reading and summarizing we had to do.  


In reply to Leonne Beebe

Re: Weekly Check-in Check List

by Gina Bennett -

hi Leonne

I felt angry reading about the teammate who contacted you "with a blast highlighted in red" & I sense my impulse to want to teach this person some manners (silly, I know, & it's not as if this approach would do any good).  

But IMO your post illustrates such a strong core reason for developing a sense of genuine community: we do it because it creates a safe, supportive environment for learning, & because engaged, connected students are more likely to stay the course. And because it's the kind thing to do.

At College of the Rockies, we had an informal "Lost Souls" policy. It went something like this: if you haven't seen your online student log in by the end of the first week, contact them (preferably by phone in case there's a problem with internet connection). And if you don't hear from them for over 2 weeks, contact them. Most instructors did this anyway but the occasional instructor would actively resist with the argument: "My students are adults & if they don't bother to participate in the class, that's their problem." My return argument was "Caring about and contacting your students is also adult behaviour" ... but this was not always effective. :-/

I like your checklist approach! It is simple, definitely not intimidating (even to a student with weak technical skills), communicates your concern while keeping the onus for contact with the student. This would be a great way to maintain contact even with students in asynchronous self-paced online programs -- notoriously hard to build community in those settings.

In reply to Gina Bennett

Re: Weekly Check-in Check List

by Leonne Beebe -

Gina,

I did react to her blast for a bit and thought how would I feel if I were a first time student.  Interestingly, after the teacher talked about problems with group work, and we took our break, that student left and sent our group an email saying she had withdrawn from the course. It may have been a coincidence.

You are right in saying our online learning communities need to be safe, supporting, and encouraging.  As facilitators, we have this opportunity and responsibility to build, maintain and sustain our course communities. Now, we need to get more "ideal" FLO into our online courses.

Out of confusion comes clarity.

Leonne

In reply to Gina Bennett

Re: Weekly Check-in Check List

by Beth Cougler Blom -

I really like this informal 'lost soul's' policy...and the name. I have called it 'going dark' and absolutely believe what you do, that reaching out is a caring thing to do. Often it reveals that someone is experiencing a tough time right then - and they usually really appreciate the reach-out.

In reply to Leonne Beebe

Re: Weekly Check-in Check List

by Beth Cougler Blom -

Leonne I love that you are experimenting with this questionnaire. You could also do this with an LMS tool or Google Form to go digital. In Moodle the feedback activity would work, and would help you aggregate responses too. I think you're on Canvas or something else though, so not sure what's in yours. Thanks for posting about this, I love that you continue to be so brave in online sharing and the building of community yourself.