Bringing Back Learning Communities in the 21st Century

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic has underlined the issue of educational inequality. There is evidence that students from low-income families and underrepresented minorities struggled to adjust to the digital environment for various reasons, exacerbating challenges that other students face in a digital classroom. To alleviate these inequalities, we propose that educators deliberately build online student communities using social or digital media platforms. However, establishing such communities prove challenging due to a lack of significant student participation. We suggest two key roles for the instructor: to provide engagement for student participation, and to carefully choose the online platform. For the former, we believe in engaging students through regular reminders and many open-ended discussion questions to spark discourse. For the latter, we suggest five criteria for educators to evaluate platforms: (1) interactional synchronicity; (2) familiarity, convenience and accessibility; (3) anonymity/pseudonymity; (4) distractions to learners; and (5) features for instructional design. With these as a guide, we are sure that online classrooms can provide peer support networks to alleviate educational inequalities, especially in issues regarding motivation and discipline.

Digital Futures of Learning Pharmacology and Medicinal and Organic Chemistry

“…4 With in-person teaching limited, the instructors established a vibrant Discord channel as an asynchronous learning community for students to connect, learn, and engage outside of class, combatting isolation and fostering a sense of belonging. 5 This, along with growing evidence of the benefits of peer-to-peer learning techniques, 6 underscores the potential of technology to enrich the learning process beyond the confines of traditional methods.…”

Exploring the Use of an Avatar-Based Online Platform to Facilitate Social Interaction in Laboratory Sessions

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