Collaborative Activities for Effective Online Learning Communities--Discussion Group at the 2006 TESOL Convention

	*Discussion Group* Collaborative Activities for Effective Online Learning Communities
Presenters
Christine Bauer-Ramazani Professor of CALL Online Co-founder & Lead Coordinator of EV ONLINE sessions 2000-2004 Saint Michael's College, Colchester, VT (http://academics.smcvt.edu/cbauer-ramazani/)	Mary Ellen Butler-Pascoe Systemwide Director of Linguistics and Language Policy Alliant International University, Graduate School of Education San Diego, CA (mbutler@alliant.edu) (http://academic.alliant.edu/mbutler/
Goals establishing an effective interactive online learning community empower students with models, tools, and activities for online learning/ teaching	Questions to be investigated How can online teachers establish a vibrant learning community in their courses? What types of collaborative activities have you had success with in online teaching? What tools and preparations are necessary to facilitate interaction and collaboration?
Types/examples of collaborative activities in online courses:
exchanging photos & bios discussions about students' background, interests, goals, learning situation online peer reviews team reviews of web sites, software team scavenger/treasure hunts team construction of slideshows team newsletters	team construction of WebQuests creating a class or group web-page team web tasks and projects team "interviews" with guest experts, faculty and students from other schools or countries "small group development of technology-enriched lessons" (TESOL teacher-training)
Tools to facilitate collaborative activities in online courses
Synchronous Tools instant messaging (Yahoo!Messenger --http://messenger.yahoo.com/, Skype -- http://www.skype.com/helloagain.html) -- for real-time chats and file exchanges for peer reviews chats with audio and text-chat archiving (Alado.net -- http://www.alado.net/webheads) chats with archiving and message board, file exchanges (TappedIn -- http://tappedin.org/tappedin/)	Asynchronous tools email -- for exchanges of ideas and files/links asynchronous discussions on how to establish effective online community Yahoo!Groups (http://groups.yahoo.com/) -- for chats, discussions, link/file sharing, photo album, polls, publishing student work Nicenet--discussion forum, link sharing, and publishing student work (Helpful Introduction to Nicenet --http://www.teachersnetwork.org/ntol/howto/incorptech/discforum.htm) wikis (http://pbwiki.com/)-- tool/space for collaborative creation of web pages
Assessment of the Learners
interaction (amount and depth) in asynchronous discussions	breadth and depth of peer reviews analytical scoring (rubrics) of team projects
Suggested Readings
Online Collaborative Learning in Higher Education--Primary Sites (http://clp.cqu.edu.au/primary_sites.htm)-- a resource compendium of links on the topic, including the Collaborative Learning Environments Sourcebook (http://www.criticalmethods.org/collab/index.htm) Concepts and Models (http://www.criticalmethods.org/collab/v.mv?d=1_23) Tools and Technologies (http://www.criticalmethods.org/collab/v.mv?d=1_24) Boettcher, Judith V. (2005, May). Designing for the Virtual Interactive Classroom. Campus Technology 8 (9), pp. 20, 22-3). Available online at http://www.campus-technology.com/article.asp?id=11046. The author reviews several synchronous collaboration tools used for Web or video conferencing, interactive classrooms, and screen sharing. She presents several scenarios and which tools are most appropriate for each situation. Online Collaborative Learning in Higher Education Online Articles: <http://clp.cqu.edu.au/online_articles.htm> Offline Articles A-K <http://clp.cqu.edu.au/offline_articles_A-K.htm> and L-Z <http://clp.cqu.edu.au/offline_articles_L-Z.htm> Books: http://clp.cqu.edu.au/call_for_chapters.htm Kim, Kyung-Sun, & Moore, J. (Nov. 2005). Web-based learning: Factors affecting students' satisfaction and learning experience. First Monday 10 (11). <http://firstmonday.org/issues/issue10_11/kim/> Hanson-Smith, E., & Al Othman, B. (2004). Tools for Online Collaboration. (http://www.geocities.com/ehansonsmi/reading_matrix/Tools_for_Collab.html) Verhaart, M., & Kinshuk (2004). Creating a virtual face-to-face delivery environment. <http://infosys.massey.ac.nz/~kinshuk/papers/deanz2004_michael_verhaart.pdf> Dewar, Tammy (2003). Keyboard Voices: Reflections on Online Facilitation and Community Building. Calliope Learning The e-book is available at no cost at http://www.calliopelearning.com/resources/papers/Keyboard.pdf,-- The author investigates questions like, "How do people make the transition to facilitating online? What have they learned about it? What issues do they struggle with? Why do they do it?" Tammy Dewar collected their "stories" and presents them in this collection of articles. Interaction, Assessment and Collaboration in Online Courses--bibliography by Christine Bauer-Ramazani, and Barbara Sihombing, (2001). (http://www.peakpeak.com/~barbs/biblio.html) Berge, Z. (2001). The Role of the Online Instructor/Facilitator. http://www.emoderators.com/moderators/teach_online.html Collaborative Learning Online: An online bibliography and web resources page (1999) (http://info.ox.ac.uk/ctitext/service/workshop/collab.html) Warschauer, M. (1998). Interaction, negotiation, and computer-mediated learning. http://www.gse.uci.edu/faculty/markw/interaction.pdf