Currently, all of the courses I’m teaching online at CSU Stanislaus are General Education courses. Students enroll in a course primarily because it satisfies one or more General Education requirements and they appreciate the online format, while interest in the course topic ranges from tolerance to excitement. The need for student-to-student and student-to-instructor connection is high in order to keep students engaged with the topic and develop the support necessary to achieve learning outcomes. These students have little connection to one another or the discipline prior to the class, and don’t enter with expectations of having continued connections post-class. The diversity of students (in identity, perspective, interest, major, etc) is a strength, but also a challenge, primarily because these classes have high enrollments (40-65 students each).

An issue I would like to explore is the best methods for supporting/fostering/facilitating community and maximizing social capital in high-enrolled online courses. Some readings recommend breaking students into smaller working groups (for discussions, projects, etc), but doing so controls/constrains who can learn from and teach whom. Having multiple sub-communities may also prove to be a facilitation challenge, as the instructor must determine the best means for regulating community membership, and ensure that valuable concepts the emerge within one group are addressed in the others as well.

I want to have a better understanding of if/how/when the organization of sub-communities within high-enrolled classes best supports achievement of learning outcomes and student satisfaction with the course, while being engaged in in a manner that creates a reasonable workload for the instructor.

So, if I were suggesting a topic for the project, it would be “Maximizing Social Capital in High-Enrolled Online Courses.”

betsy