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Course Design Orientation
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How to Build Community & Commitment
There's been a lot of talk about making courses larger to account for the high volume of good applications, especially for webcraft courses. But does a good application mean the applicant actually has the time to commit? Are you sure all these applicants will actually stick around?
The experiences of past organizers tells us that a high number of these applicants won't. Interest is not enough. To make the peer-to-peer learning experience valuable, participants need to commit.
Before you grow - give accepted applicants the opportunity to commit, whether it be by broadcast or individual emails. Once the course begins, community building is the first task at hand. Be prepared to welcome everyone into the course with clear expectations.
Read more in the handbook: http://wiki.p2pu.org/building-community
In the pilot phase, we had a sort of general idea that about 12 participants would be a nice number to have in your course.
I also built my course to accommodate about 12 people, that is to say, it was problem based and used real time chat discussions as a medium for communication and 'completing' the assignments, which would be difficult with a lot more people.
As a sign up task, I had a quiz with basic questions that people could take so I could estimate their level of experience with the subject (the course was semi-advanced).Next to this, I had a few questions that would teach me something about the level of commitment I could expect from the applicant.
To kind of stick to the original idea that I should have 12 people in my course I declined about half of all applicants; in general the one's that I thought would have trouble keeping up on the basis of their quiz and answers to the sign-up questions.
Out of these 12, 8 showed up for the first class, and 3 were there during the last class in week 6.
These statistics are of course not significant (although I read that these are the kind of stats one can expect in online learning), but what I would like to note is that, reading the applications of everyone for my course again, I really regret denying the people who scored a little bit less on the test and gave some dubious answers to the questions, just to get to the magic number of 12.
What I'd do now is to let everyone in who has completed their sign up requirement, regardless of the quality, and see who sticks around after a couple of weeks; what community will organically form.
One difficulty in this approach is that it seems less applicable to 'advanced' courses like the one I was setting up back then. I was afraid not everybody would be able to follow, which was also a reason for denying some applicants.
I'd solve this problem now by listening to the community that forms from all applicants during the first few weeks, and adjust the syllabus to the specific needs of that community. This means that I would probably learn less from facilitating/organising the course, which is a bummer, so it might only work if you're up for more of a teaching approach than a peer learning experience
These are just some ideas that might be relevant to some courses, and less relevant to others. Please note that they're not best practice: I havent tried them yet as my second course didnt 'over'subscribe :-). just see what you do with them.
Thanks for sharing your valuable experience.
Frankly, at this point, I hope a few people do fall out of my course. I have a large group (larger than I'd originally thought wise, but I am weak when pressure is on :) and they are very eager. It is still several days until the course starts and the enthusiastic number of posts and msgs is overwhelming.
I'm holding on for the ride though!
I really like the idea of tailoring the syllabus as the course community "develops." Any suggestion on getting folks not to work ahead? Or should I just let them go freely?
One thing I'm learning already is how much different an open environment like this coupled with enthusiastic learners can be. It's great...though not always easy, for me at least.
Karen - have you thought about sharing expectations for the upcoming course through a broadcast?
I did this for my course - stating that anyone could follow along without being accepted, and that participation was the next level of engagement and required a commitment. I stated that participants who start are expected to finish, so those that felt they might not have enough time to commit should drop out (unsubscribe from their profile page) and lurk/follow along instead.
A few folks did drop out, which I felt was a positive thing. It meant I set clear expectations and those that stayed made a default commitment to the course. Those that left were free to follow, but weren't forced into participating.
Yes, I did this as well. I've only had one drop so far, but I think that it did reinforce the commitment for those in the course. (I also offered the opportunity to follow and "audit" the course to those who weren't accepted, but several didn't seem satisfied with that.)
I wrote a letter that I sent to everyone who was not accepted, suggesting that they follow along if the chose to do so.
I am writing up the weekly in-depth syllabus each week, but I am also facilitating a course that is mostly about theory and discussion, with only a few exercises. Much of it is reading and evaluation of user experience, followed by discussion.
I have 50 participants and 2 co-facilitators, which is fortuitous, as one is on the other side of the Atlantic, and several folks are also in Europe and Asia, so we may be able to schedule live text discussion in such a way that it can accommodate most, if not all, of us.
Stian posted some participation statistics for the orientation course to the p2pu-dev list. He said he will gather hit count on the courses once they start running. Alison suggested that I bring my pondering to this thread, so here it is!
This makes me think we can see a chart of participation over time. Yes, as Alison said, communicating expectations is a big factor but I'm curious about course participation over time and other possible reasons. Maybe things like short courses compared to longer ones, those that have small assignments that build up to bigger ones compared to all small assignments, courses that have lots of major holidays versus those that don't, and such.