Add Social Networks to Virtual Classrooms to Spark Collaboration

Virtual classrooms are a boon to managers whose teams aredispersed around a region or around the world. They’re also a tremendous resourcefor building community among these far-flung colleagues.

It sounds counterintuitive, even impossible: Not only is theinstructor physically separated from the learners, in many cases learners areseparate from one another. But the lack of proximity might provide the pushthose learners need to reach out and connect. And most virtual classroom toolsmake it easy.

That’s a good thing, according to Darlene Christopher, authorof The Successful Virtual Classroom, an indispensable handbook for anyone newto designing or conducting eLearning in a virtual classroom. In the book,Christopher comments, “The topic of virtual classroom training has never beenmore important because it reflects the way an increasing number of people inorganizations really work today. The training professionals I spoke with duringmy research stressed this reality and why gaining a widespread comfort levelwith virtual training and team collaboration is essential to the futurecompetitiveness of every organization.”

Collaborative tools are built into most virtual classroomtools. These commonly include:

• Sharing—Most virtual classrooms allow theinstructor to share the whiteboard or screen with learners. This means that learners can alljump into a discussion; groups or individual students can present work doneoutside the synchronous session; a student can solve a problem, answer aquestion, or present information. All of these activities build deeper meaningby connecting the learning that takes place in the virtual classroom with workthat each learner, and his colleagues, are doing in their jobs. It’s also agreat way for colleagues to collaborate and learn what other individuals orteams are doing.
• Chat—The entire synchronous group can chat,or instructors can call on a learner and request a response by chat. Mostvirtual classrooms enable “private” chats, which can be set up between two (ormore) learners in virtual “breakout rooms”; they are not entirely privatebecause the instructor can access all the chat rooms.
• Polls—Instructors can poll the class, andresponses can be private or shown on the shared whiteboard or screen. Pollingprovides instructors and learners a window into their colleagues’ experience oropinions.

Taking collaboration outside the classroom

Sharing, chat, and polls are virtual classroom tools that instructorscan use during synchronous sessions to encourage engagement and discussion—elementsthat keep the class from being a one-sided delivery of information to boredlearners. But collaboration can also happen outside of synchronous sessions,extending learning and creating professional networks that can outlast theeLearning course.

Some virtual classroom platforms include features thatfacilitate asynchronous interactions, but if a designer or instructor isthinking long-term, using inter-office social networks or public social mediamight be more productive. Private spaces and networks can be created on manysocial platforms, so membership can be limited and content can be visible tomembers only. Integrating tools that learners use in their work lives oroutside of work might mean they will join, join in, and keep the conversationgoing. In short, the virtual classroom can be the springboard to creating aprofessional learning network among colleagues who will then continue to shareideas and information after the formal eLearning ends.

Asynchronous collaboration can take many forms. Forinstance:

• Curated content—The instructor can getthings started by posting supplemental material relevant to topics covered inthe course. Learners can add to it, comment on it, share their own work, and interactas people do more generally (and publicly) on sites like LinkedIn, Pinterest,and Tumblr.
• Blogs—An internal blog, or one hosted ona free blogging platform like WordPress, offers opportunities for colleagues topost longer articles and comment on one another’s work. Blog posts can be the“homework” of a virtual eLearning course or can arise more organically, withlearners posting—and sharing their expertise—on topics of interest to them.
• Social networks—Internal company networkson tools like Yammer and Slack, or closed groups on mainstream social mediatools like Facebook, allow for the creation of groups or pages with limitedmembership; these are great forums for discussion, posting content, andcollaborating on projects.

Some caveats? Keep the social network topically focused soit doesn’t balloon into a time waster. While networking with experts outsidethe company can be beneficial, limiting the group or network to a small groupof colleagues helps keep the focus narrow. And keeping the “social” networkingprofessionally focused makes it easy to establish and maintain guidelines onkeeping the content professional; these guidelines might stipulate thediscussion topics or types of content that are appropriate.

References