The Learning Community of the on-demand course is taking shape.
Statistics
Learning Community statistics from July 4th 2016 (session June 6th – September 12th) are:
- 21,108 total visitors
- 9,857 enrolled learners
- 5,175 active learners
- 1,679 active learners in week 26 (last week)
- 71 individuals rated the course with an average rating of 4.9 of 5.0
- 2 individuals have already completed the course
- 74% of learners are outside of U.S. (India = 6.7%, Mexico = 4.3%, Brazil = 4.1%, UK = 3.8%, Canada = 3.4%, China = 3.0%, and further down the list is the Netherlands at 1.2%)
- 49% female
- Age bin mode = 25-34 years old
- 30% are full time students; 58% are not
- 20% are PhDs or professional school graduates; 26% do not have a college degree
- 39% are employed full time
Performance
First of all learners are active on the course. They prove to be very creative. For example: prof. White has started a thread called: “Visualize Your Knowledge: Surface Features of the Cerebral Hemispheres”. In the session June 6th – September 12th, Ana Sophia Silva Lopes (a speech and language therapist!) shares a lovely, inspiring video ‘Lego Brain’ in which she shows her visualization of the brain.
An impressive number of posts is also present in the Let’s Discuss treads. Prof. White initiates the Let’s Discuss threads through discussion prompt in the tutorial videos. Al lot of people post in the threads. But it is striking that there is little interaction between learners in the threads. Learners respond to prof. White’s invitation to discuss but do not post responses to each others posts within the thread.
Threads that are initiated by learners also lack learner response. While there are a lot of inspiring, deep questions on the Discussion Forum fellow learners are not actively contributing answers. Mentors often wait for a certain number of hours have past before responding to a question. Mentors do that intentionally, they want to give other learners the opportunity to respond first, but learners are not helping each other as much as is hoped.
Learner interaction strengthens the community and contribute to a creative and responsive atmosphere on the Discussion Forum.
Strengthening the Learning Community
You can use the Discussion Forum to build a stronger Learning Community.
- Keep asking questions on the Forum
- React to each other in ‘Let’s Discuss’ threads
- Respond to each others questions
- You can be creative. Share your work in the ‘Visualize your knowledge’ threads
- Share your feelings when the going gets tough. It happened in previous courses and it really helps when you find out you are not the only one struggling
How to respond to posts.
First go to the Discussion Forums on the course website (red arrow). Secondly you open ‘All Threads’ (blue arrow). You scan the titles of the threads and you open a thread you want to interact in (green arrows). Than you can post a reaction to a post of a fellow learner.