This course is an online learning experience where your focus is on your own learning and that of your fellow learners. This course, despite the lack of face-to-face connections, can become a common ground – a space to share together. Here are some guidelines for your time in this course:
Common Ground in this Community of Learners
What is a community?
A community is a group of individuals who work together in support of a common goal or interest. We are working together to support the successful achievement of our learning outcomes. You will learn from each other in this class through a process of exploration, sharing, and reflecting.
A community is a group of individuals who work together in support of a common goal or interest. We are working together to support the successful achievement of our learning outcomes. You will learn from each other in this class through a process of exploration, sharing, and reflecting.
As a community member, you agree to:
- Treat contributions made by others with respect and understand that differences in opinion, interests and abilities are not only natural but encouraged and supported.
- Have a sense of patience, a sense of humour and a risk taking attitude with educational technology.
- Keep an open mind and ‘turn to wonder’.
- Ask for help when you need it and assist others when possible.
- Contribute regularly to collaborative activities to ensure other members of the community have opportunities to read, listen, reflect and respond to your ideas.
- Respect diverse opinions and viewpoints of each member of the community.
- Understand that communications shared through text have a higher likelihood of being misinterpreted than the spoken word. When you type a thought, reflection or comment, read it carefully before you submit or post. Read it out loud to yourself to see if it makes sense and is grammatically correct. Rephrase or rewrite to ensure clarity.
- Contribute regularly. With each online contribution think of your participation as part of an ongoing conversation. Each of your contributions play a role in building the content, ideas and understanding in our community.
- Solve problems or issues through open, honest questions and active listening.
- Report ground rule violations or unresolved issues to our community leader (your course instructor).
These ground rules are adapted from those presented by M. Pacansky-Brock under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 Unported License available from http://www.teachingwithoutwalls.com
