Online Learning Community Charter & Guidelines
Online Learning Community Charter & Guidelines
Purpose Statement and Objectives
To create an inclusive online learning community that supports academic enrichment for each community member through active learning, knowledge sharing, inquiry, and discovery.
To achieve these objectives, each graduate student shall uphold the following values:
- Conscientious pursuit of knowledge sharing and discovery in one’s work.
- Respect for the rights, differences, and dignity of others.
- Honesty and authenticity when interacting with members of the community.
- Accountability for personal participation and responsiveness in community engagement.
- Openness to new ideas and new ways of learning.
- Experience the joy and exhilaration of learning and collaborating as part of a learning community.
- Academic integrity.
Reminder for community members – Northwestern Office of Equity Policy:
The University prohibits discrimination and harassment on the basis of race, color, religion, national origin, sex, pregnancy, sexual orientation, gender identity, gender expression, parental status, marital status, age, disability, citizenship status, veteran status, genetic information, or any other classification protected by law in matters of admissions, employment, housing, or in the educational programs or activities it operates.
Community Members Roles, Rights, & Responsibilities
Community Members Expectations
Being part of an effective and enjoyable learning community requires members to adhere to the community’s expectations of:
- Engagement: Log in throughout the week and contribute to discussions.
- Openness: Be open to others’ perspectives.
- Timeliness: If possible, post early in the week to ensure others have time to respond.
- Compliance: Abide by all University policies including Title X and anti-discrimination/harassment policy.
Communication Guidelines
Clear, honest, and open communication ensures the best learning experience as well as maintaining a healthy, thriving learning community. This type of successful communication is achieved when community members:
- Review previous posts in a thread to avoid exact repetition of already stated ideas, but feel free to build on previously stated ideas, agree or disagree, or add encouragement to previous posts.
- Offer and welcome varied perspectives and differing opinions, remaining courteous and respectful towards others.
- Aim for meaningful content. If available, share data, related concepts, and examples from your own professional and personal experiences.
- Include any sources. Citations and links to websites allow others to dig deeper and upholds academic integrity.
- Strive to develop deep, purposeful, and reflective learning and thoughtful collaboration between faculty and students.
- Ask questions to drive your learning or others’ learning forward – solicit clarity on concepts or others’ perspectives, or encourage participation and challenge others to think critically.
- Extend ideas further, while also being thoughtful about the relatedness of the content you are posting.
- Respect the original poster by beginning a new thread for new, unrelated content rather than abruptly changing the direction of the discussion.
- Leave no one behind: if a classmate has not received a response to his/her initial posting, dive in and contribute your perspectives.
- Strive for proper grammar, spelling, and punctuation.
- Be concise whenever possible.
- When possible, add visual elements to aid learning for the online community.
Expectations of Students
Ultimately each student is responsible for both their learning as well as the success of the learning community. Students who meet the following expectations may be the most successful:
- Look to discover the joy of learning; have fun.
- Abide by values and behaviors outlined in the collaborative group charter.
- To the best of your ability, meet the high expectations of your peers and instructor when completing course assignments.
- Empower and encourage one another to engage in meaningful ways.
- Proactively and energetically work to deepen and apply new learnings.
- Take a proactive approach to challenging work by reaching out for support.
- Reach out to the instructor if there are issues meeting an assignment deadline.
Expectations of the Instructor
The instructor’s responsibility is to provide the elements necessary for an effective and enjoyable learning community. Some of these elements are enumerated below:
- Create lessons that give students the opportunity to learn from each other through cooperative learning.
- Create lessons that increase learners’ intrinsic motivation to drive more successful and deeper learning.
- Make time to answer student concerns and/or questions throughout the course.
- At the beginning of the course, communicate the expected timeframe for responses to questions (e.g. 24 hours, etc.).
- Collaborate frequently to help guide students toward meaningful discussions.
- Monitor and proactively guide online learning community activity to ensure student conduct guidelines are met.
- Prepare in an organized, easy to access and clear manner the following:
- Administration of the course including due dates, syllabus, rules of interaction, projects, course structure and the constructionist framework.
- Course content, activities, and assessments.
- In particular, the syllabus should:
- Describe available learning resources.
- Describe active learning.
- Communicate the role of technology in the course.
- Communicate student roles and scheduling requirements.
- Describe the behaviors that best facilitate an open and respectful classroom environment.
- Include reflection and formative evaluation moments throughout the course.
- Be familiar with community members and engage in ongoing assessments to determine learner retention, guide instruction, and provide necessary feedback to students.
- Create a learning environment that is equitable, usable, inclusive, and welcoming. If a student raises any aspects of instruction or course design that are presenting barriers to their inclusion or learning, the instructor will work with the student to develop reasonable accommodations. Any student requesting accommodations should be directed to register with AccessibleNU, who will work with the instructor to construct the accommodations.
Dealing with Disagreements
Discourse is at the heart of online communities. As students exchange perspectives, there are bound to be differences of belief or philosophy. A debate can be healthy; remember that conflict can contribute to learning outcomes and group cohesion so long as it remains respectful and focused on the overall goals of idea exchange and deeper learning.
In the event of disagreement, team members will attempt to resolve disagreements together, using the following guidelines:
- Treat others with respect.
- Take time to reflect before replying.
- Assume positive intent of others.
- Remember tone is lost sometimes in written communications: consider how others may interpret your words or how you are interpreting theirs.
- Avoid making disagreements personal.
- If needed, simply agree to disagree.
Small-Group Engagement
This learning community embraces many forms of learning, and one of the key approaches is collaborative learning with peers. There exists an expectation that periodically the learning community will work in smaller groups or teams. These smaller groups must develop exemplary teamwork skills and provide sound peer collaborative learning. To achieve these goals, certain expectations and behaviors are necessary.
Expectations for Behavior
A mutually supportive set of behaviors will enhance the learning experience and the enjoyment of collaborative learning. Therefore, team members should be:
- Willing to collaborate.
- Available for regular communications.
- Responsive to mutual problem solving and open to meeting individuals’ needs.
- Respectful and accommodating of the various learning styles and needs of team members, as other team members may have constraints outside of the learning community that may make their participation different than others. For example, some team members may want to practice and experiment with skills previously underdeveloped.
Guidelines for Meetings
Constructive meetings are a cornerstone of peer collaboration. For a meeting to be productive, group members shall agree mutually to meeting guidelines, such as:
- Be supportive and considerate of other team members.
- Capture and assign action items for attendees.
- Provide advanced notification of missed sessions to team members.
- Understand availability of each team member and desired frequency of meetings.
- Establish meeting specifications before scheduling. Consider dates and time zones, availability, meeting platform, and objectives.
- Determine preferences for communication (email, text, Canvas messaging, etc.) in between meetings.
- When needed, set an agenda in advance.
- Determine meeting materials (e.g., GoogleDoc) and tools to use (e.g., BlueJeans).
- Decide which team member will schedule meetings or web conferences.
- Consider session recordings if a member cannot attend.
- Feel free to meet and collaborate in team sub-groups even if the entire team cannot or does not want to be part of the collaboration.
Guidelines for Collaboration
Collaboration occurs best if project team members adhere to the concept of mutual respect and open-mindedness. All members have value and therefore:
- Everyone involved in a project acts as both a teacher and a learner and regard one another as equals.
- The team strives for a balance of workload across team members.
- If a gap in workload appears, the group will discuss it as soon as possible.
- If possible or if time allows, establish a group charter (mutually agreed upon by the group) that defines the group’s project or assignment topic, objectives, participant responsibilities, possible team leader(s), conflict resolution procedures, and creation of deadlines.
Guidelines for Decision Making
The project team’s decision-making process reinforces collaborative learning and team cohesion as well as enjoyment of the experience. Therefore, teams should ensure decision making follows these guidelines:
- Agreement, as a team, on a decision-making approach.
- Ensure all members have an opportunity to share the rationale behind their given position.
- Consider a formal vote, if needed. For example, voice voting with aye vs. nay or collaborative tools such as digital voting.
Assessment of Team and Individual Effectiveness
At an overall level, fundamental team effectiveness in a learning community results in each team member feeling they learned more than they contributed. Deeper success occurs when team members feel they have converted that learning to wisdom and may apply it innovatively to “real world” situations.
At a more specific level, the following will be assessed to determine effectiveness:
- Measure learning-based outcomes and success by comparing the team’s project deliverable to the project’s rubric. (By instructor)
- Assess team building effectiveness by comparing actual team behaviors to their charter’s collaborative guidelines to discover if, where, and how those were a help or a hindrance. (Self-evaluation by the team)
- Assess individual performance by having the instructor administer a peer-to-peer assessment to foster consistent evaluations of participation, quality, and quantity of work, according to student and behavior expectations. Poor evaluations are subject to affect final grades. This may reveal participation issues that the instructor might not otherwise know about. Students who know that their peers will evaluate them may contribute more to the group and have a greater stake in the project.
Written in collaboration with the winter of 2020 Learning Environment Design cohort at Northwestern University.