This is a great question as I teacher online both graduate students and high school students. The best way I have found is to be very present in discussion. Ask questions of the people post. Change the question or emphasize different aspects of it as the discussion progresses throughout the week.

Beth is right. Presence and questions are critical. I'm currently teaching an online public speaking course at the college level. People upload short videos of speeches and have been placed into groups of 8 assigned to unique Discussion links. The whole class has access to all discussions but individuals are only "required" to participate in their own group, which I felt was a fair compromise to manage time constraints. They're required to critique their peers' work guided by a basic rubric, but what is really encouraging community building is that I required they also imagine themselves to be a member of an audience at their peer's live speech and to generate one question they would ask about the topic of the speech. I intended this questioning as an exercise in critical thinking, but many of the students are actually responding to the questions posed to them. The use of video by students, of course, helps to humanize the learning environment, and I don't see why video and small groups cannot be incorporated into many online subjects.

I also try to respond expediently to any contact from students and, especially due to the tech challenges of the public speaking course, I tend to include copious amounts of encouragement and I take a very personal approach in my individual interactions. At the beginning of this course, several students shared feedback on things that had not gone well for them in prior online learning experiences, and I'd have to say that anecdotally, the main complaint was non-responsive instructors. That said, students are not necessarily as expedient in their responsiveness but you have to keep in mind the variability (at least in my population) of access to online services, individual tech problems, lifestyle and workplace barriers, etc. This is a very good question. I look forward to continuing to exploring the issue in my work. This is my first online course. I have wildly mixed feelings about it. :-) -Rochelle

Tutor presence in the discussion is very important but how do you encourage students to socialise within the discussion assuming you think that it is important for the interactivity ad the progression of their learning?

@ Rochelle I notice you have used an emoticon style smiley face, Do you think this is a way to make asynchronous discussions more friendly and increase the Interpersonality

Whoops. I almost feel I should apologize for that! Although I take an academic approach in presenting course content, my communication style is casual, encouraging, and sometimes humorous, and I do think that matters. Don't know if emoticons matter, but an occasional smiley face probably does slip through my communication to students. I swear I do not use any other faces besides the smiley. It is hard enough to create "safe" social learning settings in face to face. Anything that humanizes the virtual environment is probably worth trying.

Peer critique requirements encourage interaction. My peer critique requirement that students post a question they could imagine asking if the setting they were in were face to face had the unintended consequence of creating social discussion among students because they began to answer these hypothetical questions among themselves. I have not participated in that. That outcome could likely be achieved intentionally by the "shape" of individual assignments, and I intend to try it. For example, one of the components of my current course is passive viewing of some pretty stellar, short presentations that I intend as models for students' work. Next go around, I'll shape some small group discussion around those films. Required interaction around engaging topics often evolves into social discussion of its own.

I have also egged on individual students who seem to be gregarious communicators to keep engaging their peers. When I have seen something that might spark interest in other students, I've privately suggested that it occur. For example, student did a video presentation on the history of ukulele. I emailed him privately and told him he just had to go back on his discussion group a play a song for his peers. He did, and it did result in a bout of general music discussion. I don't think we're going to get social interaction if we don't encourage some "personal" doors that students can open amongst themselves.

Small groupings, I think, also help, and if an instructor gathers some info about students, he or she can create groupings of students who have complimentary interests. And as with other issues, though I do think student discussion is important and will continue trying to figure out how to foster it, I'll also try to keep in mind that at least those students who do engage each other are having that particular experience even if all aren't. Just like in the classroom.

New to online teaching, I haven't ventured into using any add-ons or social media in my course. Don't know what potential might be there. Please let me know, Gary, if I'm not quite understanding your question.

I did an online class some years back. After the initial introductions where the instructor and students exchanged information about themselves, their personal interests and what they expected from the class. Beyond that there was little interaction of this nature once the course was underway. Perhaps it might help to create a separate forum where students could meet outside the class discussions. Perhaps this has now been covered by social media, but how about creating one on the side just for the class. They can get to exchange a lot of other information that may even be helpful to the class that they are taking. Also, what I am about to suggest may be difficult to accomplish - but how about setting aside 20 minutes twice in a day as "meeting time" where classmates come together to chat, share photos, videos, music, etc. The suggestion of twice a day may help to cater for students in the different time zones. I am happy to know what others think about this.

It is interesting @Caroline that you mention that after the initial introductions, there was little interaction because the study I am conducting at the moment shows a very similar pattern. A study I found during my research suggests a social chatroom style forum just like the one you suggested. I wonder if anyone else has a similar experience of online courses they have taken or taught.

I have achieved all my HE qualifications via distance learning and online including a degree with The Open University.

During my post grad qualification the online forum was a buzz with topics to debate, support offered, questions answered and the summary moan. I believe this was due to the course tutor/moderator interacting with the forum, posting questions, steering conversations and adding relevant research papers for debate. There were marks towards modules too for interaction and posting.

For my Masters qualification the forum was cited as the hub of peer review and everything should be posted there and critiqued before submission. This never happened despite copious posting from myself.

There was no active course tutor. In addition, we were a disparate group as the masters modules were research techniques and project planning so there was no single topic to bind us together.

I thrive on discussion and it is my dominant learning style. and without such interaction found the module hard going.

It is important for the instructor to recognize that it takes more time in the long run to teach online. I have obtained all of my degrees (AA, BA, MS, and currently working PhD) online and instructor interaction is vital to understanding the material and concepts presented in the course.

Students must realize that it takes self-discipline, time management, and organization to do well in the online environment and successful students understand the material more so through written text than lectures. Video lectures are becoming more prevalent in the online environment, which may help audio learners. As Beth Robelia stated an instructor that is engaged in discussion forums, asking questions and prompting further discovery is very important to engage learners. Conversely, many instructors have seen online as a do-it-yourself correspondence course and online is very different from those.

I believe online is here to stay; however, it might not be as advantageous to students in high school as once thought unless they are highly motivated students. Online can enhance learning potential as a tool in conjunction with hands-on classroom learning.

You can read three articles written after focus group comments from nursing students across the nation enrolled in an online RN to BSN program on sense of community vs isolation in online nursing courses at:

1) http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22616408 (Me and My Computer)

2) http://ojni.org/issues/?p=139 (Becoming and Online Learner)

3) http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19697984 (Student Perceptions of Community in Online Learning)

Thank you for the links but I handed in my dissertation today. These would have been very useful as I found the same problems and comments about the sense of community or the lack of it was a major part of my own results. The reduction in the personal and social interaction was a significant factor in the level of participation. Those students who did participate often participated a lot but the level of interaction within each discussion was limited to the tutors and one student so that it often appeared to be a collection of one-to-one tutorials instead. Involving the whole class as a community of practise seems to be the desired goal but often courses fall short of this goal.

@Gary: I feel we have to reward the desired behaviour. To do this we need to force the students to co-operate in the community. We can do this by rewarding them with marks when they do so. Think like RG SCORE!

Caroline and Gary - Many classes at Washington State University has a student lounge discussion board forum for students to use that is non-content related. I have been working within the onine environment there for almost four years and surprisingly very few students utilize the forum. I did not find it as useful when I was a student there. If I connected with a student we usually went via email, IM, or phone.

Hi Gary,

We addressed this issue somewhat in an article about a Mathematics Course that comprised online and blended options. I have provided the link below. Hopefully a second article will be published soon which looks at how we used Transactional Distance Theory as a design framework for a totally online mathematics education course. Hopefully I will be updating my publications list with this information soon.

http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/07380569.2012.651424#.U7cylfmSzTo 

Thanks Kevin

I am not a maths specialist so it may take a while to read through and understand this article but I'm sure it will be very useful to see how it fits into my own research.