BUILDING COLLABORATIVE ONLINE COMMUNITIES THROUGH DIGITAL MOMENTS

This paper describes a pilot study of online graduate students' responses to a pedagogical strategy for developing social presence in synchronous online graduate courses. This work is grounded in current research on the impact of social presence in the development of interactive, creative online communities. The article describes a teaching strategy for increasing student engagement through the use of creative and artistic expression, then measures the responses of 25 graduate students enrolled in masters level courses. Using individual share pods in Adobe, students uploaded Digital Moments, defined as digital artifacts that described from a personal or professional perspective the events of their previous week. This technique replicated a similar relationship-building process that often occurs at the beginning of face-to-face classes. Using Digital Moments as a way to build inclusion in two synchronous graduate courses, the authors describe how this teaching strategy increased student participation, developed student ownership of learning, and encouraged collaborative processes between participants. The development of greater social presence allowed class members to connect in ways that increased accountability to each other while developing collective ownership of, and responsibility for, the learning environment. This teaching strategy makes a significant contribution to digital pedagogy. Emerging themes included the importance of social relationships in learning, creative and artistic expressions of learning, teacher-learner-teacher role shifts, the valuing and devaluing of traditional and non-traditional representations of knowledge, and the barriers and challenges of implementing Digital Moments. While it is important to note that there as many differences in online courses as there are in f2f environments, it is clear that the human aspects of fundamentally good teaching and assessment remain untouched. This paper analyses and interprets the value of using Digital Moments through digital artifacts produced by students and Adobe Connect class recordings.