Improving Student Interaction in Small Groups for Online Courses at DeVry University

The purpose of this paper is to address how to improve student interaction in small groups online in order to make it as effective as onsite courses. Insight will be provided to show the differences between the formation and effectiveness of small groups for onsite and online courses, and to present potential solutions to improve student interactions in small groups online. This paper highlights the challenges students and educational institutions face with group interaction in online courses. There has been published research for onsite small group interaction but not as abundantly for online. In an effort to provide more insight in regards to online small group interactions, the author has conducted research using action research and shares his experience as a professor at DeVry University in Long Beach, California where has taught courses in three different formats: onsite, blended and online. Specific challenges in forming small groups at DeVry University will be discussed along with recommendations to create similar small group outcomes for both onsite and online courses. The solutions will be explicit to meet the needs of DeVry University, but could be molded for other institutions as well. Further research is on-going using a mixture of action research and a multi-level approach using different technical tools for online collaboration.