Social Capital
Tara Hunt has a book all about creating online social capital: The Whuffie Factor. Until it comes out, you can read articles by her on her blog - I like this one: You Can't Eat Whuffie, But It's Getting Harder to Eat Without It.
Once explained briefly, we all recognize what "Whuffie" is. We know when we are gaining it, we know when we don't have it, and we know when we do. It's basically your reputation, which is all you have online, since "on the internet, no one knows you're a dog"!
Members of an online community gain social capital by making thoughtful or helpful contributions. This can be made tangible by a rating system - some forums have thumbs up or down or voting systems for forum posts. For example, Amazon.com has the "was this post helpful" vote. Contributors with more helpful votes (and more posts), gain social capital and their posts tend to be more heavily weighted by other members of the community. I've seen numerous forums where the number of posts you had made showed up in your profile on each post, and crossing certain thresholds changed your status (e.g., 1-50 posts = "new kid," 50-100 posts = "been around the block," 100-200 posts = "old hand," etc). Once contributors notice these stats, they strive to get positive votes and higher status - it's just human nature!
Social capital is a natural and logical consequence/reward of a student's (or anyone's) online behavior and contributions, and as such, it is a powerful tool for educators to include in their online courses to ensure student engagement and retention.
Online Community
A sense of community is created where people have a common goal, such as a project, or can benefit from working together. One of those benefits is social capital, as mentioned above. Another is increased learning. If you want to truly learn something, there is nothing like teaching it, so allowing, in fact encouraging, students to help one another solve problems, to teach each other, increases learning for both the helper and the helped.
A group can gain social capital by being proud of what it creates and getting positive feedback from other groups. A chance for students, whether working as individuals or in collaborative groups, to give feedback to each other is a valuable tool for creating a greater sense of community and engagement toward common goals.
Educator Tools and Links for Creating Community
(and opportunities for students to develop social capital):Bookmarking, Sharing, Highlighting, and Annotating Online Resources:
Diigo is a great tool for Educators, because you can form a group, and share bookmarks, which each member can highlight and comment on. Diigo is a fantastic tool for sharing resources and collaborating. Now, they have come out with Diigo for Educators, to make it even better!Your Own Networks:
Moodle.org is a great online community as well. At first, Moodle may seem clunky to use compared to other online forums, but Moodle is much more than just a forum - it's an open source Course Management System with many, many ways to customize it for your own classroom. And it's free! If you've taken other online courses with Blackboard or WebCT, you might realize that Moodle is pretty darn great. The Moodle website also has great resources for educators and an active, passionate, community. Here is the Moodle Pedagogical Philosophy, which makes for inspiring reading!Ning for Educators is another great resource for creating your own, private online community - now ad free, too! In the Ning, students can each have their own pages, leave comments for others, create blogs, have discussions, post photos, videos and more. I am a member of Nerdfighters, which is on a Ning network, and find the format very fun and easy to use!
Video:
YouTube, or TeacherTube for those worried about the (tons of) inappropriate content on YouTube (ie, K-12 teachers).Some YouTube resources I enjoy are Lee Lefever's Explanations in Plain English which may be helpful to explain social bookmarking, blogging, wikis, Twitter, and much more to your students should you want to start using those in your online classes.
Also on YouTube is my favorite video from professor Mike Wesch, explaining just what Web 2.0 is, and the power of the network: The Machine is US/ing Us. He has an interesting video presentation on "An anthropological introduction to YouTube" on his home page!
Twitter:
Using Twitter as an Educational Tool shows how microblogging can be used in the online classroom to help create community, and perhaps better than that article is one it links to, Twitter for Academia by AcademHack, another useful site.Creating Your Own Social Network of Educators
If you are on Diigo, or another Social Bookmarking site, you can follow lots of other educators who are on there and learn from them, or at least learn from the same sources they are learning from - Kathy Schrock is one who comes to mind for K-12 educators.Twitter also has communities - I sort of follow the web design community, the birdwatcher/naturalist/hiker community, and the liberal community on there, but it's all about who you follow. Here is a list of 100+ Learning Professionals on Twitter for some ideas.
Conclusion
Social engagement is a great way to motivate students, keep them engaged in active learning that feels meaningful and relevant to them. Giving chances for students to earn, and bestow, social capital, using practices to create a sense of community, and modeling life-long learning yourself will help your students, and you, succeed in the world of online teaching and learning!
