Using Student Facilitation and Interactive Tools Within and Beyond the LMS

Abstract

While dialogue remains a critical component to an online community of inquiry (CoI), challenges regarding engaged student participation persist. This chapter discusses an online graduate course, “Designing Learning Within Course Management Systems” (“Designing Learning”), in which student-student interaction is a key feature and a central component of nearly all of the student activities. This chapter highlights the core pedagogical concepts and theories, including CoI, that form the foundation for the “Designing Learning” course. It then demonstrates the integration of those concepts throughout course design elements, including student facilitation and the use of multiple platforms like VoiceThread and Google Docs for interaction including reflections on both the students' and instructors' experiences of this course. Recommendations are next provided so that the successes of this course can be applied to other online teaching and learning contexts. Lastly, further research directions are identified.