We often focus on the instructor's presence in an online course. However, successful course design includes opportunity for student presence as well. Continuing research illustrates that online students are more likely to be successful if the course is designed to support learning in a community. B2 and B3 focus on including opportunities for student engagement in our course design and look specifically at how interaction is used to create a mutually-supportive learning environment.

B4: Student-Initiated Contact
B5: RSI Among Students
Resources

B4: Student-Initiated Contact with Other Students

ALIGNED: Opportunities for unstructured student-initiated interaction with other students are available and encouraged.
EXEMPLARY: The course makes a variety of tools and methods available for unstructured student-initiated interaction to accommodate a variety of communication styles.

B4 supports the development of a learning community by providing optional, informal opportunities and tools for students to connect with one another. While casual conversation tends to happen rather easily in an in-person class (chatting before class begins, study groups, etc.), a space for it needs to be intentionally built into an online environment.

Here are some ways to facilitate unstructured student interaction, and remember to have guidelines in place (such as a netiquette policy) for what is acceptable behavior when interacting with classmates.

Create a "Student Lounge" discussion in Canvas where students can talk about college events, study skills, related careers, and other topics that wouldn't fit in the traditional Q&A discussion.
Introduce Pronto to your class encourage its use.
Encourage study groups. If you're not sure how to set these up in Canvas, check out How do I allow students to create their own groups?
Create a class hashtag for students to share resources and ideas.

B5: Regular & Substantive Interaction Among Students

ALIGNED: Regular and substantive interaction among students is designed to facilitate interaction with and about course content.
EXEMPLARY: The design and facilitation of student interaction is responsive to the variety of cultures and communication styles in the learning community.

While B4 focuses on informal and voluntary student-to-student interaction, B5 is all about the required interaction that is part of the learning process in your course. There is a good reason why Title 5 includes regular interaction among students--research shows that students in online classes with regular, meaningful interaction feel less isolated and perform at a higher level.

Discussions

Most people immediately think of discussion assignments for B5, and this is certainly that is an effective and popular way to establish RSI among students. When creating discussions, you'll want to be very deliberate in creating your prompts. Don't pose a question that has just one answer, as this will result in a lot of repetition and little opportunity for discussion. Instead of asking for a fact from the textbook, for example, ask students to choose a textbook concept and apply it to their lives, current events, or a scenario. That way, each student has a chance to contribute a unique post and the group benefits from seeing a variety of examples and perspectives, which can deepen their learning and help them remember concepts. Here are a few prompt starters that can get your creativity flowing:

Predict what might happen if...
How would you design...
What criteria could be used to...
Use X to explain an experience you've had of...
What evidence is there of...
If you were in this situation, how would you...

Group Activities

If you've wondered how group assignments can possibly work in an online environment, wonder no more! In less than four minutes, Helen Graves demystifies the why, what, and how of successful online group activities:

Other Options

If you'd like to expand beyond instructions to include other types of activities, here are a few: VoiceThread discussions, small-group discussions peer-review assignments, student-led presentations with discussion, collaborative Google docs, and editable Canvas pages. To see a wealth of specific examples--many with instructions, prompts, and/or links--check out @ONE's Student-to-Student Interactions Guide embedded below:

Resources

Canvas Guides:

How do I create a group discussion in a course?
How do I use peer review assignments in a course?
Groups in Canvas
Editing Pages (see Edit Content to allow students editing access)

CVC's Course Design Resources for B4-B5:

Video Walkthroughs:

Meaningful Discussions: Interview with walkthrough of an aligned discussion
When We Empower Students to Become Experts: group video project

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