People join online communities expecting to learn in a safe environment where they can feel seen, known, and accepted.
They benefit from being a part of a supportive place where people work together to accomplish a goal. And there are so many advantages:
While all these advantages (and more) are fantastic, creating a learning-focused community isn’t easy. That’s why we have compiled seven tips for building a successful online learning community.
An online learning community is an online space where your students can get answers to their questions, check in for accountability, or obtain tools and resources. Many edupreneurs host these digital organizations on LinkedIn, Facebook, messaging apps, or a community website.
Online communities allow you to go beyond providing a course. You can provide a place where people can ask questions, show their work, get feedback, and support each other.
Before beginning, you must have a clear goal and purpose for your online community. Be sure that you can answer these questions before moving forward:
Apart from these, you need to consider whether you’re building a community for one single course or your entire online school. Everything from your community’s focus to branding will depend on this.
Creating a group on Facebook or LinkedIn is easy and could be a manageable first step. Still, it limits you in three significant ways:
A better long-term option is to choose a platform designed for online learning communities. While our top recommendations are Mighty Networks and Circle, you can see our comparison of the best online community platforms to find one that works best for you.
Ness Labs is an example of a learning community with a private platform. The community is hosted on Circle, which takes care of all the important aspects of engagement, like creating discussions, organizing content, moderating community members, and much more.
Considering that each community has its own feel, it’s vital in an online learning community to foster an environment that leans into learning. Otherwise, there’s a risk that students will show up and socialize.
While socialization is desirable, you don’t want that to compete with the primary purpose of the community—learning.
One of the best ways to prioritize learning is to establish your presence as an educator and the leader of the learning process. When you show up, learning happens. You can challenge their work, offer feedback, and answer relevant questions.
When students ask questions, it can feel heroic to sweep in and impress them with your knowledge. However, it’s best if you don’t answer every question. Here are two familiar situations where refraining from answering is the best way to encourage learning.
Engaging your community is important because learning can’t occur without attention. You want to provide two types of content: fixed and short-lived.
Fixed content includes permanent tools and resources that support learning, like templates, mini-courses, and references. You’ll want to organize these in a way that makes them easy for students to find.
Consider making tools and resources findable rather than just searchable. If students struggle to find them, they won’t use them.
Short-lived content is novel and grabs attention. These remind students of essential principles, reiterate mottos, and redirect attention to their purpose. These can often provide motivation and change mindsets.
Short-lived content can include memes, easy-to-answer questions or polls, or inspirational thoughts.
People learn when they’re more actively engaged. They learn best when they explain their actions, provide feedback to peers, or help someone else understand a concept.
This is one of the reasons you’ll want to select a community platform that makes it easy for members to interact. Many platforms make these behaviors visible with gamification and badges.
Whenever you post, be willing to use tags, ask questions that draw out their thinking, and redirect questions to other members.
Whenever you see someone ask a great question or comment on someone else’s post, give specific praise about what they asked or stated. For more ideas to engage your community, check out these ideas and strategies for community engagement.
One of the most challenging aspects of learning is participating in a try-fail cycle. This is where people attempt to apply what they’ve learned and risk failing. It doesn’t matter if you’re trying a new tae kwon do move or sending out your first bulk email. Fear of failure keeps many from success.
Because failure can be paralyzing, it’s crucial to monitor ongoing performance and continually provide feedback. Progress—even the progress of trying and failing—is a usual and ordinary learning experience. In fact, students often learn more from mistakes and failures than from successes.
When you build an online learning community, it can be beneficial to normalize failure as a part of progress. As long as you provide feedback and make each failure a learning experience, your learners will be on the right track. You continue to encourage learners to keep moving forward despite the risks.
Celebrating successes helps your students savor their accomplishments. Your students’ positive results and progress reinforce their reasons to continue learning and cross the finish line. And, as an educator, it feels good to see them win.
It has so many benefits for you and your community:
When you consider how the successes of your current students can persuade existing and new students to achieve these results, it can provide a ripple effect of positive impact.
Some community platforms provide fantastic ways to offer rewards and recognition. This recognition could look like a certificate, a badge, monetary or tangible prizes, or bragging rights. And it doesn’t have to cost much to implement.
Several surveys have shown that managers more effectively motivate employees to go above and beyond using recognition rather than monetary rewards. If that’s true of an employee at work, what do you think persuasive recognition can do for your audience?
Building an online learning community can significantly impact your students’ results.
Because it’s more comprehensive than a course, it offers a complete ecosystem for student success. Since learning often results in failed attempts, the community can serve as a sort of laboratory where people encourage others and receive encouragement in return.
It’s also a fantastic way for you to have a greater impact on your students and their results.
So, what will your online learning community look like?
Share your comments and questions below.
Platforms can range from messaging apps to social media groups to online community platforms. While our top recommendations are Mighty Networks and Circle, you can see our comparison of the best online community platforms.
Some online community platforms are more secure than others. Communities may also benefit from a strictly enforced code of conduct. If you’re looking for an example of a complete code of conduct, check out the one posted by the Love Club, a public club for women’s health.
Additionally, as a leader, you can foster a feeling of safety by appropriately sharing vulnerable stories, which signals safety to others.
Hi, I’m Kate Nash, a content writer at Sell Courses Online. I have been an instructional designer since 2002, where I created a variety of different training and leadership development programs with Fortune 500 companies for 18 years. In 2020, I left the corporate world to help online course creators deliver programs their clients and customers love.
SellCoursesOnline is supported by its audience. When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn affiliate commissions. However, this doesn’t influence our reviews or product listings. All opinions are based on our tests and personal experience with a product/service.
Copyright © 2024 by SellCoursesOnline
Hi, I’m Kate Nash, a content writer at Sell Courses Online. I have been an instructional designer since 2002, where I created a variety of different training and leadership development programs with Fortune 500 companies for 18 years. In 2020, I left the corporate world to help online course creators deliver programs their clients and customers love.
We respect your privacy and will never spam you.
