Blog post 3 Community and Social Media

We have to admit that we can’t live without social media. Not only for our normal life, but also can we connect with all other people. Now, we all take this online course. Even though we don’t have the chance for the face-to face group study, we could still work together by some tools like google, Facebook or skype. These social media develop the connection between me and other classmates.

Before I took this course, I have many experiences working online with my colleagues, we contact online and work together online. Last semester, my colleagues and I are assigned to make a research paper and then we need to have a presentation on the campus. Firstly, we created a group chat in the Facebook, discussed our topic, and allocated jobs to every of our team member. Then, we worked together in the google doc. Everyone spent time working on their own part here. While we were working on our own part, we can still have a chance to see how our colleagues did. We can  see if our colleagues are on the right track. I think like Facebook and many other social media make us easily connect with each other’s, also we can share our thoughts and experience without meeting. Sometimes, commuting cost or the times spend are also the factors we need to think of. By using social media or building community online, we can save a lot of money on the commuting cost. Also, we could well-organized our schedule, as a result we can manage our time more effective.

“Community allows us to be around others who hold a common set of ideals and ideas and who can validate our own experiencesand beliefs. It is what gives us a sense of identity and belonging” (Major, 2015).As a community member, we take advantage of sharing resources with others, also we can learn a lot through discussion or other’s feedback. Community allow us study from others.

Developing community is a crucial thing for online courses. For online course, the most difference might be lack of face-to-face communication. So developing community allow student should get into the discussion or connection with other colleagues.“They publically need to share the good things they do.Likewise, they should be asking students to be contributors, not merely passive elements in the classroom” (Major, 2015). In the community, every students are supposed to take part in all events or activities. So as a student, well use social media, and get better communicate with other group members.

Reference

Major, C. H. (2015). Teaching online: A guide to theory, research, and practice. Baltimore, Maryland: Johns Hopkins University Press