How Indiana University is Maintaining Close Student Connections Despite the Distance Between Them
Streamlining Class Interactions and Communications with an 'Army of TAs'
More students are learning online, and whether that shift is temporary given the pandemic, or it represents a growing trend for how students will choose to learn in the future, ensuring a quality online experience is top of mind among educators. An important part of that online experience is preserving student-to-student and student-to-faculty connections, collaboration, and communication.
We recently had the opportunity to co-present with Aaron Perry, Senior Faculty Lecturer at Indiana University Bloomington, during the 2020 Focus on Teaching and Technology Conference. Aaron shared his story about using InScribe’s digital communities to make sure his online students have access to the people and information they need most.
Perry's online students hail from around the world, meaning he's working with students in many different time zones with many different questions. Having a cohesive, consistent way to connect everyone is imperative. While communication tools exist within the school's LMS, they can be limited in terms of what people can see and how people can participate. InScribe, which integrates directly into Perry's course, empowers any student to contribute at any time.
While he is always there to facilitate, the digital community gives his students a voice.
Perry uses his InScribe community to create a space for dialog about academic and course issues, but also to help foster human interactions. He wants students to get to know each other and work together. They can answer each other's questions and offer insights and advice. Perry lets them lead - stepping in when needed to add context or provide answers fellow students wouldn’t know. When students give a great response, Perry can endorse it to give a “shout out” to the responder and to help other students to take note. “It's like having an "army of TA's!" Perry says.
The InScribe platform also reports back to Perry. He sees who is most active and what content is most popular. He can identify common places where students are getting hung up and step in to provide extra details and support.
Another advantage of the InScribe community Perry spoke about is the fact that that answers and resources are searchable. That means Perry’s no longer responding to the same question over and over again, and students can find what they need much more quickly. This “Intelligent FAQ” evolves in real-time throughout the course, and popular questions and answers can be easily carried forward term over term.
InScribe empowers students and faculty to connect, contribute, and collaborate. The company's digital communities provide students with easy access to people, answers, and information through knowledge repositories and as knowledge grows, it is shared across the institution.
Curious how your institution can bridge the distance for your distance learners? Get in touch with us today!