In Search of a Teaching Community

It is true that online learning still lacks a meaningful social dimension for students; the same goes for online instructors. There is no copy room, cafeteria, or parking lot where one could bump into a colleague, share thoughts about a course, and have a sense of belonging to the learning community. The discussions in the Community pages, the blogs, and the annual conference are good attempts to fill the gap, and I also read somewhere that ideas about a social network for CCCO are beginning to float. So the issue is not neglected.

As things stand right now, I am most satisfied with what blogging has done for me to feel part of a teaching community. In the past I have read blogs posted in the school’s website, but I never had a method to check these systematically. As a blogger for the summer series of Faculty Voices I felt compelled to read what others were writing and found deep appreciation for the stories that so closely resonate with my experiences. And yes, I felt a sense of community—kinda.

This sense of community is only kinda, because it is fleeting and self serving. I read other blogs with attention mainly because I blog. But even so, as a temporary conversation with colleagues, blogging has been a very positive experience and I would highly recommend other faculty members to give it a try.

While I still wish and impatiently wait for the day when we could all have easy, fun spaces to socialize with colleagues, spaces that would resemble casual encounters in a campus, in the meantime I am excited to think I will meet my blogging colleagues in person at the September conference. There we will gather to conduct an informal discussion about blogging.

Blogging has given me the most significant social interaction I have had with other faculty as an online instructor. Even if the experience is brief, and the level of engagement is mostly impersonal there is a sense of connection and purpose I don’t sense in other discussions or meetings. I think this is because when you blog, you commit to think a little deeper about some things, and care a little bit more about what others have to say.

~Carol