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What is a community? Different people hold different ideas about the community. Some people think the community is the place which can help people exchange information, and some people think the community is the tool which can help learners to meet common goals. Both of thinking is correct, but it is not a complete way to define community. In the past, the traditional community is restricted by the place, which means people should have physical space and cannot be across the world. In this spatial boundaries, learners or individuals may have something in common, such as their beliefs, education, languages even for their experience. However, nowadays, we extended the conception of the community (Johns, 2015). The community is not restricted by the spatial boundaries which mean even if group members are not physically situated, they still can connect each other. Moreover, the group members do not limit by the same group of people. They can from different countries, different culture and different races. In today’s community, they can share different beliefs, life experiences and exchange different ideas.
Recently, we have many social media to support learners to create a community, even for the ordinary chat app can be a good tool. For example, Wechat, Facebook, and Twitter which can be used for learners. Using myself as an example, when I have a group discussion, we normally do not physically show up on the campus, we just talk on Facebook to share some information or exchange ideas. Moreover, there are some websites or apps to design for the learners such as Hypothesis, ZipBoard, Usersnap, and BugHerd. Those websites are designed for the team, and learners can be back and forth in emails and messages which collaborating the team members directly.
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However, the community can collaborate with team members quickly, but I think the community does have some drawbacks. For example, the online community can lack physical cues like facial expression and gestures compared to face to face like the above picture showed (2019, June 24). This can be a risk of misunderstanding. When teachers post lectures, videos, and notes online, students may have a different understanding which can cause a learning problem. As my first blog an example, because the Chinese music instrument website is for everyone, which means people from different countries learn the instrument through the videos. In fact, because of different cultural background, some people from China can quickly understand the culture when the teacher talks about the history of this instrument. By the contrary, people from the western country who do not know the Chinese culture may need more time to understand. In this case, teachers cannot give feedback quickly from their facial expression or gestures. The most important is the community online may not be convenient for disabilities especially for people who have a reading disorder (2019, June 24). Community online or online course reply on the text which can be a challenge for people who cannot read or write. Therefore, I just wondering is there have any special social media or online course design for the disabilities?
References:
8 Disadvantages of Online Communication. (2019, June 24). Retrieved from https://www.bangthetable.com/blog/disadvantages-of-online-communication/
Johns, H. U. P. (2015). Teaching online : A guide to theory, research, and practice. Retrieved from https://ebookcentral-proquest-com.ezproxy.library.uvic.ca