An adapted excerpt from Google Course Builder

 

 

Managing the student community

Fostering a community between tutors and students and among the students is an integral part of creating an successful online course.

If your students feel they are supported by humans throughout the course, their motivation and determination increase. Students tend to enjoy the course more and drop out less.

One of your goals with a student community is to have your students support each other as much as possible. If your course is massive, you cannot effectively answer all your students' questions, even if you have a small army of tutors. With a community, students are much more likely to get answers to their questions. Even if you and your tutors could answer everybody, you might not be the best people to answer questions. Peer instruction can be better than expert instruction. Peers remember what it’s like to not know the material; you and your tutors might have forgotten.