A number of published works have addressed issues of designed interactivity in online courses to create a sense of community and to promote learning. There are discovery spaces where communities just evolve and grow on their own. There are facilitated communities of practice.

It seems like strategies for creating hallway conversations in online learning spaces would be helpful.

The F2F as a Motivator

When I worked for a major aircraft manufacturer years ago, I remember my supervisor would do a lot of small talk at various cubicles. It wasn't because he was particularly innately social - though I think now that he may have been - but it was part of a larger strategy of motivating people to follow through on their part of a project.

It was also a way of catching up on the latest information.

A Dean's View

Also, one of the former deans that I had spoken with for a research project explained how much progress was made in hallway conversations. The formal meetings that were held were often to put final official okays on decisions that had been made unofficially. He said a lot of his work was achieved while standing in a hallway with a cup of coffee in his hand, or leaning into a colleague's doorway.

Informal Sharing

All sorts of relationships get made in a casual atmosphere in various workplaces. People find similarities between themselves through chit-chat. However, bringing this into online learning turns out to be quite a monumentally difficult endeavor.

Face-to-face conversations may turn on a dime, and they may be carried on for a certain amount of time without any awkwardness. More than a few postings on one thread on a certain subject line leads to a kind of self-consciousness. The stickiness of the messages and threads make any discussion seem serious and formal and necessarily profound. Student lounges in message boards sort of exist in its own space without any real integration to the larger learning, and students use it rarely.

Icebreakers help. Using learner profiles help. Assigning students to interact with each other helps - for basic interactivity.

A Telepresence Question

However, maybe more telepresence would make people more real to each other. It may make casual conversations more comfortable. This may mean more use of audio and video types of files.

Any ideas on this would be intriguing to me.