Social Dynamics of the College Classroom: Issues and Ideas for Distance Educators

Introduction

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INTRODUCTION

College classrooms are social settings where diverse individuals must work together to learn. The teacher must create the social conditions for productive work. Many college teachers rely on their interpersonal skills to orchestrate these social relationships. They depend on the feelings the get from reading students' expressions and body language. Their responses can be intuitive and extemporaneous. In the distance education classroom, however, many of these clues are gone. In addition, many of the informal opportunities outside the lesson where teacher and students develop essential social relationships are not present. For this reason, the distance education teacher should be more deliberate in addressing the social dynamics of his or her classroom.

There has been considerable study of the social characteristics of classrooms. Although little of this work focuses on the college classroom, many of the guiding insights from this work are transferable. For our purposes, we will focus on three specific areas:

Communicating Direction

Social communication requires individual use symbol to communicate their intentions and interpret each others actions. Classroom communications must use this symbolic behavior to coordinate teachers and learners around an educational activity. Two obvious concerns arise. 1) people enter the classroom with different educational experiences -- and thus different symbolic sets for communicating educationally, and 2) people enter the classroom with different intentions -- and thus use the symbolic set for different purposes. A teacher must understand this process and use it to direct everyone's efforts to productive engagement of the learning task. For more details select this heading (above).

Creating Community

David Johnson claims that people are more likely to learn new ideas when they are a member of a group that is accepting and allows them to experiment with ideas and actions. Often, the interpersonal contact in a classroom begins this process. When teachers use team building and support other efforts to create feelings of community, the social qualities that enhance learning add to the success of the lesson. Distance, alone, does not preclude the formation of community. More important are the number and nature of interactions that the teacher designs into the lessons. For more details, select this heading (above).

Power and Leadership

The college classroom gains its energy through the commitments individuals are prepared to make to the group. These commitments depend, however, on whether or not the group is organized to meet his or her needs. The processes for defining the patterns of group work, for resolving conflicting, and for evaluating individuals have a direct bearing on how the group is organized (and, thus, whether an individual will put his or her energy into the group work). For more details, select this heading (above).

All three of these areas are essential to successful social functioning of a college classroom. Following the brief discussions summarized in the paragraphs above, you will find a beginning list of classroom tips that suggest ideas to help you address the social dynamics of your distance education classrooms.