A teacher could intervene throughout the task where s/he sees possible and where it doesn’t affect the students’ participation negatively. The teacher should try to limit his intervention and minimize it gradually towards the end of the activity because the main objective of the task is to enhance and encourage students’ autonomy and to raise their confidence in using the discussion board on their own.

The teacher should initiate the task by explaining it into details, highlighting the aims and objectives of the task to the students because the students are likely to perform better on a task if they are fully aware of the outputs (what they would gain and learn after it). Once all the procedures have been explained to the students, the teacher should guide them into the first two or three steps of the task and explain what is expected of them during each stage. Students will feel secure in this way because they will know that there is someone they can refer to if they have any problem either in understanding the task or with issues of technicalities. This guidance at the very beginning is very necessary as it makes students less frightened of sing the net and it actually motivates them to participate more on the discussion boards when they know that whatever contribution they make is going to be viewed by both their teacher and their peers.

Once the first stages are done, the teacher should gradually minimize his/her interference because that would teach the students to become independent learners and by the time the teacher does that, most of the students would be ready to be weaned off teacher’s help. The degree of interference level should reach its minimum as the course reaches its final stages.

I haven’t really explained into details the kind of intervention expected from the teacher in the different stages as this would vary a lot from a teacher to another. So, I am leaving it to the teacher to decide when and how to interfere as I think teachers should know exactly when to do that and it would be clear to them when students need to be prompted, given some clues or guided in a certain way that would fit the kind of task or stage they are involved in. However, prior to the design of the course and then throughout the tasks and activities and in order to maintain an acceptable level of interaction, teachers should be aware of the following:

1. Online courses shouldn’t be completely structured or completely open/free as that would either discourage the students’ participation or make them lost if the course is left for them to arrange. In other words, courses shouldn’t be totally controlled by the teacher but they should allow students some freedom as the main purpose of these courses is to get students to work freely and independently in their own time.

2. Instructor’s continuous support whether in technical or academic matters plays a great role in the success of an online course in our learning environment. This is a brand new style of learning for the majority of teachers and students and therefore, students would need constant support in order to keep them going otherwise, they would be scared of this style and they would feel much safer using the old existing face to face communication style.

3. Teachers’ presence in an online course is essential but their interference in the interaction should be limited as more interference from the teacher would probably reduce the amount of students’ interaction online. In other words, supporting presence is different than that of spoon feeding in one extreme or negative feedback in the other.

4. The style of interaction whether individual or group work activities is to be decided by the instructor but the students’ views and suggestions should be taken into account as that will have a great impact on their interaction.

5. Students should be aware of how the assessment of the course would be conducted as that would enforce their social presence on the course.

6. Competition would help a lot in an online course but it would generate a lot of negative results if cooperation is missing. Therefore, competition and cooperation should go hand in hand and should be considered equally prior to the design of any online course.

7. Course designers should design their courses in a way that they would be very structured at the beginning (for the students to get used to them and to know how they work). These courses should gradually turn into unstructured courses (where students have more control over their own learning) as that would be easier to students to adapt to than asking them to do everything on their own at the very beginning. Depending on the nature of the class, teachers should decide on how much independent the students should be and then they should tailor the course towards that. Later on, they can modify the course so as to suit their developing students they could give more freedom to the students if they wish.

8. Setting up groups consisting of mixed sexes would be a good start that would in the long run help overcome some of the existing cultural conflicts. Boys and girls in a group could be asked to work on a project provided that they are all aware of how to deal with each other, respect each other and be mature enough in their interaction. We can always initiate the change online and it would find its way through later on even to our classrooms.

9. Social factors should be considered as they are essential for the successful design of an online course. For members of an online course to feel at home with one another, for them to interact and develop friendships, for them to make the best of the course, for them to feel free and informal with one another, for newcomers to be able to cross the threshold of insider status, for them to be involved with the others on the course, socials factors should be taken into account prior to the design of online courses.

10. Students in an online course should be prepared before hand for the actual activities of the course. Details about how to use the programs involved, how to post a message on a forum, how to respond, how to use the chat rooms should be made clear to the participants as this sort of information would form the base on which the rest of the stages of the course would be built. It shouldn’t be assumed that learners are aware of these details as they differ in their background knowledge. Making wrong assumptions that weren’t based on a research, or obtained from interviews or questionnaires would negatively affect the learners’ performance at later stages. In addition to making the details clear, the aims of the course should be highlighted and explained at the very beginning as that would help the members form an overall idea about the course and would enable them to have some expectations as far as assignments, tasks and activities are concerned.

11. Dividing students into groups would work better than dividing them into pairs. Pair work has its limitation as far as knowledge, opinions, comments are concerned. On the other hand, group work works best here as it provides space for individuals to share their ideas and learn more from others. It also develops the participants’ critical and problem-solving skills and it helps them to quickly develop friendship with more members. It is preferable that where possible, individuals should be put in different groups every time they work on a different task as that would raise their chances of knowing others and will contribute to the creation of an atmosphere of ease where all members feel comfortable with all others on the course.

12. For an online course to be evaluated, it is not enough to get feedback from participants on discussion boards only. For the assessment of the course to be valid, participants should be contacted individually by means of face-to-face interviews or interviews over phones. This will provide comprehensive data that would contribute to the development of the course if it is to be given again in future.

13. The amount and quality of interaction online depends greatly on how participants in the course go along with one another. This is essential and could affect the performance of the participant (amount of interaction) and their acceptance of the course. This in turn will affect their overall learning and benefiting from the course.

14. The course shouldn’t only consider the social factors but it should consider some other factors as well. For instance, an online course should be flexible in terms of assignments and deadlines as some of the participants would not be good at time management, and would have a lot of other responsibilities to attend to.

15. For participants, it is really important to take initiatives as everyone on the course feels as a stranger at the beginning. Taking initiatives helps participants break the ice and develop self- confidence.

16. Participants should be made aware that online interaction should be informal in the sense that everyone feels relaxed and comfortable responding to others. One must not feel obliged to prepare the messages before hand just because he/she doesn’t want his/her ideas to be disorganized or doesn’t want the messages to have spelling mistakes …etc. Participants on the other hand should be made aware that spontaneity and informal interaction are some of the main aims of online course.

17. Computer-mediated-communication (CMC) can easily solve the problem of gender biased that hinder interaction in face-to-face communication. Everyone can participate in an online session even if they join late as conversations/discussions are recorded unlike what happens in face-to-face communication. Some people claim that online interaction lack argumentation and this claim has no ground. Everyone can interact, argue, criticize, comment on and advice others online if they want that. So, the lack of argumentation where it occurs would be due to reasons that belong to participants and not the medium (CMC).

18. Some participants are not yet ready to take responsibility of their own learning and they find it difficult to find their way around in an online course without guidance and instructions from a moderator or a facilitator (it is a scary, frustrating task for a beginner). In other words, they find it difficult to work or learn when task/course is not completely structured. They feel more secure with structured courses as they could anticipate what they have to deal with, what they are supposed to learn at a time and what they are expected to produce or submit. To overcome this problem, an online course should be designed in a way that takes into account the gradual move from completely structured exercises (in the beginning, warm-up for participants) to completely unstructured and opened tasks (at the end where the course becomes totally learner-centered and the learners become ready to take responsibility of their learning).

19. Old members in the course should be friendly enough with newcomers (as they still feel like strangers or outsiders) and they should support them to cross the threshold to insider status (the point when they feel that they belong to the group).

20. Using authentic materials as that would be more interesting and closer to reality than books. Try to be aware of what is going on around you and keep making use of the situations and the events that happen. Making use of the day-to-day activities and events makes the online class fun and opens doors for endless discussions.

There are some factors that need to be considered prior to the design of an online course and some of these are:

students’ ideas and feedback on the previous courses or their responses to a questionnaire or an interview
their needs and interests
individual differences between students in the way they perceive and look at the course, the way they handle activities, the learning approaches that appeal to them most…etc.

21. Explaining the basics as far as interaction is concerned and making the aims and objectives clear to the students would make them more confident and relaxed, otherwise, they would feel lost and stressed.

22. Considering different teaching methods such as group work, individual tasks, self-correction, peer correction, competitions, games …etc.

23. Developing cooperative and collaborative atmosphere where students develop a feeling of belonging to the group and feel comfortable and informal in their interaction with their peers.

Here are some questions that should be considered by any course designer. They should be carefully thought of and they should form the basis for an online course. I am trying to provide answers that would fit to my own educational context and of course, answers to these questions will vary from a designer to another depending on many other factors like objectives of the course, time, requirements, facilities provided…etc.

1. How comfortable are your students online?

I have taught a lot of course and I have dealt with different students every time. Almost all of my students were involved in e-learning tasks on Web CT or Moodle. As for how comfortable my students are online, I would like to answer this question with reference to my Level 500/Science students.

I noticed that students were very interested in using computers and interacting online although e-learning was a very new style of learning (at the time) and people had just started putting materials online. We had some difficulties at first and they were all related to the design of the courses and the technical problems that existed at the time. Students were annoyed whenever they had problems and being in e-learning labs was a nightmare for the teachers who were not ready themselves to use this new technology and also for those who resisted this new style and didn’t want to learn (some teachers did go to the e-labs with their students only because it was going to be assessed at the end otherwise they wouldn’t have done it). Of course, for some other teachers, it was great fun and they found and came up with very creative ways to solve the problems they had. The great effort exerted on the course for Level 5 Sciences and the kind of materials that were put online for students were really great that it hooked the students, motivated them, appealed to their needs and interests and considered their views and suggestions. The frustration of the students was overcome by the teachers’ different manners of dealing with the problems and simplifying things and making them easy to digest. Students then felt great about going to the lab and sometimes, they would ask us (teachers) to turn one of the normal classes into and e-learning session. It just made me feel proud and taught me how to bring a change to an already existing style or method of teaching. Of course, this scenario repeats itself almost every year with new students but once the students have been introduced to the e-learning concept and practice, it keeps growing with them as they move ahead with their study.

2. How can you help make the discussion board a place where your students feel part of a learning community and therefore be able to learn more effectively?

It is not easy to talk about this in a page or ten, I think it would take ages and pages to put the ideas I have down but I will try to list some of them:

In order for us to be able to get the students together online and to turn the discussion board into a learning community, we will need to consider some questions and factors like:

# Do participants have equal opportunities to access the internet? And if they have, can they afford it? Can they be online for equal periods of time?This will help us set up reasonable amount of tasks as if we just set a lot of tasks without considering the students’ availability online, these tasks won’t be responded to by the majority of participants but only by those who have easy access to the net.

# Have they started the course together? This would affect their social presence later on as if they started all together, it is more likely that they would get a long with other participants whereas if someone joins later, they would find it very difficult to adapt to the group and also to get hold of what they have missed. In fact, some of the late comers to online course end up dropping out as they find it really difficult to develop an insider sort of feelings and this in turn makes it even more difficult for them to develop the feeling of belonging to the community.

# What are their needs, interests, expectations, backgrounds and the teaching and learning approaches that would appeal to them?All these factors are essential and they should be considered prior to the design of the course and even during the application of the course as online courses should have a certain degree of flexibility and they should have room to accommodate new ideas, suggestions or even changes. If these factors are taken into account, then a lot of the current online problems will be reduced to minimum if not eliminated. Considering the students’ needs and interests, their views and suggestions, give the students feeling of ownership of the online course and make them feel responsible for it even more than the teacher. Students then come to the conclusion that the online course is their community and they should maintain it and keep it alive by their active participations and continuous presence. Teachers as facilitators should try to develop in their students a feeling of sympathy and respect towards their peers and they should try to create an environment where students cooperate and collaborate to achieve common goals. Finally, considering the use of various teaching methods would ensure that all students on the course are targeted and that nobody is left out. It would also help students learn better as they have different preferences when it comes to teaching and learning approaches.

# Do they feel okay online? Can they relate to others in the group? Do they feel pressured by their peers? How do they react to peer pressure? Student’s feelings and psychology must be considered and respected as that would either attract them to the course as a whole or send them away from it. If students feel that they can talk freely with their teachers and peers and that they can discuss whatever they want (of course, there would be some limitations to this kind of freedom), then, they will make every effort to make their points and to participate in online tasks. Also, if students feel that their peers and teachers sympathize with them, then, they would feel safer and more secure and they won’t worry much about losing face or giving a wrong answer. One of the very important points I noticed in my courses is that students’ participation tend to increase if they get response from their peers (this is what keeps the discussion board going, interaction). Students feel that what they have posted online is being acknowledged and not ignored (Students who get no responses are discouraged usually. Teachers should do their best to create such environments online and they should clarify the kind of relationship that should exist between participants in their course as that would make the course more organized and would eliminate some of the cultural/behavioral problems even before they start.

In this section, I will try to give some ideas for those who are interested in raising the level of interaction in their online course. These are just some thoughts that could be adopted, developed and considered during the design of online courses. They focus on answering the following questions (some of the points are not really answers but they could be used to answer the questions):

1.What are the factors that attract the students to interact in an online course?

- clear goals and objectives

- materials that appeal to the students needs and interests

- guidance (but not too much of it so as to allow them some freedom and space for creativity)

- encouragement (grade, praising them in front of their colleagues…etc)

- trying to involve them as much as possible in the process and the design of some tasks

- highlighting and emphasizing the importance of online interaction

- giving them a good reason for being online (providing them with chances to interact with others not only from their class but from other classes for a start and then this circle could be expanded to involve some of their peers or counterparts in some other institutions).

- relating the themes/topics in the online course or task to what the students have already covered or to what they are still covering in their traditional course as that would be an extra practice to them that would contribute to their development both online and in the class

- relating the topics to their day-to-day life activity and maybe asking them to link the activities that happened in their life to what they are doing or discussing online.

- using marks as a reward for those who are doing more. This will be an incentive for the students to do more and to work even harder

- forcing students into something they don’t like is definitely not going to work, so punishment is not a good idea really in this context but encouraging the students and clarifying and highlighting the importance of being involved in online activities would be a great alternative.

- showing students a sample of a good discussion will show them how a discussion should be handled online and will encourage them to try to do better

- maybe encouraging the students to use their MSN messengers or any other device (net meeting, yahoo messenger…etc) for learning instead of wasting time just chatting to anyone.

- asking students to come up with topics they are interested in and adopting some of these topics would give students a feeling of ownership and would make their participation even better.

- for teachers, having some background on how internet works and being able to solve some of the simple technical problems would be great as there are a lot of potential problems that might occur in an online course/session and when that happens, it screws everything up if the teacher has no clue as to what to do to solve that problem.

2. How can we convince students to interact and use online materials?

There are so many ways to do that and here are some. Giving them a reason for being online as it is really useless to ask them to go online when they can get to do the task in their books. Not only that but we should also consider their needs and topics of interests. For example, as teachers we can always relate the topics of the discussions online or the topics on the chatting forums to something that has been covered in the class. This will provide the students who have extra interest in the topic with what they need and will expand their knowledge about that particular topic.

Setting up some group work tasks would also make it more fun and would encourage the students to work, participate and contribute even more to the titles of the topics. Guidance is another key factor. We have to make sure that we are there as a guide and a regulator of the tasks and activities otherwise the whole place/lesson or whatever it is would be a miss. Use of Marks is one very important way to force students to be online and to participate. It would be better for Marks to be used as a reward rather than as a punishment.

Having the ability to trace the students’ activities online is great. You can as a teacher print out the names of the students and the kind of the activities they were involved in and thank them in front of the others in the class. Offering an incentive to those who do extra work will definitely improve the presence of the students online. This would also encourage the others to participate and would show them that doing such tasks is serious and could affect the overall performance and development of the students.

Conclusion

Interacting online can go hand in hand with classroom interaction and it can bridge the communication gap that may occur therein. Planning for online interaction should consider a lot of factors in order to appeal to the target students and to serve their needs. This paper has provided some potential measures that could be considered throughout any online course. It is very important to conclude that in order for an online course to be interactive, online course designers have to be creative, flexible and approachable and they have to target strengthen the features of the course that appeals to the students most.