Comment on Rachel’s Post 3
The access to learning tools that are not supported by institutions or instructors may have stability issues, and learners who have not previously been exposed need to take extra time to learn them. For online asynchronous forums, it would be considerate to review learners’ questions first before distributing them to other learners as part of learning activities. We need to be aware that learners’ questions may only cover a narrow range of the materials, and this indirectly affects other learners. Instructors should review the questions to identify or correct any vague phrases. One potential barrier of group work is that some students are not comfortable about interacting with strangers. Learners could be frustrated about participating in discussions and have different opinions of directions of projects. This may result in only one person or part of the group dominating the supervision of an entire project. In addition, it is also difficult for instructors to vignette them. We want learners to work as a group to learn from each others’ strength and have constructive criticism on the project to improve and succeed eventually. A similar barrier is found in polls. Learners can unintentionally emphasize the “correctness” and “professionalism” of their opinions and answers instead of focusing on reflecting on their own understanding of the subjects. Various forms of communications could raise unexpected issues; sometimes it relies on instructors’ experience to find optimal solutions.