Building Online Community and Content Skills Using Class Citizenship Behaviors

This idea came out of my 2016 Tech Trends article "The Future of Work: What Google Shows Us about the Present and Future of Online Collaboration." I co-presented the content below at conferences in 2016 with a computers instructor to offer more variety in its implementation, and since then I've heard from a library professor how she uses this activity to create community in her online classes. After a brief grounding in the literature, I share how I used an weekly extra credit forum to engage students in these types of community-buildings tasks that helped them in their course content directly and indirectly.

What Are Class Citizenship Behaviors?

Organizational Citizenship Behaviors (OCBs) are the characteristics of an employee that are beneficial to a workplace. Traditionally, some of these characteristics have included obedience, deference to authority, and strict work schedules.

Updating OCBs for New Work Environments

While traditional organizational citizenship behaviors (OCBs) worked well in 9-5 brick-and-mortar work contexts, knowledge work careers are becoming increasingly flexible in with whom, when, and where employees work. Kathryn Dekas, a Google employee, with a team of scholars (2013), compared OCBs characterized in the 1980s and 90s to see what does and doesn’t apply to current knowledge workers. Through focus groups and surveys of Google employees, Dekas and her team created a scale for Organizational Citizenship Behaviors among Knowledge Workers (OCB-KW), which identified eight top categories:

employee sustainability
social participation
civic virtue
voice
helping behavior
knowledge sharing
individual initiative
administrative behavior

The top two citizenship behaviors—employee sustainability and social participation—revolve around behaviors less directly associated with work productivity, as they focus on building wellness and camaraderie.

Implementation in Writing and Computer Courses

Borrowed from business studies of organizational citizenship behaviors (OCBs), class citizenship behaviors (CCBs) are student traits that build a positive, productive learning environment. These behaviors simultaneously help learners reinforce the course content and build community among one another. These behaviors have been implemented in six first-year writing courses over three semesters through a weekly extra credit forum. In Winter 2016, a business professor included a similar forum in his MIS 100 course, a Management Information Systems course for first-year business majors. His version, the Social Forum, invited students to think about course content in less formal ways and share their own personalities and experiences.

Both professors have shared most of their prompts below. For more details on research and results related to these practices, contact me at cmamoore@oakland.edu.

Composition 2 CCB Forum Prompts

Abbreviated prompts offered in the class

Organization Tools - What are your best tricks and strategies for keeping organized: an app, a routine, a computer program, something else? Contribute to the class and glean your own ideas by sharing your go-to strategies, researching new organizational tools, and explaining their pros and cons.

Pin WRT 160 - How can we put the social media outlet to use? Make a board of pins related to what we have learned in class and shared in the Class Citizenship forum so far. Describe your pins and highlight the "best of,” and include a link to your board. Then, explore peers' boards and pin helpful ones on your board.

Time-Saving Tech Tips - Even if you love writing with paper and pen, you will type most of the words you write. Why not learn some shortcuts to help you do this faster and with more ease? As this week's CCB, help yourself for a lifetime by reviewing the Week 4 Time-Saving Tech Tips page. If you are a tech-savvy sage already, help all of us manage our lives easier by sharing your own tricks.

Video Research - Let's take a break from the denser texts and see what TED Talks have to offer. Search TED for talks related to your research project. Once you've found a worthwhile one, share what it’s about and how it relates to your project or our class.

Your Expertise Beyond Writing and Research - Writing is hard. It’s some of the most important work you can do, but it’s hard. This week, let’s take a break to remember all of the things we do well. Share one of your fortes by considering these two questions: What do you do well, at least above average? In this realm, what is one thing you know how to do that the average person would not know, perhaps a semi-secret of the trade?

Presentation Tech Forum - If you have a tech question or solution related to the presentation, please share it here! If you solved a problem, found a good resource, or have general tips, share the wealth. If you find yourself at a stopping point about the presentation, post your question here.

Writing Revamp - Let’s write for fun. Choose one of the prompts below or riff off of someone else’s writing (150-500 words). In the subject, write [Option Choice] Title (e.g. [Option A] Turn That Clown Upside-Down. If you’re working off of someone else’s, put their first name brackets.

Color a Turkey - Take a break from the books and color a turkey for Thanksgiving (template attached). Print it and color it, with your hands. Use crayons, pencils, markers, charcoal, fingerpaint, or whatever method best suits you (not a computer program).

Texting Experiment! :) Primary research should be fun and creative! In order to get us on that wavelength, let's practice an experiment of our own. In order to put our texting language under a microscope, eliminate at least one of these from your texting or messaging behavior for the next five days: exclamation points, smiley or frown faces (and all of these variations :D :/), and emojis. Keep a journal of the experience. At the end of the week, analyze your notes to share your results in 1-2 fluid paragraphs, emphasizing the most important findings and using experiential evidence to explain them.

Life Event - While you and I seldom, if never, see each other out of our class context, we likely are doing some pretty cool things outside of the classroom. What notable life event from this semester is worth sharing? If you can, share a photo or video that helps capture that event. As you see what all of us have been up to, give us some love and comment on what others have been up to.

Example of the Color a Turkey forum, showing six submitted entries with comments expressing people's contexts and appreciation for the opportunity to color and share.

MIS 100 Professor Shaun Moore modeling a selfie expressing a Network Nightmare.

MIS 100 Professor Experience

I brought an optional social forum into my fully online class to try to help build a sense of community, which somewhat naturally happens in a face-to-face class, but is harder to foster in an online environment. The forums really added a personal element to the online class. It allowed me to open up a bit more to my students, showing more of myself, my hobbies and personality. More importantly, I learned more about my students. They also got to know each other better, evidenced in the student to student posts.

While I offered extra credit for participating, it was a fairly small part of their grade. It was just motivation enough for a little over half the class to participate each week. I plan on starting the social forums earlier in the semester next time around.

MIS 100 Social Forum Prompts

Abbreviated prompts offered in the class.

Where I Work - Share a picture of yourself in the place where you work when taking this online class. Also write a short paragraph explaining what we're seeing in the picture, and how you normally do you work for this online class.

Computer Frustration - Tell us a bit about some frustrating computer experience you've had (it can even be from this class, like something frustrating about using one of the Office programs). Include an image in your post.

Excel Art - What I'm asking you to do for this week's social forum is to create a piece of art using Excel. You can do this easily by opening a blank workbook, then hitting Ctrl+A to select all, and right clicking a column and setting the Column Width to 2.5. That will make it look like graph paper. Then you can use the Fill Color (paint can icon in HOME tab Font section) to color boxes to make a lovely work of art. Attach a screenshot of your artwork. You can feel free to look at templates online to try to draw something like that, it just has to be something you actually did.

Gaming - Tell us about a game you're currently playing and why you like to play it. It could be a video game such as on a console system, handheld (portable systems/phones/tablets), computer, or it could be a boardgame, or just something fun you like to play with friends or family that you consider a game. Include a picture or screenshot of your game.

Future Tech - Tell us about a piece of technology that isn't out yet that you are personally looking forward to. This could be something that is going to be released somewhat soon, like sometime this year, or it could be some concept technology that may not come around for years.

Network Nightmare - We're reading chapter 9 of the Visualizing Technology book this week, looking at networks and communication. So for this week, tell us a bit about some network nightmare you've experienced before. What happened, why was it particularly frustrating, what were you trying to get done online at the time, and how did you resolve it? So we can get to know each other a bit more for those participating, include a picture/selfie of yourself acting out how you felt at the time. It could be any range of emotions that you were experiencing depending on your situation. Attach your picture under your story.

Future Business Tech - Tell us about a piece of technology that isn't out yet that you believe will change the way people do business in the future. Relate it back to how a business would use it and how it would change the way they do business.

Hobby - Tell us about one of your hobbies. This can be anything you are passionate about that is outside of what you do for school. Write up a few paragraphs telling us about your hobby, such as what it is, why you like it, how long you've been doing it, etc. Also include some picture of you doing your hobby.

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