non-traditional

In this session, we share an online workshop series designed to provide an interactive educational and community-building opportunity to online students. Interest and attendance in our live online workshop series, as well as enthusiastic participation from students, exceeded our expectations. The literature on online students talks about the role online workshops play in developing a sense of community for online students, which aligns with what we observed in our series. Scholarship on commuter and non-traditional students also points to the valuable role informal workshops can play to engage and retain these student groups. At this session, we provide lessons learned from our project on selecting topics, publicizing, selecting and working with the right tools, and working towards developing a community of online learners. During the 2018-19 academic year, we have focused on managing the workload to increase the sustainability of the workshops.