Read Only Participants Summary

Nagel, Blignaut, and Cronje (2009) “foresee that a large number of lurking students in an online class can prevent the formation of a virtual community of learners and compromise everyone’s education” (pg. 50). Being a read-only participant can not only affect that student’s learning, but hinder the other students’ education and learning. In a virtual classroom, successful students interacted more with their peers (Nagel et al., 2009). This paper will address the main points from the article Read-Only Participants: A Case for Student Communication in Online Classes by Nagel, Blignaut, and Cronje (2009) regarding characteristics of the interaction between students in an online class.
Expectation of Students In an online community, it can be
The instructor is expected to be just as present as the students. Abdelmalak (2015) makes it known that the instructor needs to have an awareness within the classroom to ensure the online community works collaboratively together. Within the study done by Nagel et al. (2009), the researchers explain that the instructor was flexible with some students, due to personal or work related issues, and worked with these students so that they were still successful in the class. Adhering to policies is important, but flexibility is essential as
(2009) explain that the drop out ranges in the online communities are “10-20% higher than” the same course that’s offered face-to-face (pg.38). Nagel et al. (2009) found that some students had problems like power outages, slow connectivity, family or work matters that may have hindered some of the school work. These are common problems that any or most college students will encounter in face-to-face courses at some point in time as well. Being in an online community, some students may try to hide behind the computer. Nagel et al. (2009) explains that some students that were not as present from the instructor’s point-of-view still feel like they received an adequate education while some of the other hidden students failed the class completely.
Conclusion
In an online community, the community the students build can become what the student chooses for it to become. A student can get the most or the least amount of information from their course and peers, depending on how active and present they are. Everyone must remember that disconnected students will not be helped, regardless how present the instructor may be (Nagel et al.,