Online Teaching: 5 ways to stay connected to your students.

As we all adjust to life in the shadow of COVID-19, the lack of direct human connection with others outside of our home is undeniable. Thank goodness for Zoom, Skype, Facebook, WebEx, and all the other programs that allow us to interact with each other.

In this digital age of text messaging, Instagram, tweets, and e-mail that allow us to communicate, I would venture to say that communication is not the same as connection or presence. Connection and presence are about feelings and emotions. It’s about experiencing the warmth of knowing someone is there, has your back, is cheering you on, guiding you, redirecting you when needed, and being gently honest with sharing truths of which you need to be reminded. It’s about a reassuring hand on a shoulder or a pat on the back. It’s visceral. But how do we capture this when we are all relegated to our homes, with only our digital devices for communication?

One of the most significant challenges of online education is a real or perceived sense of isolation, a lack of connection and presence between teacher and student, and student to student. This sense of isolation actually contributes to a higher rate of disengagement and attrition in online learning (Roddy et al., 2017). I can speak from personal experience of taking some courses online. There were many times I felt like the “teacher” was never really present. I frequently felt totally isolated while being in a sea of learners.  For someone who has been a student and a teacher my entire life, I have always valued the in-person interactions and connections.

What I have learned from my research about the role of a teacher is that as teachers, we are one of, if not the most influential factor in whether a student learns.  If a student feels seen, heard, safe, supported, respected, and valued – they flourish, they excel, no matter the odds. But without that connection, they disengage (Bain, 2004; Roddy et al., 2017). 

So here are 5 ways to stay connected with your students when teaching online.

1. Feedback

We know it is vital to provide feedback frequently and timely for the student to have a sense of how they are doing in the course and with their learning. I appreciate the thought of individually responding to 60 plus students' posts or assignment seems overwhelming, so consider building a bank of responses that you can cut and paste. But the key here, in an online dynamic,  is to make them personal by adding the student’s name or something else that is unique to what you know about them in some way.  Sometimes it will be fine for the feedback to be short, acknowledging their contribution, other times

2. Communication

Think about mixing up the ways you communicate with students, including using short e-mails or pre-recorded audio or video message.  Give students a chance to see your face and hear your voice. It could be a quick comment that you noticed they got their assignment in early or acknowledge they were the first to jump in and make a comment in the discussion post. This is a way to stay connected with the students and to let them know you are present and watching their engagement in the course. Also, sending a text or short message to the entire class with a simple reassuring and positive message can be really appreciated.

Another aspect of communication is to be sure to respond to students’ queries or concerns within a reasonable time frame, like 24 hours. However, it helps if you let them know ahead of time what your response time frame is, so they know what to expect.

3. Check-in with students

In face-to-face teaching,  when you see your students in class or the hallway, and can usually quickly intuit when something is wrong.  Therefore, for the online setting, the need to intentionally make an effort to check in becomes critical to helping students know you are there, engaged, and available. One suggestion is to use brief surveys. These can usually be easily be created in whatever learning management system your program is using or even the free version of Survey Monkey.   Perhaps once a week send a brief survey to ten students and ask them about how things are going, what are the challenges they are encountering. Then,  the next week send the survey to ten different students. Mixing it up like this helps provide varying student perspectives and experiences and avoids survey fatigue.  

4. Set up virtual office hours

Just as most institutions require faculty to have posted office hours, consider following that practice and set a standing time to hold virtual office hours. This is yet another way to let students know you are present and available to them. You can require students to make an appointment during your office hours, or some folks open up a Zoom space and then simply allow people just to show up.

5. Involve the students in decision making.

Having a voice in the decisions being made in their education is important, especially to adult learners.  Since we are all navigating a sudden shift in how the curriculum is being delivered where possible, consider ways to involve the students when making decisions. This involvement could be asking their opinion or preference about something in the course, or asking for ideas when the course has hit an unexpected challenge. I have found that sometimes, it is a student’s suggestion that creates the best solution.

As clinicians, our ability to forge a trusting relationship with our patients is crucial to their healing.  Developing a trusting professional relationship with our students is equally vital for their learning and success and how they move forward in the face of adversity and challenge. Although establishing a sense of connection or relationship with our students is essential overall, it is a critical aspect that requires intentional consideration with online teaching.

References

Bain, K. (2004). What the best college teachers do. Cambridge, MA: Harvard Press.

Corrow, C., & Chapin, G. (2020, March 16). So they’ve closed the schools – now what? Center for Collaborative Education. Retrieved from https://www.cce.org/thought-leadership/blog/post/closed-schools-tips-covid19    

Cruickshank, S. (2020, March 12). How to adapt courses for online learning: A practical guide for faculty. John Hopkins University Hub. Retrieved from https://hub.jhu.edu/2020/03/12/how-to-teach-online-courses-coronavirus-response/

Macgregor-Mendoza, P. (2013, July). Transition from tradition: 9 tips for successfully moving your face-to-face course online. elearnmag. Retrieved from https://elearnmag.acm.org/archive.cfm?aid=2509419

Roddy, C., Amiet, D.L., Chung, J., Holt, C., Shaw, L., McKenzie, S., … Mundy, M. E. (2017) Applying best practice online Learning, teaching, and support to intensive online environments: An integrative Review. Front. Educ. 2:59. doi: 10.3389/feduc.2017.00059 Retrieved from https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/feduc.2017.00059/full