Sunday, September 04, 2005

Make Your Online Classroom a "Hybrid Place"

Here's an idea I had while reading a great article (Cats in the classroom: Online learning in hybrid space by Michelle Kazmer) in First Monday.

Read the article to get more info on why I think this might be a good idea, but I was thinking that maybe having students post pictures of the workspaces they're in while participating in your course might help build a sense of community. I've long thought that having students post pictures of themselves helps everyone build a little bit of a connection to one another.

I've been thinking about how awareness of one another helps online students create connections and feel more a part of a community. In my previous post, I noted that online instructors should talk about the more quotidian aspects of their lives to help students know that they are "real." Sharing with one another what the space they're in while connecting in the online classroom might help to create such awareness.

I know that many online students like the anonymity of online courses, but instead of posting picutres of themselves, you can also have students post pictures of things that they feel represent themselves--a favorite image, a picture of their pet... If you try having students post pictures of their workspaces, you might give them the option of posting a picture of just one thing on their desk, or the view out the window.

Give it a try, anyway. I'm going to the next time I teach online. If you do try it out, please post a comment here and let us know how it went.

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Friday, August 26, 2005

Remind Your Students That You're Human

This one might seem a little silly, but it's amazing how important it can be, especially when your students are new to online learning.

I worked with a good friend and colleague a few years ago on some online courses--I'd hired her to facilitate the courses. She told me how she'd always begin her posts to the discussion boards with a weather report or a note about how she'd just finished the laundry and boy, was she tired. This initially felt to me like just so much clutter getting in the way of students connecting to the content. I wasn't against the idea of being warm and friendly, but talking about doing laundry?

My friend explained that she was trying to remind her students that she really was a human being. Not that her students might have believed otherwise, but because there were a couple of computers and potentially thousands of miles of fiber optic cable between her and each of her students, it was important to show students that the someone on the other end was a living, breathing person.

Later, I was taking an online course and discovered exactly why my friend did this. Everything posted by the instructor in that course felt as though it was either automatically generated by some piece of software or had been written well in advance and just copied and pasted at the appropriate point in the course. I'm not against online instructors using some time-saving techniques, but if everything is pre-written, I can see how easy it is for a student to begin to think that they're connected only to a machine...

So tell your students about your laundry. Or your pets. Or what the weather is like in your corner of the world today. Tell them what you did for fun over the weekend. Unless, of course, you just assigned them a lot of work that they had to spend their weekend doing--you don't want them to resent your humanness. ;-)

Of course, lots of one-on-one contact with students will help, too. But in the group discussions it's important to show how human you are. Your students will respond in-kind, to be sure.

Wednesday, August 24, 2005

Connect Before the Class Begins

I'm getting ready to take an online course. It's the first online course I'll be participating in at the college where I now work, and I'm really looking forward to getting a glimpse of the experience our online students have when taking courses in our distance learning programs.

I've already gotten a taste of the experience, and I have to pat ourselves on the back for setting up a great way to engage students even before classes begin--making a strong connection to the students a couple of weeks before class starts. With most traditional courses, you show up on the first day and get the syllabus and find out what you're going to have to do to succeed in the course.

Online learners, if they're going to hit the ground running, need to be thinking and preparing even before the first day that the course is available in your course management system. Find ways to reach out and connect to them even before the semester starts.

I got an email from my instructor the other day, and here's what was included in it--all ideas for you to consider for early outreach:

  • a hearty "Welcome!"
  • information about pre-course on-campus orientation sessions
  • links to online orientation tools
  • a draft of the course syllabus (of course you like to make changes to your syllabus right up until the time the course begins--just mark your early syllabus "DRAFT")
  • deadlines for graded materials (a big help to non-traditional students who are fitting learning in with work and family and need to plan ahead)
  • a document containing tips and advice from successful online students
  • a document comparing online learning to traditional classroom learning
  • an invitation to feel free to contact the instructor with any questions or concerns, starting now--even before class begins

I've been an online learner before, and still this advance package from my instructor helps me feel at ease about the course. I imagine that for those new to online learning this kind of contact has been critical to their getting acclimated.

I'm even getting excited about the course--and wouldn't it be great if all your students showed up to class eager to learn? Make contact with them early and you might just inspire some of that eagerness.