Get to Know your Students
Online instructors are often concerned about the lack of personal connections they make with students enrolled in their online courses. After all, this connection is often what keeps us motivated to continue teaching. The meaningful connections we make in our face-to-face classes can still happen in an online class, just in a different way or in a different place. Think about where and when you get to know your students. Is it during class? Before or after class? During office hours? Knowing how these meaningful connections are happening in your traditional courses can help you determine how to create that same space or opportunity within your online course.
Connecting in an online course may seem impossible, but it’s not! It does require strategic planning, and you must be committed to staying engaged with your students. When you form relationships during an in-person class, you must be an active participant in discussions and take an interest in the success of your students. It’s the same in your online courses.
Here are a few ways you can try to better get to know students in your online classes:
Know their names
Names have power, and many people take great pride in their names. Honor that pride by trying to learn and correctly use your students’ names. For an in-person course, it’s vital that you learn how to correctly pronounce your students’ names. Think about how you would feel if a colleague you interact with frequently, such as your boss, mispronounced your name every time you saw them. It would be frustrating, and you might be less likely to respect them. It can be the same for our students!
Even though you may not be saying students’ names aloud in on online class as often as you would in person, you can still try to learn them. Something as simple as starting an email with a student’s first name can make a difference as to whether they feel like a part of a community or whether they feel invisible in an online crowd.
You can also use your students’ names to call out good ideas. For example, if Paolo has a great response in a discussion board, you can mention that when replying to other students and direct them to read Paolo’s ideas.
Gather information about them using surveys and polls
When you take an interest in your students, they are more likely to take an interest in your class. There are several ways you can do this at the beginning of the course and throughout the semester.
Student interest surveys are a great way to find out more than just the basic demographics about your students. You can use a free tool like Microsoft Forms or Google Forms to create a short survey for students to take at the start of the course. The survey can cover things like their major, what interests them most about the field of study or their hobbies. You can then use this information to craft your course around interests and to reply to your students on a personal level. For example, if a few of your students mentioned studying abroad, you could use current events from some of their travel locations to pique their interest about the topic you’re covering.
You can use tools like Mentimeter, Poll Everywhere or SurveyMonkey to take the pulse of your students. You can find out how they are struggling, which topics they are enjoying the most or really anything related to your class.
Additionally, you can also create your own survey regarding how the structure of the class is working for students. The Student Survey of Instruction given at the end of the semester may not give you the detailed feedback you want, so crafting your own allows you to be more specific. Keep in mind that students need to know their survey responses do not affect their grade in any way. It’s best to make surveys about the structure or quality of the course completely anonymous.
Integrate videos into your assignments
Did you know that students can submit discussion board replies and assignments in video format using a built-in tool in Canvas? These videos will allow you to see your students’ personalities. You’ll be able to more easily learn their names and can use their body language and voice inflection to help you understand their thinking even better, just as you would during an in-person class.
Grading video assignments can be time-consuming if you’re teaching a larger class. Consider setting time limits for the videos (such as 1.5 to 2 minutes) and rotating which section or group is required to submit by video each week. You can also offer students the choice between a written submission or video on some assignments. At a minimum, consider requesting a video submission for an introduction discussion post so that you’ll be able to see every one of your students faces at least once.
Use meaningful icebreaker activities
The term “icebreaker activity” often invokes an eye roll, and understandably so. When icebreakers are well-planned and bring a meaningful purpose to the class, they can be great, even in an online class. As you’re planning an activity, go beyond the base-level purpose of getting to know your students’ names. How can you connect the course content to their current interests or their future aspirations? How can you connect to their outside lives or connect the students to each other? Online classes can seem isolating for some students and they may want the ability to network with each other outside of class. Icebreaker games and introductions are one way to facilitate those connections.
Encourage discussion
Canvas provides a variety of ways for students to have discussions, both synchronously and asynchronously. Student discussions might be one of the best strategies for getting your students involved and engaged in the course content, but even the most well-thought discussion prompts can fail if they are not well-facilitated. Be active with your students and provide them meaningful feedback. Discussions can be ungraded, but students tend to focus their energy on things that are required as part of a grade. Grading discussions can be tedious and time consuming, so consider making them a portion of the overall participation grade.