5 Ways to Connect With Online Students
By Flower Darby
Faculty Focus
I’d been teaching online courses for 10 years — and, I liked to think, had become quite efficient and effective in the format — on the day it dawned on me that I was treating my online students as if they weren’t actually people.
Most of my university’s courses, in normal times, are offered in buildings, not online, and I teach in both realms. My epiphany came in March 2018, when a student I’ll call “Lori” emailed to explain why she hadn’t followed directions on an assignment. I’d required students to submit a quick video of themselves, but she’d posted an audio with her photo attached. In the week before the due date, she explained, she’d been beaten up by an ex-boyfriend. With a swollen and bruised face, she’d been too embarrassed to post a video. And without knowing the back story, I’d docked her grade.
Clearly, my well-intentioned effort to “create community” online — by requiring students to show their faces so we could get to know one another — had backfired. I realized I’d been treating my online students as names on a screen, grading tasks on a to-do list, rather than as people with varied life circumstances. I subsequently changed the assignment to encourage but not require students to show their faces in videos. And I changed my thinking about how I interact with online students.
As higher education prepares for a fall semester that will be entirely or partly online, amid Covid-19, many of you are taking the opportunity to improve your online-teaching skills. Helping you do that is the aim of this series. Today’s topic is among the most crucial: how to connect with online students as people.
