How might you cultivate students' ability to connect with you and their peers during a semester of online classes? These guidelines will help you build human connection into your course design so your students can thrive in the virtual environment.
Designing for human connection is critically important to student learning outcomes, especially in the online environment. In a study of student satisfaction after shifts to remote instruction in the spring of 2020, 65% of students stated that "opportunities to collaborate with other students" were worse than their in-person experiences. And research has shown how faculty's ability to build online rapport with students can increase student retention.
The online environment provides a unique opportunity to reimagine student engagement during your course and encourage students to get support from you, their peers, and their broader communities. Some general tips to keep in mind are:
Focus on early interactions. If you are worried you might not have enough time to give students highly personalized feedback or small group interactions during the entire semester, any focused work you put into the first couple of weeks will help set up a culture that can become self-sustaining.
Set up consistent connection habits. Embed regular moments of connection into your course that will become routine to you and your students, like a live-session question-of-the-day or weekly asynchronous forums where students can share questions and challenges from their coursework.
Keep your personality in your recorded lectures. You may be inclined to be more serious in any videos you create than you are in the classroom. The enthusiasm and stories of real-world connections that you bring to your videos will keep your students motivated and allow you to develop rapport asynchronously.
Model vulnerability and a growth mindset. Consider using some lectures to address common challenges to learning in order to help your students feel more prepared. Or share a story about your experiences as a learner in the topic and how you overcame challenges and worked hard to master the material.
Create consistent structures for asynchronous group work. Cultivate connections between students by setting aside time for groups of 3-4 students to get together during the week to work through practice problems, discuss readings, or debrief any course challenges. Consider asking groups to submit a short reflection on their work each week to encourage accountability and collect any points of confusion that surfaced on a group level.
Engage with your students in discussion forums. While you may not have time to respond to every single post, your comments in discussion forums will help set the tone for asynchronous conversation. Ask your students follow-up questions to help them expand on answers or challenge their thinking. Encourage less formal written responses in discussion forums, and model the type of encouragement and playfulness that you would have in an in-person classroom as well.
Encourage students to sign up for office hours, especially if you're teaching a larger class. Consider requiring that students sign up for short individual time slots in office hours early in the class, either with you or a teaching assistant. Investing time in these 1:1 check-ins early on will help students become comfortable with speaking up in a virtual setting and coming to you if they are struggling. If you have replaced some live session time with asynchronous work, consider using the original live session time slot for office hours, or holding them in your zoom room immediately before or after the live session.
Use live session time for getting-to-know-you activities. Cultivate connections throughout the semester by building in consistent getting-to-know-you activities. Depending on your class size, you might want students to do these activities all together or in smaller groups in Zoom breakout rooms.
Discuss what students should expect in the course and where they can seek help. In addition to a syllabus review and overall welcome in the first live session, leave some time to review the asynchronous and synchronous learning activities and what will be expected of students in each. Make sure students know where they can go with questions and what they should do to get the help they need to successfully participate in the course.
Designate some live session time for checking in about how the course is going. Set aside some time for students to share successes and struggles from their coursework. Consider modeling vulnerability by sharing topics that you had originally struggled with while learning the material or some of your current challenges with working from home.
Use live session time to prepare for asynchronous group work. If you are putting students into new groups, leave some time in that week's live session to put groups into Zoom breakout rooms to discuss what time they will check in and how they would like to communicate with each other. Consider leaving extra time for these meetings for students to answer a getting-to-know-you prompt as well in order to cultivate trust for their group work.
Survey all your students at the beginning of the course about how they are feeling. In the first week of class, ask students to fill out an online survey or private question that gleans information about their prior experience with the topic, how they feel going into the course, and anything else their instructors should know. This type of information will help you tailor feedback and live session instruction to your individual students and identify students who may need extra support throughout the course.
Ask students to check in weekly with you asynchronously. Keep your finger on the pulse of how your students are feeling by adding a short set of questions as a regular weekly diagnostic or temperature check assignment. If you already have a weekly assignment, consider simply adding an additional question to ask students how they are feeling about the coursework or if there's anything else they'd like to share with you about their participation in the course.
Consider opportunities for audio or video feedback on assignments. While some of your grading may be more automated in order to save time and provide students with immediate feedback, consider providing audio or video feedback to students on select assignments. Recording a few of your main points of feedback will help students continue to feel connected to you. Please note that audio or video feedback might not be accessible to all your students, so consider offering a written alternative for students who would prefer and checking in with your school's accessibility office if you have additional questions.
Check in early with students who are not participating or completing coursework. A personal email or note at the beginning of the semester can help identify issues that students might be having and reassure them that you are looking out for them, even in a new online environment.
Consider assessments that allow students to create something for a community outside of the virtual classroom environment. By designing assignments that students could do in collaboration with their families or roommates, or with local or virtual communities, you can encourage authentic practice of concepts and facilitate a web of student connections beyond their faculty and peers.
Learn how to bring all these best practices together to support students accessing courses with a variety of needs »