How do I shatter the overwhelming isolation in the online classroom?

Instructional Strategies

Encourage introduction videos that allow students to get to know one another, put faces to names, and begin forming a learning community from the very start.
Try some icebreaker activities. They are not just for corporate teams and most of them can be used or adapted for in-person and online classes.
Consider using social media, such as setting up a Facebook group for your class, that allows for student-student interaction in a less formal setting and contributes to forming a learning community for them. However, don’t force students to participate due to the fact that some students may have privacy issues or concerns.
Study buddies typically form organically in face-to-face courses, so consider proactively setting students up as study buddies in the course so that they would have a classmate to turn to for any questions they have and to get any necessary clarification on course components or content before they approach you.
Consider allowing students to complete quizzes in pairs so that they could potentially learn from each other in addition to encouraging and holding one another accountable for the required reading. Each student will submit their own responses, but they will have the benefit of talking through the questions and their responses. These quizzes could be auto-graded quizzes, or you could create more open-ended questions that require higher-order thinking skills. (Gantner, 2020).