Examples Resources
 

Good teaching is good teaching, so what's different at a distance?
Here's what we know:

  
 

 
 

YOUR STUDENTS:

  • May be anxious about taking an online course especially those who consider themselves less tech savvy.
  • Often feel isolated participating from a distance.
  • Are more likely to be satisfied and successful in online learning if they develop interpersonal connections.

YOU:

  • Are the first person your students will know online.
  • Lack the benefits that a smile, eye contact, and body language can provide in building trust and putting your students at ease.
  • Are less able to gauge reactions and spontaneously adapt to learners’ cues and needs.
  
It's up to YOU to build community from the start!

WELCOME! WELCOME!

OK, so maybe you’re not into a bubbly welcome, but sometimes you have to step a little outside your comfort zone to put your students at ease. Remember, thanks to traditional models of education, students tend to view you as the expert and themselves as the recipients. They want to please you, they want to succeed (aren’t those first days of class just wonderful?), and they want to know up-front what it will take to succeed in your class. They ARE motivated! What can you do to keep them that way?

 
           

Building Community with Attention Relevance Confidence & Satisfaction (ARCS)

John M. Keller (1983), a professor from Florida State University, designed a model of motivation called ARCS that is specifically geared to creating motivating instruction. ARCS is relevant to many aspects of online instruction. Click above to see how it relates to community building.
 
Example 1: Just the Facts
Example 2: Ask 3 Then Me
Example 3: MIA
 
COMMUNICATING IN A NEW LAND  

Remember, as the online instructor it is your responsibility to create a warm and inviting climate for your students. Now that you have moved out of the “bricks and mortar” to the “clicks and mortar”, it is important that you make your students feel connected to your online community even from many miles away. Here are some recommendations that will promote a sense of community:
  • Reflect on what students might see if your course was FTF (face-to-face), and paint a picture with your words in your welcome statement.
  • Tell students from the start what resources (time, internet connection, etc.) they will need to be successful in your course.
  • State clear instructional objectives and specify what students should be able to do after successfully completing your course.
  • Share your plan for communicating with your students (online office hours, e-mails, response journals)
  • Start building your community of learners right away with a discussion thread for introductions (see Ice Breakers). Discuss your expectations for crafting posts, your rubric for assessing posts, and the basic rules of Web etiquette (also known as Netiquette)
  • Use metaphors to help students create visual images of what you want them to see while they are there.
  • Use graphics and cartoons to keep the climate light. Avoid animation of any kind.
  • Contact some of your former students who have taken that course before and ask them to write a quick snippet about their experiences in your class. Snippets could start with:
    • “When I first started this class I wish I had known…”
    • “You can keep your sanity in this class by……”
    • “Whatever you do, don’t……..”
    • “If you want to get on her good side be sure to …..”
  • Avoid using capital letters and multiple punctuation marks (???. !!!!, ?!?!) as it looks like YOU’RE SHOUTING!!!!

ICE BREAKERS

One of the best ways to engage your students and help them feel like part of a learning community is with creative ice breakers. Here are some ice breakers adapted from Conrad and Donaldson’s (2004) Engaging the Online Learner. You can use them as they are or adapt them to sound more like you.

Room with a View
Use vivid details to describe the view from a window closest to where you are working. If possible weave some autobiographical information into you “view”. For example, “I am looking out over the backyard where my children played so actively this weekend. I would have loved to join them but am committed to getting my coursework done before summer. Once it’s beach weather around here, I am worthless at my computer.” Read what others have written and pick 2 people with whom you would like to change places for a day. Explain why.

Things
Find a digital image, cartoon, caricature, or object that represents who you are and why you are taking this course. Post a description and explanation of the pictorial representation you have chosen.

Snowball
Post a basic introduction of yourself and include your interests. Give each student a number and have whoever is #1 introduce him/herself and find 1 thing in common with you. #2 then enters his/her introduction and finds 1 thing in common with you and the first person. Each of the rest of the class members will then enter their own introduction and must find something in common with at least 2 people who have already posted.

  
 

LET'S TALK ABOUT IT...

Visit the Topic of the Month: Building Community forum to discuss the following or start new threads about community building:

  • Why is it important to use your words to create a warm online environment? How is communicating a warm climate online different from creating one in a FTF class?
  • What strategies (such as ice breakers) have you used in the past to build community in your online classes? What has worked well and not so well?