Tips from the AEJMC Teaching Committee
Letting Online Students Know You’re There
By Susan Keith
Standing Committee on Teaching
Associate Professor
Rutgers University
(Article courtesy of AEJMC News, January 2014 issue)
At the beginning of the fall semester a few years ago, two young women stepped into my office and greeted me warmly. They spoke as if I knew them, though I couldn’t recall meeting either. Finally, they noticed my confusion and one said, “Oh, Dr. Keith, we were in your Newer Media Law and Policy course!”
They identified themselves and I realized they had, indeed, been in a summer course I had just taught as part of the Master’s in Communication and Information Studies program at Rutgers University. I failed to recognize them not because the class had been so large that I couldn’t learn students’ faces but because the course, like all the offerings in the MCIS program’s Digital Media track, which my department staffs, was fully online.
The course management system we used did not display avatars for students, so although students knew what I looked like from the headshot I had placed on the course syllabus, all I had seen of them were thumbnail images from their student IDs. In fact, I had thought throughout the summer that one of the women, who had a somewhat unusual first name, was male!
The students told me they had enjoyed the course, and I told them I had enjoyed their questions, comments and final papers. Then one of the students said something like, “I just wish the course could have been face to face.”
Ah! Had it been, I would not have volunteered to teach the course in summer. I commute an hour (by car) to two hours (subway/train) each way. Coming to campus several times a week in the summer would have seriously cut into research time.
The student’s comments, however, implied a legitimate concern over presence, a frequent issue in asynchronous online courses. Although online courses can give a voice to shy students or to international students concerned about their spoken English, other students sometimes miss the camaraderie of classmates they can see and a professor who is “right there.”
However, if you are teaching fully online courses — a topic that will be addressed in the plenary session being organized by AEJMC’s Standing Committee on Teaching for our Montreal Conference — there are things you can do to make students feel your presence in the virtual classroom:
Let students see you right away. I put a small mugshot on my syllabus and have students, before they do anything else, watch a short video of me welcoming them to the course. Although I don’t typically lecture straight to the camera in online courses, I think a video showing me explaining course expectations helps make the human connection.
Answer email more rapidly than in a face-to-face course: For students in off-campus, asynchronous online courses, email (or CMS-based message) is the only way to connect with the instructor. You ignore it at the peril of your teaching evaluation scores.
Encourage cooperative work. As an undergrad, I groaned at the prospect of group work. Now I think at least small group assignments can help alleviate a sense of isolation in online courses. Encourage students to go beyond email as they plan. If the course management system doesn’t support video chatting, have them try Google+ Hangout (http://www.google. com/hangouts/), which allows multiple people to talk and see each other.
Think critically about discussion boards: Many online instructors have students post to discussion boards as a way to simulate in-class discussions. I’m not convinced, however, that most of us use those boards well. Do students see any evidence, through your on-board responses or timely feedback, that you are reading their work? Do you work — behind the scenes, through email — with students who make erroneous assertions on the boards to help them publically convey correct information? Do you review what students discussed in the last discussion board assignment before moving on to the next unit?
Consider some synchronous chats: I offer hourlong synchronous group text- or video-based chats eight or 10 times a semester and four times in a five-week summer session. Because my online courses are advertised as asynchronous, I cannot require students to take part, but I find that many are hungry for the connection and join multiple times, especially before big assignments. (I ask students to look over my planned dates and times in the first week of the course, and I adjust if any student says he or she cannot make any of the sessions.) I plan a discussion topic, usually tied to course content in current events. The first thing I do, however, is ask whether students have questions. Sometimes they have many questions and answering them takes the full hour!
These are just a few ways to give students a sense of your presence in online courses.
What are yours? I would love to hear. Drop a note to .
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