invitationOne of your primary roles as an online teacher is the role of invitor. I’m not even sure if that’s a real word. If it is, perhaps it should be spelled inviter–but that just doesn’t look right. So, we’ll go with invitor. In the face-to-face classroom your very presence invites communication (I’m assuming you’re normal and not unpleasant). In the online context, you have to inject social presence into your instructional style. One of the best strategies is to use invitation in your communication.

3 Ways to use the Strategy of Invitation in your Online Course

1. Include an invitation to respond in your weekly emails. Examples: “If you need further clarification, just drop be an email.” “I’d like to hear how your weekend went” or “…if you need any assistance on the current assignment.” Now, you may be concerned that twenty students will reply, but that rarely happens. The students who need help or who want to connect with you will email you. The rest will understand that you are open and available, there when they need you.

2. Use invitations in assignments. At the end of larger assignments invite students to ask you for focused feedback. For example, at the end of a ten page paper, invite your students to pose one question to you about the subject matter, and to ask you to examine a specific section of their assignment. This requires your students to be more reflective about their own work, and it helps you to address areas of weakness that the student wants to improve.

3. Invite them to ask for more. Sometime assignments don’t require detailed feedback. Specifically, I’m thinking of threaded discussion grades. I’d rather spend my time in the discussion rather than writing lengthily comments to each student. I’ll do this for the first discussion, then I’ll simply give students a grade, refer them to the rubric, then invite them to contact me if they need more detailed feedback.