The Disconnect
Because we don’t see or hear our students in the online classroom, we can begin to forget that they exist.
Or, at least, we feel less connected to them. This is one of the challenges of both online courses, and courses that meet fewer times in the semester. When students feel this disconnect, they start to disengage. When teachers feel this disconnect, they loose the motivation to cultivate the learning environment of the online classroom. Some have pronounced this disconnect as the permanent fault of online learning, but I think that is a premature conclusion. There are ways to build warm connection with students online, but it takes different strategies and requires higher level of intention.
Here are a five ways that you can create more warm and personal connections with your students:
- 1 – Student Photos: Go into your course participants list and look at their photos. Read the bios that some have created on their profile page. Follow links to explore their blogs and websites.
- 2 – Introductions: If you have a course introductions forum, become an active participant in the discussion.
- 3 – Notes: Print off your participants list and keep notes beside the name and photo of your students. This might include current life circumstances like, “Child is recovering from surgery” or “Working 3rd shift” that give you insight into the world of a particular student. You can mine the student introductions and profiles to begin your notes and add to them as you communicate over the course of the semester.
- 4 – Use tools that allow you to see one another. We were created to recognize faces and voices. It’s an essential aspect of being human. Many courses require only text responses and assignment submissions. Take one of those assignments, like a threaded discussion, and tweak it so that it requires the posting of audio or video responses. One of our favorite tools for this is Voicethread.
- 5 – Individual Emails. This doesn’t scale well. It requires an investment of time and care. However, when we think back to the teachers who have invested in us and made the most impact on our lives, it was because they gave us individualized attention. You may not be able to do this for all of your students, or even many of them this semester, but choose a few to contact directly via email. This is where your notes on individual students becomes a goldmine. Check in with them as learners, and find some way to encourage them.
There are more than just these five ways to connect, but these are a great place to start.
I do appreciate your 5 ways to create warm and personal connections with students in online teaching. In our pilot distance learning during the latter part of the 2019-2020 school year, I discovered that although I was not in a face to face format of teaching, I could make an impact with individual emails, which was not something I would normally do. It was definitely an investment of time and care, imploring and encouraging some students not to give up. It really paid dividends. I would definitely follow these suggestions and encourage my colleagues to do the same. The article “Disconnect” was a great read. Thanks.
Connection is so critical to build a classroom that is open to collaboration and growth mindsets. In your goal statement you state your hope of transition from direct instruction to online with a foundation of confidence and competence. It is the goal of most educators to obtain the same end result and I may add to build such important connections that those connections become invaluable resources to promote changes in to improve educational equity in such times as these and well beyond what we could ever hope .
I truly appreciate you commenting on how important a teacher’s personal connection with her students is crucial for a successful year. When our school started remote learning, I knew I had to do something to stay connected to my class. I had daily Zoom meetings and insisted that they have their video feeds on at all times. I decided that this wasn’t enough and began hand writing each of my 24 students letters and sending them by snail mail. I hoped that they would all write me back and low and behold between the end of March and June 9th I had written over 100 letters. The letters my students wrote me were full of pictures, poems and words expressing their personalities. Although my letter writing was very time consuming, I got such pleasure out of receiving their letters and I know they felt the same way. I worry that beginning online with a new set of students will be a struggle, but I feel hopeful that through creative outlets, I can connect with these kiddos and have a successful year online and hopefully back in the classroom.
During the latter part of the 2019-2020 school year, we went to online teaching. I continuously kept in touch with my students through email, zoom, and messaging. Sometimes they just wanted to know I was there, while other times they needed that one-on-one care.
Thanks Aaron for your 5 suggestions regarding how to create warm and personalized connections with our students. At my school we are assigned a class (homeroom-we call it Tribe) of students when they arrive as 7th graders. I am the only teacher they will have for their entire 6 years until they graduate as 12 graders. I feel this is very special because I am able to form a bonds with all these students over the years. We share and discuss the ups and downs going on in their lives. During all our class meetings (which are every Friday for 30 minutes), I made sure to have snacks for the students. Last year, at the end of our school year we went into being online due to the pandemic. In an effort to let my students know that I was still thinking about them, I mailed them all snack boxes. This year my students are 8th graders and half my Tribe are online (eLearners) still. The other half of our Tribe is at the school in person. I teach them synchronously now on Fridays. A way I wanted to still show them I cared about the “at home” students was that I drove one day after school to each students house and left them a box of snacks to eat with us during our Zoom meetings on Fridays. Connections with my students is very important to me.