Are Online Teachers Real Teachers?
I received a very nice email from a student in my online class a few days ago. She thanked me for my feedback on her assignments and said she really enjoyed the class. There was a sentence in her email that really got me thinking, "You seem like a great professor, I wish I had the pleasure to meet you ."
This line between not being able to really know something because it is not tangible is something that all instructors who teach online should keep in mind. How we present ourselves and our ideas in the classes that we teach, is often not sufficient to demonstrate all of the important things in pedagogy: ethics, honesty, care, awareness, knowledge. Sometimes what our students need is something tangible, real, something they can see besides words on a screen.
Often the way to circumvent this is to have webcam or Skype sessions or office hours. This shows our students that yes indeed, we are real people, we truly exist. However, if you are teaching a class where your institution states that there is to be no contact with your students beyond email correspondence or discussion board interaction, one has to be more creative to show your students that you are a real person.
Individualized emails as opposed to form emails help with this. But what else can online teachers do to demonstrate that we are "real" if the video and visual component is off limits? Collaborative assignments and activities play a large role in creating a sense of real as well as to create a stimulating (as opposed to simulated) learning environment.
One of my students mentioned that sometimes taking an online class is like listening to the radio. Ideally it should not be like the radio, there should be more interaction within the class and the instructor. Online classes should have collaborative activities that maximize learning. However, when you are teaching content that has been created by someone else and that you cannot modify, it becomes increasingly difficult to add in collaborative activities.
Online teachers need to constantly develop and modify their strategies to demonstrate that they are in fact a real person, a real teacher.
Have you ever had a time where a student had voiced a need for the tangible in an online class? What strategies do you use to foster collaboration in your online classes?
This line between not being able to really know something because it is not tangible is something that all instructors who teach online should keep in mind. How we present ourselves and our ideas in the classes that we teach, is often not sufficient to demonstrate all of the important things in pedagogy: ethics, honesty, care, awareness, knowledge. Sometimes what our students need is something tangible, real, something they can see besides words on a screen.
Often the way to circumvent this is to have webcam or Skype sessions or office hours. This shows our students that yes indeed, we are real people, we truly exist. However, if you are teaching a class where your institution states that there is to be no contact with your students beyond email correspondence or discussion board interaction, one has to be more creative to show your students that you are a real person.
Individualized emails as opposed to form emails help with this. But what else can online teachers do to demonstrate that we are "real" if the video and visual component is off limits? Collaborative assignments and activities play a large role in creating a sense of real as well as to create a stimulating (as opposed to simulated) learning environment.
One of my students mentioned that sometimes taking an online class is like listening to the radio. Ideally it should not be like the radio, there should be more interaction within the class and the instructor. Online classes should have collaborative activities that maximize learning. However, when you are teaching content that has been created by someone else and that you cannot modify, it becomes increasingly difficult to add in collaborative activities.
Online teachers need to constantly develop and modify their strategies to demonstrate that they are in fact a real person, a real teacher.
Have you ever had a time where a student had voiced a need for the tangible in an online class? What strategies do you use to foster collaboration in your online classes?
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