Any teacher can tell you that teaching isn't simply about knowing a lot of information and then telling it to students. Teaching is about cultivating relationships with students, building trust, and also about imparting knowledge and a skill base to the students. And even though a virtual classroom is not face-to-face, teachers in the virtual classroom still need to work to establish and maintain positive relationships with students. Instructors of online courses must rely heavily upon communication to foster these relationships.
Teachers can use feedback and commentary on assignments to show the student how much they care about the student and his or her improvement. To keep students abreast of class happenings and upcoming events, teachers may opt to use reminders or other tools available through the LMS. This is one area where teachers may want to use humor to try to relate to the students (while remaining professional, of course).
Through regular mass emails (where the contacts are blind copied to stay within FERPA guidelines), teachers can contact both students and parents to address basic housekeeping (deadlines, reminders, opportunities, etc.) and to create a welcoming classroom climate. The language in these emails may be more conversational in order to be less intimidating to students, though it must, again, remain professional at all times. Students may enjoy a humorous picture or graphic, but a teacher needn't make every sentence a different crazy font or color to get content across. Such approaches can, at times, seem condescending to students and cause the message to get lost in the medium.
Teachers can use feedback and commentary on assignments to show the student how much they care about the student and his or her improvement. To keep students abreast of class happenings and upcoming events, teachers may opt to use reminders or other tools available through the LMS. This is one area where teachers may want to use humor to try to relate to the students (while remaining professional, of course).
Through regular mass emails (where the contacts are blind copied to stay within FERPA guidelines), teachers can contact both students and parents to address basic housekeeping (deadlines, reminders, opportunities, etc.) and to create a welcoming classroom climate. The language in these emails may be more conversational in order to be less intimidating to students, though it must, again, remain professional at all times. Students may enjoy a humorous picture or graphic, but a teacher needn't make every sentence a different crazy font or color to get content across. Such approaches can, at times, seem condescending to students and cause the message to get lost in the medium.
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