Regardless of whether students are online or face-to-face students they require guidance from their instructors. They have a need 1) to ask questions about assignments, concepts, 2) have instructions clarified or 3) deal with struggles impeding them from make progress in their learning journey. As an instructor you need to make yourself available to students in order to deal with these inquiries and avoid online social isolation. Some online teaching strategies to achieve this teaching presence is to: monitor and respond to posts and emails on a daily basis, set up virtual office hours where students can contact you via phone or skype, and have a policy where student can contact you on an appointment basis. Connect has a tool called “Blackboard Collaborate My Room which can be used to host virtual office hours.
Why Letting Your Students Know a Little about yourself is Important?
A welcome video is an important part of an online course and a great starting point. Students also need to see the human side of you the instructor. Knowing things like your expertise, hobbies, awards and other interesting fact about you is an added bonus to the course – it helps to eliminate social isolation. Ways to accomplish this is to post links to your webpages, blogs, podcasts, videocasts, journals written, favorite sites, etc. Here is an example of a blog posted by one of UBC’s instructors ETEC 533 (66A) Technology in Mathematics & Science Classroom (Instructor: Dr. Marina Milner-Bolotine, https://blogs.ubc.ca/mmilner/)