Wayne Hall has high expectations for his online students. He tells them that he expects them to be in the course three or four times per week and to not go more than three days without logging on. “I do this because I want to keep this course on their front burner,” says Hall, a psychology professor at San Jacinto College in Texas.

Simply stating these expectations is not enough. The students must be interested in the course and feel a sense of community in order to put in that amount of effort. Hall has gone to great lengths to attain that level of interest and community.

Here are some of the things he does:

Extensive introductions. Hall requires students to answer questions that provide personal information such as occupation, hobbies, life philosophy, etc. He also requires students to post a 250-word introduction and a photo. This information lays the groundwork for subsequent interactions. Occasionally, students question the need for this information, and Hall explains the importance of collaboration in the course as well as the workplace.

Email communication. To help build the learning community, Hall sends each student two personal email messages every week and requires them to respond to him and to send an email to at least one other student in the course. “This is always a challenge at the start. It’s easier to send an email to the entire class. They come back and say, ‘How do I find someone I want to communicate with?’ and I tell them, ‘Go to the student information sheets. You’re going to find students in the nursing program like you, or they may be a business or computer science major. Maybe you both enjoy the same books or have had similar experiences. If you read these things, you will find people you identify with.’ The students will not like it initially, but once they do it, they tell me it’s great. It’s just different. They tell me they never had to do this before. Once they do it, they say, ‘I’ve met some good people.’ Building that community is an important aspect of an online course,” Hall says.

Hall does not monitor emails between students, but students often let him know what they communicate about. Sometimes it’s the course content, but they also touch on subjects like sports, family, and entertainment. “At first, that bothered me, but I said, ‘Wait a minute. The same types of conversation would be taking place in the classroom, so why not allow it in [emails] as well?’”

Student surveys. Throughout the course, Hall randomly sends survey questions to students as a way to engage them in the course by getting them to think about their own learning and as a way to elicit feedback. He typically asks questions such as

• What is your definition of being successful in this course?

• What did you find most interesting about taking this course?

• What problems did you have at the beginning of the course?

“I tell the students that I do not want a simple answer. I have found that I have to tell them, ‘I want you to think about this and give an in-depth answer, not the first thing that pops into your head,’” Hall says.

Opportunities for discussion. Like most online instructors, Hall provides asynchronous discussion opportunities. He posts questions and monitors and gently guides discussions in the cybercafé in areas students might not have thought about before. As with the email messages that students send each other, Hall allows some diversion from course content in these discussions. He estimates that 60 percent to 70 percent of these discussions are related to course content.

Chat sessions. Hall offers synchronous chat sessions for students each Sunday night and typically has 30 to 35 students attend (from classes of 90 or 120) without credit being offered for participation. Many of these students simply monitor the chat, and Hall occasionally addresses individuals directly to draw them into the conversation. However, with so many students attending, active participation from each one would be problematic.

Hall uses these chat sessions as abbreviated lectures. He typically prepares an outline with 12 to 15 items that he would like to cover; however, he keeps the chats flexible to respond to students’ questions. “If I get through six or eight of the points, I’m happy,” Hall says.

Attending chats and reviewing the content help students understand the content, but this is not the only benefit of these sessions. Feedback indicates that students appreciate that Hall takes the time to conduct them. “My being there and being able to make contact seems to have more value than I would have guessed. Students feel like they get a sense of who I am in these chat rooms. Students have said that they leave my class feeling like they have had a real classroom experience. They feel that they know more about me as an instructor than they do about some of their face-to-face instructors,” Hall says.

Videos. Hall incorporates brief videos throughout his courses to create community, illustrate content, and make learning more interesting. He begins with a five-minute introductory video that explains the history of his course. He has also arranged with the textbook publisher to produce a brief video of the book’s authors.

Although creating the videos takes time and effort, Hall says they are worth it because they help “hook” students. “They say, ‘We get a sense of who you are, and we get a sense that this is a serious course.’ I’ve had students tell me that they have dropped other Internet courses to finish my course simply because they felt connected. They get that sense of community, which is very important right from the start,” Hall says. “They get a sense that I’m going to be in the middle of the course with them.”

In addition to these introductory videos, Hall incorporates brief videos into his PowerPoint slides, which break up the text and give students a different way of learning the content.

By using all these elements in his online courses, Hall creates a sense of community and gets greater commitment from his students as a result. He recommends that other online instructors push their students. “Students will never go more than three days without logging in to see if a survey has popped up or to see if I have posted something new. I’ve had students tell me, ‘You will never get students to log in that frequently, but I find that students rise to the occasion. They may not like it at first, but it becomes addictive,” Hall says.

Contact Wayne Hall at wayne.hall@sjcd.edu.

 

This article originally appeared in Online Classroom, Magna Publications' monthly newsletter for developers and instructors of online courses. Each issue features tips and insights from experts on topics such as course design, facilitation, assessment, interaction, student support and use of emerging technologies. Click here for more information.