On Teaching Online: Taking It Personally

As the photograph to the right suggests, I've always enjoyed getting up in front of a group of students and pontificating, whether it's talking about Yo Ghana! to a group of junior high school students in Kete-Krachi, Ghana or trying to untangle the socio-cultural context of the American Revolution at PSU.

More and more, though, I do most of my teaching online.  Many people in academia, including students, view online teaching as a sort of necessary evil, an inferior way of learning made necessary by the busy schedules of cramped facilities of modern students and universities, respectively.  I fell into online teaching when I left my tenured job in Canada and returned to Portland in 1999.  I went to PSU and OSU, in particular, and soon learned that there were plenty of opportunities for teaching classes that tenure-stream faculty tended to avoided: classes at night; classes on week-ends; classes that were fully online.

There are lots of bells and whistles available to online teachers, more and more all the time.  But I have found that two broad principles are particularly prized by students taking online classes.

First, they prize clarity.  It's imperative to have a clear and detailed syllabus and to answer questions about it promptly.  Teaching online requires strong organizational skills.  Everyone emphasizes that.

Lesser known is the second key component to successful online teaching: fostering a sense of connection.  It's taken me awhile to figure this out, being something of an introvert by nature.  Most students enjoy interacting with each others' ideas and helping each other to improve.  But students seem to "perform" much better when they believe that their teachers also care about them,  And teaching is a lot more enjoyable when that care is sincere and enforced.  Intellectual pursuits need not be impersonal.