By Flower Darby<\/p>\n
Faculty Focus<\/p>\n
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I\u2019d been teaching online courses for 10 years \u2014 and, I liked to think, had become quite efficient and effective in the format \u2014 on the day it dawned on me that I was treating my online students as if they weren\u2019t actually people.<\/p>\n
Most of my university\u2019s courses, in normal times, are offered in buildings, not online, and I teach in both realms. My epiphany came in March 2018, when a student I\u2019ll call \u201cLori\u201d emailed to explain why she hadn\u2019t followed directions on an assignment. I\u2019d required students to submit a quick video of themselves, but she\u2019d posted an audio with her photo attached. In the week before the due date, she explained, she\u2019d been beaten up by an ex-boyfriend. With a swollen and bruised face, she\u2019d been too embarrassed to post a video. And without knowing the back story, I\u2019d docked her grade.<\/p>\n
Clearly, my well-intentioned effort to \u201ccreate community\u201d online \u2014 by requiring students to show their faces so we could get to know one another \u2014 had backfired. I realized I\u2019d been treating my online students as names on a screen, grading tasks on a to-do list, rather than as people with varied life circumstances. I subsequently changed the assignment to\u00a0encourage but not require\u00a0<\/em>students to show their faces in videos. And I changed my thinking about how I interact with online students.<\/p>\n As higher education prepares for a fall semester that will be\u00a0entirely or partly online, amid Covid-19, many of you are taking the opportunity to\u00a0improve your online-teaching skills. Helping you do that is the aim of\u00a0this series. Today\u2019s topic is among the most crucial: how to connect with online students as people.<\/p>\n