Instructors Put Human Connection Into Online Degree Programs

Of all the tools University of Arkansas instructors have at their disposal to help students be successful, some consider showing they care to be the most important.

Phil Jones experienced a long and winding road from college dropout to teaching at the U of A. He accepted all blame for his early struggles, but he often wondered what might have made a difference for him back then and dreamed about how he could make a difference for other students someday.

“I have to connect with my students,” said Jones, who teaches primarily in the College of Engineering. “I really crashed and burned pretty bad as a sophomore in college. It was every bit my fault, but I always feel like, if I had one instructor who reached out and said, ‘Hey, Phil, what’s going on? Can I help you?’ it might have made a difference. So, I want to be sure every one of my students, whether they are online or face to face, know that I have an interest in them and their success.”

Jones dropped out of college three times before finally completing a bachelor’s degree in construction management in his 40s. Now, he also has a Master of Business Administration degree and is working on a doctorate from Indiana State University delivered online. He has won departmental awards for his teaching, which he started doing 12 years ago after a decades-long career in the private sector.

 

Techniques to Try

Jones offered several ideas in a presentation about making a big class seem small he gave during the BOLT conference (Better Online Learning Together) hosted in October by the Global Campus, including:

• Make a short video introducing yourself and explaining what is expected of students, giving them “every possible likelihood of succeeding in this course.” Jones elaborates on how a student can be an engaged, active learner.
• Offer voluntary, weekly online sessions to go over key topics focusing on real-life experiences as well as offering tips on assignments and answering questions. Students who don’t attend the sessions can watch a recorded replay. It makes them feel like there is less of a gulf between the instructor and student, Jones said.
• Create a Week 1 introduction assignment asking for each student’s hometown, hobbies or interests, major and, most importantly, what was one thing he could do to help them have a good learning experience. He has used several of the suggestions, adopting the attitude of not being afraid to fail if something doesn’t work out.
• Ask students to combine into what he called community groups of seven to 10 people but without any group project or other assigned group work. The groups allow him to check in with multiple students at one time at pivotal points such as before the first exam and at midterm and see what students have questions about and what they may be struggling with.
• Email each student asking how they are doing and what’s going on. “If I think they are in trouble academically, I’ll tell them that and offer to help them however I can. I am doing this at least once this semester,” Jones said.
• Offer a fast-food gift card to the student who wins a weekly Razorback trivia contest. A fun experience like this helps keep students engaged.
• Talk about your own personal experiences, particularly concepts you tried and how they worked out, as well as a brief look into your pastimes and interests.
• Add questions to your course evaluation asking students if they felt you as an instructor were interested in them and for blunt feedback on what is not working so well and what can be done to improve the class. Responses have not been major criticisms; students have asked for minor tweaks, Jones said.

Jones believes techniques he’s using in a large, in-person, civil engineering class of 105 students will translate well to online instruction.

“There are some things that I just have to do as an instructor because of the way that I’m wired, because of what’s important to me, because of my values,” he said.  “I think students can connect well when someone is authentic and that helps them not be afraid to approach us as instructors.”

 

Panel Input

David Reavis and Dave Bostwick, who teach in the Sam M. Walton College of Business and the School of Journalism and Strategic Media, respectively, spoke on a separate panel with Jones during the BOLT conference. They offered additional thoughts on improving student-instructor interaction.

Reavis values interacting with students taking his courses in the Department of Information Systems.

“I’m able to interact with students more one-on-one because, when they contact me via email or Zoom or however they contact me, I can focus on that one student and answer their questions and get them down the road,” he said. “It seems like that’s a little different than in the classroom setting where I may have anywhere from 12 to 30 students and it’s a little bit more challenging to try to get that one-on-one time in that kind of environment.”

Bostwick, who is the online course coordinator in journalism in the Fulbright College of Arts and Sciences, talked about the crossover between online and in-person courses because both use the Blackboard Ultra learning management system.

“You rely on your content or learning management system to organize processes and provide individual feedback we’re talking about,” he said. “I can’t talk individually with all 175 students in an (in-person) class, but I can let them know I care about them through a lot of the Blackboard tools.”

Reavis offered additional guidance from his teaching to improve student experience: Be sure readings relate to the learning outcomes of the course, not just something interesting in the field.

Bostwick has also written three textbooks available online through Open Educational Resources, which allows students access to resources for free.

 

Blackboard Ultra

Reavis said students appreciate the opportunity to submit a first draft of a paper for feedback so the writing assignment can be more of a learning experience. He has also found they like when he uses video to give them feedback. It allows him to be more descriptive and offer suggestions in a more friendly way than written notations on the paper. The Blackboard Ultra system makes it easy to give video feedback that helps the instructor express emotion about the work, not just mark a misspelled word, Reavis said.

“I only do the video feedback in the rough-draft scenario, but I think it really establishes a good connection point with students,” he said. “So many students say, ‘Wow, I’ve never seen that before. That was great.’”

Reavis said he can use a tone that sounds less critical than the words alone would.

 

Responsive Communication

The three instructors stressed the importance of responding quickly to students in online courses.

“When I have an online course running, I check my email frequently,” Reavis said. “That’s the way I ask students to communicate with me, and I get back to them as quickly as I can. Sometimes, it’s not convenient, but that is something that really came through in evaluations – the availability and keeping the grades up to date as well.”

Instructors teaching online can reach out to the instructional designer who worked on their course any time during the semester for assistance. Faculty who teach either online or face-to-face can visit the TIPS website (Teaching Innovation and Pedagogical Support) to read articles or request a meeting with Global Campus staff.

“I know it’s sometimes frustrating trying to figure something out so reaching out to us is just a good starting point,” said Bob Hinton, senior instructional designer. “We are more than happy to help you try to figure something out and try to relieve some of the stress when you ask, ‘Why didn’t this work?’”

All U of A instructors moved from Blackboard to Blackboard Ultra this fall with assistance by Global Campus. The panelists said students find it useful that Ultra is easily accessible from their phones.