Social presence is important in an online course. If students feel they are in the class by themselves, without a facilitator, they can feel frustrated and abandoned. By establishing your presence in the online class, you encourage students to take a more active role in their learning and create a positive atmosphere for learning. Below are some tips for improving your social presence in your class.
To improve social presence in your class:
- Include a picture of yourself with your introduction. Add it as an attachment to the post, or, if you have the picture online, incorporate it into the message using the "Add Picture" feature. Reminder: Know your students. Visually impaired students may not be able to see your picture nor post one of their own and may feel excluded from this activity.
- In your introduction, make sure your passion for teaching and for the subject matter comes through.
- Keep an observable presence in the Discussion Forums. This is a game of balance. Students don't know you are reading their posts unless you post. On the other hand, you want to let the discussion develop without interfering too much. Some strategies you can use to improve social presence in the Forums while promoting discussion are:
- Ask questions giving credit to specific students by name. Example: "Sally brought up a good point in her previous post. What are your opinions on what she said about ____?"
- Summarize the Forum at the end of the week to close out the thread. Example: "We had an excellent discussion this week. I wanted to summarize some of the key points brought up by you all…"
- Acknowledge student participation. Example: "That is a great comment David. I think you really did a good job of explaining the other side of this issue."
- Personally respond to student introductions. Encourage them to post their own introductions, then respond in a way that shows you read their posts.
- Abide by your own expectations posting. If you indicated that you would respond to student emails in 24 hours, make sure you do so!
