Social connections are essential

For students to be successful in online courses, they must make a social connection with you, their instructor, conveying the first type of presence has to begin early in the course. “Research has suggested three types of presence: Social presence, teaching presence and cognitive presence” (Boettcher & Conrad, 2016, p. 46). For students to be successful in online courses, they must make a social connection with their educator, early in the course. Therefore, the first activity will have to do with introductions. For example, provide a welcome video that includes your picture, credentials, contact information, and other appropriate information about you. Secondly, you may want to create an introductory forum (using Discussion tool) where each learner can post his/her photo and a short biography, or an introductory video. Lastly, always provide timely responses to emails or questions posed in the discussion forums within 24 hours to promote a faculty-learner dialogue. Please refer to Establishing a Strong Remote Teaching Presence page.

Cognitive presence is “the extent to which learners are able to construct and confirm meaning through sustained reflection and discourse in a critical community of inquiry” (Epigeum, 2014). To convey cognitive aspects, clearly articulate what a student is expected to know at the end of each unit. Then, integrate effective content to explain core concepts and provide multiple checkpoints after each crucial concept that enable learners to assess their understanding.

Students will require a supportive online course community. In order to build an online community, the educator must design a course that promotes learner to learner dialog (Boettcher & Conrad, 2016). The introductions forum activity is a good start. To make it better, add an ice breaker activity. Incorporate a 'virtual cafe' where students can chat or ask questions anytime during the course. In this forum, share interesting local news or events to create those casual hall conversations that you will not have online, unless you plan it! Grouping students for assignments also allows socialization and reducing the feelings of isolation.

Use a variety of large group, small group and individual work experiences

By varying the work experiences, learners get the opportunity to tap into their different skills and learning capabilities (Boettcher & Conrad, 2016).

Research projects can be assigned to each learner, for example. In small groups, (TBL, PBL, CBL) learners can work on a given case, or part of system to demonstrate a deeper understanding of the material. For large groups, the class can be divided into two groups and assign each group a side of a debate. The possibilities are endless.

Use synchronous and asynchronous activities

There are advantages and disadvantages of both modes. Please refer to Synchronous vs. Asynchronous? page. A combination of both types of will enhance your course, by providing more time for learners to engage with the content, other students and the instructor. Synchronous activities does humanize the course (Poe & Stasson, n.d.), just by embedding live sessions into a distance course. Please consider first that live/synchronous should be scheduled at the beginning of course so learners make arrangement to participate. Second, synchronous live sessions should not be more than an hour long. Provide short breaks if needed to be longer. Third, plan student engagement items in the session. If there will be a lecture, it is better to record it and post it in Canvas. During synchronous sessions consider having a panel of experts with questions from students, or student presentations, for example. Lastly, an archive for each live session should be posted to enable learners who have fallen behind to catch up (Kelly, 2009, November 23).

Use a combination of core concept learning with customized and personalized learning

Dewey wrote “Relate the school to life, and all studies are of necessity correlated” (Dewey, 2008). That best practice re-emphasizes the importance of applying concepts in real-life applications and giving learners the choice.

Whenever possible, provide students with choices. Choices in topics, applications, projects, formats, cases, and so on. That practice will create a sense of autonomous, competent, relatedness which will enhance learners’ intrinsic motivation.

Plan a good wrap up activity

Just like the introductory activity, closure creates a lasting impression. One common wrap-up activity is to ask learners to summarize what they will remember most from the course. Another is having students write a post to future students, giving them advice on how they can do well in the course. This will give learners a chance to reflect on what they have learned and how they did it, while providing you valuable tips on what worked.

An interesting idea that could make this wrap up activity more engaging, implies giving each learner a “fortune” created by another participant, each of these fortunes has a summary of a key lesson from the class or a quote that reflects the course content. They will provide a higher quality posts because learners tend to care more about publicly shared posts. The activity can be held in Discussion forum, as “Fortunes”. This will provide the instructor a quick way to gauge strengths and weakness of learning for future courses (TILT, 2017, April 24).

References:

Clark, M., Merrick, L., Styron, J., Dolowitz, A., Dorius, C., Madeka, K., ... & Dorneich, M. (2018). Off to On: Best Practices for Online Team-Based Learning™. Off to On_ Best Practices for Online Team-Based Learning_.pdf
Boettcher, J. V. & Conrad, R.-M. (2016). The Online Teaching Survival Guide (2nd ed). San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.
Dennen, V. & Bonk, C. (2007).We’ll Leave the Light on for You: Keeping Learners Motivated in Online Courses, Flexible Learning in an Information Society [IGI-global](pp. 64-76). DOI: 10.4018/978-1-59904-325-8.ch006
Dewey, J. (2008). The School and the Society (Indian ed.) [Google Books]. Retrieved from https://books.google.ca/
Epigeum Ltd. (2014). Establishing a cognitive presence. Retrieved from https://leocontent.acu.edu.au/file/ccbe60fc-4a3c-4a2c-a80e-286a4946a9f3/1/html/ote_2_40.html
Kelly, R. (2009, November 23). Synching up with Your Asynchronous Learners. Faculty Focus. Retrieved from https://www.facultyfocus.com/articles/online-education/synching-up-with-your-asynchronous-learners/
Poe,M. & Stasson, M.(n.d.). Teaching and Learning Online: Communication, Community, and Assessment. University of Massachusetts Amherst. Retrieved from https://www.umass.edu/oapa/oapa/publications/online_handbooks/Teaching_and_Learning_Online_Handbook.pdf
Tech BB. (n.d.). 20 Best Practices and Expectations for Online Teaching. Retrieved from https://canvas.instructure.com/courses/1068822/pages/20-best-practices-and-expectations-for-online-teaching
TILT. (2017, April 24). Course Closure – the 2017 version with emphasis on Metacognition [Blog Post]. Retrieved from https://uminntilt.com/2017/04/24/course-closure-the-2017-version-with-emphasis-on-metacognition/