Being present
In a physical campus setting teaching staff are seen as present by the way they engage with students and colleagues, whether it’s through scheduled face-to-face sessions or their location on campus. But how do we build a similar sense of being present in an online environment?
‘Social presence’ refers to the way that individuals represent themselves in their online environment and the degree to which an individual is perceived as “real and present” by others in this online space. Social presence is therefore important in helping you as an educator to engage with students and communicate effectively. There are three ways in which a person’s social presence can be demonstrated online:
- affective – communicate emotion, values, attitudes or beliefs through language,
- interactive – respond and interact directly with others’ messages,
- cohesive – use language as behaviour designed to reinforce the group’s sense of itself as a learning community.
Being present is not about always being online, but about being seen as present and real to build a rapport with and between your students. Describe your passion for and approach to topics to be affective. Encourage and respond to students’ participation in discussions and activities to be interactive. Model behaviours and build shared language to be cohesive.
The way you communicate your attitudes and values, the directedness of your interactions, and language you use will help build a learning community.
Write well
Writing well is an important factor in building a rapport with students and to foster a welcoming space. Below are some pointers to help you navigate how best to communicate effectively in this online space.
- Be short, concise and organised; avoid long, rambling or confusing messages. Take the time to edit your messages.
- Give students the benefit of the doubt if you’re unsure about the meaning or tone of a comment.
- Make allowances for students’ typing skills when reading posts. Don’t judge the quality of a post by the quality of the typing.
- Consider using emoticons as a way of showing your mood or facial expression as these can enhance students’ understanding of your posts (see Wikipedia’s list of emoticons alongside their meaning). You could also describe your mood in brackets, for example ‘(I’m being serious)’.
- Keep a sense of humour – remember that remote teaching and learning will be new and unfamiliar territory to many on the course.
- Think carefully about the number of questions you pose in discussions. Your time will be better spent encouraging students to interact with one another. Ask direct questions to get the discussion back on topic.
Time: 10 minutes
Introduce yourself to your students by writing a short introduction to who you are. You will have written personal statements and bios before – try to avoid copy and pasting an old bio and instead introduce yourself in a way that is relevant and approachable to your students.
Your bio should only be a few sentences, but you can link out to additional information where appropriate. Make your bio relevant to your teaching role and be mindful that the audience is your students across all modules you teach.
To start, write a sentence on each of the following:
- Your role and the courses you teach on,
- Your professional background,
- Your research focus,
- Wider interests.
Once you have these four sentences you can tinker around with the bio further to express your personality. You can then display this in your Moodle profile and/or include in a welcome message (see Make a one-minute welcome video).
