Explore high- and low-tech approaches to creating and maintaining connections with online students in large-enrollment courses. Student feedback on their online experience will demonstrate success in these approaches.
Strong instructor presence engages students and can help them be more successful in blended, online, and distance courses. In the context of e-learning, social presence is the capacity of e-learners and instructors “… to project their personal characteristics into the community, thereby presenting themselves to other participants as ‘real people’” (Garrison, Anderson, & Archer, 2000, p. 89). In other words, social presence describes the degree to which students feel personally connected to their instructor and peers (Sung and Mayer, 2012).
In this session, participants will learn ways to connect students with other students, students with the course content, and students with the instructor. Among the plethora of tools and apps available online, participants will encounter demonstrations of specific tools and examples of how they have worked in high-enrollment courses.Participants will leave this session with a collection of free tools that they will be able to use immediately in their own courses.
In conclusion, presenters will share lessons learned and student perceptions from high-enrollment undergraduate courses. Even students new to online feel comfortable and connected with the implementation of these tools and strategies.