It’s been almost a decade since Learning Forte team members began teaching the design and facilitation of online and hybrid courses. In that time, we’ve learned a lot about the joys and frustrations of our fellow educators and faith formation leaders.
Some of the common themes of our countless forum threads and Zoom discussions will probably sound familiar:
- “When I teach online, it feels like I’m always on. I never get to leave my digital classroom.”
- “Facilitation tasks sneak up on me. Sometimes I realize it’s Thursday and I haven’t checked in with my students.”
- “I have trouble getting participants to go deep with the material. It feels like their contributions are just checking boxes.”
- “I feel uncertain about my students’ learning. It’s hard for me to know if they’re really understanding the concepts.”
- “I don’t have time to be my students’ tech support!”
While we address all of these concerns and more as part of Design + Deliver: Intensive on Teaching Online & Hybrid Courses, I want to focus in this post on what may be the most common and important concern we hear.
Instructors want to feel connected to their students.
For many of us, the most rewarding aspect of teaching is the relationships we form in the classroom.
Sure, we feel passionate about our various subject matters and want to pass along knowledge and skills from our academic disciplines and/or faith journeys. But the moments we remember fondly at the end of a course, conference, retreat, or other experience are when we helped a community of distinct, flesh-and-blood human beings parse difficult concepts or internalize transformative practices and skills.
To a person, our team of digital learning experts believes strongly that you can form connections with learners that are just as deep and transformational when teaching in online and hybrid settings.
St. Paul knew and leveraged this truth, with the technology and teaching approaches available in his day. So have countless others through the centuries who have used the power of words, images, real-world experience, and mutual engagement to nurture learning, growth, and faith among people with whom they were connected but not physically together.
One of the most important concepts in digital learning is teaching presence. You probably have an intuitive and practiced sense of how to communicate your attentive engagement to your students when you’re with them on-site.
But it isn’t hard to learn the analogous techniques for demonstrating presence in online and hybrid spaces. It starts with configuring your learning tools so you have the right information about what your students are up to. This step allows you to respond in ways that help them feel acknowledged in a timely and specific manner. We’ll also discuss choosing the most effective tools and approaches for the various modes of engagement you want to cultivate.
Feeling connected to our students—and helping them feel connected to us and each other—is a joyful outcome of the craft of digital teaching when well executed. That joy is something we could all use a bit more of in this time of both acute and chronic social disconnection.
Join me and Stacy Williams-Duncan February 7 to March 21 to reconnect with this life-giving aspect of your vocation—and so much more.
Client Spotlight: Virginia Theological Seminary