The Six Knows of Teaching Online: Know Your Students

 

Know Your Students: This step is not all that surprising, but in online education it becomes even more important as you will most likely not have the opportunity of connecting with students in person, or a living, breathing, body-connection way. This inability for human connection is what leaves many excellent instructors on the sidelines when considering teaching online. Getting to know your students, and allowing them to get to know you, is the first stage of creating community in the classroom. Goldman and Pellegrino (2015) argue that “learning is fundamentally interpersonal, often occurring in and through social interactions” (p. 35). How are you encouraging those valuable social interactions? Unless community is created from the start, it is difficult to manufacture learning environments that are supportive and inclusive of all. 

Community in the digital classroom:

• helps students learn
• makes up for the lack of physical connections
• encourages diverse perspectives
• promotes inclusion
• needs to be built as it does not happen naturally

I cannot discuss knowing your students without including the importance of understanding equity and inclusion in pedagogical practices. Because of the overwhelming growth in online education over the last decade, and the accessible nature of the internet to all parts of the world, the reach to more diverse student populations has grown in response (Wynants & Dennis, 2017). Online educators do not have a pass when it comes to understanding cultural differences and how they play out in the digital classroom. Effective online instructors consider the “funds of knowledge” students enter the classroom with and use that knowledge to enrich the educational experience for all (National Academies, 2017, p. 142). Taking the time to understand the cultural knowledge of your students and allowing them to share can be a valuable tool for helping everyone to learn in new and exciting ways. 

A great way to get to know your students is to provide a pre-semester personal interest survey and, with permission, share the results with the entire class. Or, why not ask students to create personal videos (even a TikTok) to introduce themselves to you and their peers? Keep in mind that often your students already know each other pretty well after being in a program together for a few terms. If that is the case, take these activities off-line so you can learn about them without taking too much time from class on the first day. 

→ Pro tip: Create a simple student survey using Google Forms. Click here for a quick tutorial on google forms. To gain a better understanding of how culture impacts the student experience and learn inclusive teaching practices, sign up for our six-week workshop series on equity and social justice here.

References:

Goldman, S. R. & Pellegrino, J. W. (2015). Research on learning and instruction: Implications for curriculum, instruction, and assessment. Policy Insights from the Behavioral and Brain Sciences. 2(1) 33-41. DOI: 10.1177/2372732215601866

National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. (2018). How people learn II: Learners, contexts, and cultures. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: https://doi.org/10.17226/24783. ISBN 978-0-309-45964-8

Wynants, S. A., & Dennis, J. M. (2017). Embracing diversity and accessibility: A mixed methods study of the impact of an online disability awareness program. Journal of Postsecondary Education & Disability, 30(1), 33–48.