I think what engages me most is the embedded recognition that all of us in the classroom, face-to-face or online, comprise a community of people with a common set of goals. Communities are built on relationships. Relationships are built on mutual understanding and respect. If I’m perceived as “the teacher automaton”, relationships will be much more distant, learner engagement will be much harder, and inspiration will likely be reduced or absent.

How to avoid this? Selective vulnerability. Revealing something of myself. Modeling engagement and caring. If students don’t perceive that I care, why should they?

Thanks for this.

This comment struck me and maybe had me a little defensive: ” I feel compelled to add that when I review online courses, I am often struck by how generic they are – how devoid of stories and personality they are. I sometimes think that online instructors have received a secret memo requiring their online courses to be formal in the extreme – present only the facts and just the facts, and then assess the students’ knowledge of the facts, but never ever venture into the forbidden realm of stories and emotions.” I feel like the college, in part, wants us to create generic classes which are shareable with others. There is this tension between keeping things streamlined and providing individuality and personality in our classes that can be difficult to navigate.

I suppose we could tell stories about others as well; they don’t have to be personal ones. For instance, I am always amused by how Harry Potter was rejected by publishers at first. And there’s the Beatles–who were told “Guitar groups are on the way out.” These are good stories about creativity and perseverance.

Thanks for a thought-provoking post!

In my first experience recording instructions for my students, I felt that everything had to be perfect. I (slowly) realized that that’s not how I approached my on campus classes, and I was having much better success in my on campus classes..

I’ve moved away from “recording instructions” to “talking about the topic”. When talking about the topic, I can make mistakes, and then correct them. Sometimes I make mistakes on purpose to show that programming solutions don’t spring fully formed from the mind of Zeus, but are constant revisions of ideas until the solution is achieved. I’ve had better results with this approach.