Good teachers have always established some form of personal relationship with students. In the face-to-face classroom, this is based in part on the teacher's physical presence. In the online environment, it's not so easy to establish such a personal presence. However, studies suggest that students value personal contact with the teacher highly, and that personal contact is an important factor in avoiding the feelings of isolation that off-campus students often experience. Students may also feel more confident in communicating online if they feel they know their teacher better.

Teacher Home Page

Most learning management systems allow teachers to create a personal home page and upload a photo. This enables students to get a better picture of who their teachers are.

Phil teaches on Niu Sila's Small Business Management course which has an e-learning component. So, he set up his home page with a photo of himself and some personal information. He made sure he included something about his own experience in managing a small business - this would help his credibility with students!

Communicating with students

Teachers can help establish a strong personal presence by considering the tone and style of how they communicate with learners. Since much of this communication is in written form rather than spoken, this can be quite a big change from communicating in a face-to-face classroom setting.

Addressing learners directly can be helpful: for example, using the word you rather than students when writing instructions or learning outcomes. This helps learners to see the teacher as a personal guide rather than an anonymous authority figure.

The sense of a personal guide can also be helped by using relatively informal language:

Manu: when I first taught online, feedback from students wasn't very positive. When I read over the instructions I'd posted online, I realised how formal I sounded! They came across as more like an official document or an academic paper than a learning guide.

It was hard in one course because the whole paper was online, with no face-to-face contact. But I found that if I tried to visualise or imagine the actual learners I was writing for it was much easier to write in a way that they found more accessible and user-friendly. It helps too when students have their photos and personal profiles online - I find it much easier to address them as individuals!