Suggestions for Personalizing the online course:

Introduction at beginning of the class – I think this is very important.  It’s good to be creative, but not too creative. We want students to be able to reveal as much about themselves as they wish but not feel pressure.

In the beginning we should make clear that the course is NOT open entry, open access and there are due dates. if some post far ahead of time community is lost. The only solution is to not make the material available, and I have done that.  It’s easier with the late posters because colleges usually allow the teachers to take off points. 

Teachers should reply to posts in the Introduction. Don’t wait. Do it!

There should be a Cyber Café for posts outside the course content. Sometimes there are “chatty” classes and the Cyber Café is very active, but sometimes nobody posts. When you teach you will be surprised at how different classes can be. Once I taught the same class to two very similar groups demographically at the same time. There was a big difference in the “feel” of the class.  

While we might find comics and other graphics are very appropriate for onlines class we must be careful in using copyrighted material. I use sites like http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/images/ for public domain images. There are public domain comic sites also http://digitalcomicmuseum.com/  and you can make your own http://www.makebeliefscomix.com/  The words to search for are Public Domain and Open Access.

Fostering diversity: If students do NOT know what their classmates look like will they be more willing to respect their views? Some students have told me that they take online courses because they will be judged by the quality of their work, not by how they look. Maybe put pictures in at the END of the class?