Suggestions for Personalizing the Online Course:

Introduction at beginning of the class – I think this is very important.  Some teachers hold  a synchronous call at the start of class. I think this would be fun but the problem is that people take online classes because they cannot be in one place at one time. Also, some teachers, like me, because of a situation at home, cannot guarantee to be available at one time.  

It is important that the teacher welcome each student. I know some teachers say they don’t want to “interfere” with the discussions but I disagree. I believe in getting in there early with a welcome.

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

Problem with late and early posters: 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. However, since I do require replies to others the early posters must return to the class and enter into the conversation.

With late posters there is no problem because colleges usually allow the teachers to take off points. If a student has been active in the conversations all semester and then contacts me that they have a problem then I usually do not deduct points.

Student-to-student interaction: 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. 

Comics: While we might find comics that are very appropriate for our class we must be careful in using copyrighted material. 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?