I am often charged with quality evaluation of online courses.
What would you think if, as part of that evaluation, I asked the tutors the following:
After your first week of tutoring, could you tell me one fact about each participant if I gave you a list of their names but without looking at the course environment?
Would you think this was a fair question?
Do you think that your participants would expect you to be able to answer it?
What can we do to make sure our learners feel welcomed and to encourage them to get to know one another, as future collaborators?
One of the basics is to make sure that the tutor has completed their profile, with photo and short bio. This models one of the basic expectations that we have about how people can start to get to know one another and learners should be encouraged to do the same. If a view of enrolled learners looks as in the screenshot below then this does not provide the basis on which to work together.
I am also concerned that we do not plan for failure by expecting dropouts. If we expect dropouts then that means that any one participant is not an individual but simply a generic brick in our wider plan. Therefore I think that it is very important that we view each participant as a unique individual and make sure that they are aware that we do too.
Part of this duty of care has a great deal to do with how participants are welcomed to the course and their first contribution acknowledged. Imagine if it was your first day at college and you were brave enough to answer a question in class but nobody acknowledged that you had even spoken. It feels exactly the same online.
But what concerns me more is how we deal with those who don’t participate. In my experience, those who don’t respond within max 2 days, eg by logging in, are the ones facing a challenge. Two days sounds extremely short but this has been my experience both with face 2 face with an online element and 100% online. How we deal with these non-participants I think needs special attention. Non-participation needs to be noticed immediately and followed up personally by email (maybe even a phone call in some circumstances).
All this to confirm that the busiest time for tutors should be at the beginning of the course. Effort front-loaded at the start of the course will reap dividends by giving participants confidence and trust to work together without (or with less) tutor support in the later stages.