One of the most common challenges online educators face is how to connect online students to the campus culture and community that F2F students enjoy. It’s definitely a difficult but important dilemma and one that deserves our best efforts to tackle. Especially in places where there is a strong campus culture that nurtures, supports, and encourages students, it makes the effort to translate that beneficial atmosphere to the online realm very worthwhile so that all students can benefit from it.
Easier said than done for sure. There are so many elements that go into creating a campus culture that it would be impossible to translate each one directly into an online space. Here at the University of Portland where there is a stunningly beautiful campus, a warm and welcoming staff/faculty presence and multitudes of symbolic reminders throughout the buildings and on the campus reinforcing the values of the school, it’s almost inconceivable to imagine how online students could feel the same comforting reach that the F2F students do.
But that is the challenge at hand for those of us wanting to make the online experience more rewarding and richer for students. In cases where traditional F2F students are merely electing to take a small number of course offerings online, this issue is pretty much bypassed altogether since students can easily arrange in person office visits with their professors and visits to campus frequently. But when entire programs move online to include students who aren’t in geographical proximity to campus, that’s when everyone needs to be thinking about how to solve this problem.
Thinking about what it is that makes your institution unique, what it has to offer students in particular, and why being a student at your school is still a good choice and a wise investment, is thinking that is beneficial to do upfront before starting to craft course materials for online courses. And using those answers to develop a tone and culture for your course is something that sets your course apart from another course on the same subject and makes it unique among other offerings. Being larger than life online is more important than in a F2F situation. Everything needs to be bolder, bigger, and more pronounced. And that includes the special aspects of teaching your course at your particular institution. As we move forward with online learning at the University of Portland, I’ll be inviting everyone I work with to address this issue so that we can create learning experiences that embrace all of our students with the values and appreciation that are such a strong part of being part of the wonderful community of learners that is here.
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