Social contact and forming a remote community

Getting to know each other is the first step in creating relatedness. It is easier to ask questions when you know each other. If students are allowed to ask questions or add learning objectives to their course experience, they will be more motivated as they feel heard, might see opportunities to develop themselves, and potentially even experience autonomy as they have options to choose from.

• Introduce yourself and let students introduce themselves as well. 
  • By writing a few sentences about yourself and posting this with a picture in an online environment.
  • By having students record short video of them introducing themselves.

• Collect students' questions/ bottlenecks/learning goals before hand and during the first session discuss how you will be addressing these during the course.

You can work on the feeling of relatedness by establishing and maintaining (informal) online contact. Students will feel heard. You are able to create a positive atmosphere during the session by making it entertaining as well as functional. This will have students come back each session. By managing contact during the session, you can create a safe learning environment where everyone can participate. Online interaction offers opportunities, as for instance a chat-function allows everyone to read and reread any remarks and questions made.

• Be present in the online meeting for some time before and after the online session: Open the session before you start your lecture and only close it when no students remain present. This creates opportunities for students to talk informally with the teacher and to ask questions. Furthermore, students can meet each other before and after the lecture in (predetermined) groups in the subchannels as long as the teacher leaves the session active.

• Start the session with check-ins: Short questions which every student is required to answer. For instance: Ask the following question in the chat ‘Describe your current situation with an emoticon’ and allow them to respond to with emoticons in the chat. In a smaller group you can also allow them to draw an emoticon on a paper and hold it up to the camera. A different example: Ask students to hold up a unique object to the camera and ask a few students why this object is so close to their computer. Another idea: use Mentimeter to ask some questions that give an insight into the characteristics of the group.

• Present the rules for online contact during the session:
  • Especially in the beginning of the course, give students the time to answer questions in the chat rather than raising their hand and taking turns. This feels safer than using the microphone and/or video.
  • Establish how the chat-function will be used during the course. You can have students ask questions and remarks in the chat during your explanation. Create moments in the session where you address the chat messages.
  • Establish how (in Teams) you will use the option for raising your hand. Create moments where you address the students with a raised hand (those with a question or a remark). You can also establish that raised hands are for urgent questions, while other questions will be collected in chat.
  • It can be helpful to have someone monitor the chat and the raised hands for you. This person can interrupt if a question in chat requires immediate response. They can also relay to you how many people have their hands raised if you ask for this during the session, as you will not be able to see this when you have your PowerPoint presentation open. If there is no fellow teacher you can ask a student for this task (for a certain period during the session).

• The traditional introduction round often takes up too much time, nor do people clearly remember what has been said. You can choose to use a different activity to get to know each other. There are many examples of these, choose something that fits for you. Examples of introduction activities (some separated from the content, others linked to the course or the situation) in, for instance, the Teams chat, a Padlet, or Mentimeter:
  • Name something which makes you unique in this group and something which makes you mundane.
  • Hold a personal object up to the camera and explain its meaning to you.
  • Two truths, one lie. It is up to your fellow students to figure out which is the lie.
  • Show a picture of a special place. You can also ask students to set the picture as a background image.
  • Have you gained any new hobbies lately?
  • Speed dating (max. 5 minutes): provide introductory questions and questions that fit with the theme of the course.
  • What experience do you have with online education (can be very informative: should you spend time explaining what a break-out room is, or does everyone know this?).
  • What made you choose this programme?
  • What do you hope to learn during this course (in a Mentimeter you can use this to create a word-cloud)?

• Ensure that students can see you. This creates connectedness. Do not present an entire session using just a PowerPoint presentation, make sure you are also visible from time to time.
   
• Facilitate students getting to know each other by creating smaller subgroups and asking them to discuss the subject matter. You can create subchannels/break-out rooms in Teams and assign students to them (on the spot, or beforehand). Additional ideas to use alongside this: flashcards in Quizlet, collaborate in a document (Word, Excel, Padlet).
   
• If you want to ensure that everybody gets to know everybody else, continually change up the group composition. It is better to keep the same group composition if you want everybody to get to know a few students better, for instance if they must work on a development, evaluation, or reflection assignment during the course. Keep the previously discussed group development by Tuckman (1965) in mind.

• Activities for the teacher when the students are working in subgroups:
  • Remain available in the main channel.
  • Visit the subgroups in their channel (be sure to keep the main channel active, otherwise the session will end!). Notify your students about this beforehand. Announce your presence in a subgroup in the chat. Make sure students ask questions in the main channel, so that you will see them when you return there.

• Increase the complexity of the interaction within assignments. Start with assignments where students discuss the information you have provided. Students don’t need to know each other very well for this. Later, you can increase this to cooperative work, gathering your own information and potentially peer feedback on the cooperation. For the latter you need a safe learning environment in which students know and trust each other. You build this in the previous steps (see Salmon’s 5 stage model).

• Ask students to not only discuss the task at hand but also what they think of the task: What about this inspires you and why?

• At the end of the session (within the allotted time) remain in Teams and notify students that you will be doing so. This provides opportunities for asking you questions and provides more opportunity for informal contact.

Stimulate students to look for online contact with their fellow student, for instance by studying at the same time or sharing a lunch break together. Just suggesting this will not be enough if your students don't know each other. You can facilitate this by:

• Letting assignments flow into the break. Let students know how much time they have for an assignment and that they will subsequently have a break. This time can be used for natural informal conversations in subgroups. Be sure to indicate a specific time for students to have returned to the main channel.
   
• Providing assignments in which students need to interact with each other outside the session.
   
• Add getting acquainted and thinking about remote education to independent study moments.
   

Not everything a teacher comes up with to stimulate social contact is received positively. Students might consider your ideas as stupid, childish, or artificial. Create an opportunity to consult students on how to encourage social contact within the course. It is important in every session to try and establish a connection. This is especially true if students have only just met each other. Students might even be interested to create a part of the session themselves.