Creating a Sense of Belonging in Online Learning Environments

 

One of the biggest challenges online learners face is isolation. Compared to traditional classroom settings, where students interact with peers and instructors face-to-face, online students often feel disconnected. This sense of isolation can lead to decreased motivation and higher dropout rates. Educators must intentionally create a sense of presence in online learning environments to combat this. In this post, we’ll explore strategies for fostering engagement and community to keep online learners motivated and engaged.

 

Why Belonging Matters in Online Education

A sense of belonging is crucial for student success in traditional and online learning environments. When students feel connected to their peers, instructors, and the course, they are more likely to stay engaged, complete assignments, and participate actively. Research shows that belonging positively impacts motivation, persistence, and learning outcomes.

 

However, achieving this in an online setting requires deliberate actions from both educators and students. Below are several strategies that can help foster community, create presence, and reduce isolation in online courses.

 

Strategies for Fostering Community, Presence, and Engagement

 

1.    Encourage Active Participation from Day One

Instructors should encourage students to participate actively from the beginning of the course. One way to do this is through an introductory discussion forum, where students share something about themselves, their goals, and why they’re taking the course. This simple icebreaker helps students recognize commonalities and start building connections.

 

2.    Create a Welcoming, Inclusive Environment

Instructors play a key role in setting the tone for the course. An inclusive environment where all students feel valued and respected promotes a sense of belonging. This can be achieved by using inclusive language, recognizing diverse perspectives, and encouraging respectful dialogue in discussion boards.

 

3.    Facilitate Regular and Meaningful Interactions

A lack of face-to-face interaction doesn’t mean students should feel disconnected. It is important to foster regular interaction between students and instructors through discussion forums, group projects, and synchronous virtual meetings. Video conferencing tools can also create more personal connections, making interactions feel more “real” to students.

 

4.    Incorporate Collaborative Learning Activities

Collaborative learning activities like group discussions or team projects can foster peer-to-peer connections and encourage teamwork. These activities help build relationships and provide opportunities for students to learn from each other and apply their knowledge in new ways.

 

5.    Leverage Technology to Connect Students

Use digital tools that promote collaboration and interaction, such as shared documents, online chat rooms, or social media groups. Platforms like Slack, Skype, or Microsoft Teams can facilitate ongoing communication outside formal class hours, helping students stay connected and engaged and giving them a sense of belonging.

 

6.    Show Instructor Presence

A strong instructor presence can make students feel supported and connected. Regularly checking in, providing timely feedback, and being accessible for questions help students feel like they are part of an active learning community. Video messages or announcements are also another great way to personalize interactions.

 

7.    Use Peer Mentoring or Study Groups

Establishing peer mentoring programs or encouraging study groups can help students build relationships outside of structured class activities. These peer connections provide students with a support network, helping them stay motivated and engaged throughout the course.

 

8.    Recognize and Celebrate Student Contributions

Acknowledging student participation and achievements fosters a sense of recognition and belonging. Highlighting student work, offering praise in discussion forums, or creating a “Student of the Week” feature are ways to recognize contributions and motivate others to participate.

 

Creating a sense of belonging and presence in online learning environments is essential for student success. Educators can help online students feel connected, supported, and motivated by fostering community, encouraging engagement, and leveraging digital tools. Students who feel they belong are likelier to stay on track and achieve their learning goals. As online education grows, building these connections becomes even more critical for ensuring positive learning outcomes. By taking deliberate steps to cultivate an inclusive and engaging virtual learning space, educators can empower students to thrive, even without physical classroom walls.

 

 

Suggested Resources

Baumeister, R. F., & Leary, M. R. (2017). The need to belong: Desire for interpersonal attachments as a fundamental human motivation. Interpersonal development, 57-89.

Lehman, R. M., & Conceição, S. C. (2010). Creating a Sense of Presence in Online Teaching: How to “Be There” for Distance Learners. Jossey-Bass. 

Lehman, R. M., & Conceição, S. C. O. (2014). Motivating and retaining online students: Research-based strategies that work. Jossey-Bass.

 

Practical Implications for Balancing Workload

 

 

Why do instructors need to be concerned with workload when teaching online? How can instructional designers assist instructors who teach online? What can administrators in institutions of higher education do to support instructors who teach online? These are key questions that concern leaders in the field of online education and point to implications for future directions.

 

The workload can substantially impact instructors’ work and quality of life. Online quality education depends on how the course is designed and delivered; however, it is impossible to function and succeed in online teaching without infrastructure and support. When instructors identify strategies for managing workload ahead of time, they can better plan courses during the preparation stages of their online courses and during course delivery. Also, depending on the course discipline, enrollment, and other academic workload, instructors can allot time before the beginning of the course and be more efficient during the delivery of their courses.

 

Instructors need more than identifying workload strategies to succeed in online teaching. Institutional support can be the foundation for instructors to embark on online instruction. Institutional leadership and management can make it happen through incentives, rewards, and infrastructure support.

 

Learning designers can be supportive in assisting instructors to succeed online. By understanding strategies that best work for them, learning designers can help instructors organize, prioritize, and anticipate the various aspects of the course design process.

Administrators play a critical role in establishing, maintaining, and sustaining online offerings in higher education institutions. They are the ones who are responsible for administrative services, infrastructure support, and can provide instructor incentives and rewards. By understanding instructors’ workload for online offerings, they can make better policy decisions and identify sound procedures for different disciplines and course enrollment.

 

Our book, Managing Online Instructor Workload: Strategies for Finding Balance and Success, can have practical implications for online instructors, learning designers, and administrators. In addition, this book can help policymakers interested in modifying the fields of distance education, learning design, and educational technology to develop guiding principles related to teaching improvement. Our book can influence leaders in higher education to make pragmatic changes in online teaching and adequately address market demands.

 

Reference

 

Conceição, S. C. O, Lehman, R. M. (2011). Managing Online Instructor Workload: Strategies for Finding Balance and Success. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

Widening Perspectives Invite Openness: Strategies for Prioritizing Time and Managing Workload

 

Image credit: Pexels/Antoni Shkraba

In this article, we provide four strategies for rethinking how to prioritize time and manage workload: (1) look at online teaching from an open perspective, (2) adapt course design, (3) modify workload strategies, and (4) rethink how to prioritize and manage workload.

 

Teaching From an Open Perspective

 

Instructors who are open to new perspectives and have ventured into online teaching have discovered differences between face-to-face and online teaching regarding workload. These differences can be looked at in terms of space (tangible versus elusive), time (clear sense versus flexible concept), boundaries (specific location versus no geographical limits), use of the senses (can see and hear learners and touch objects versus the need to adapt senses and create closeness), level of planning (spontaneously add and adapt teaching versus pre-planning), and mental and emotional efforts (predictable time to focus mind and emotion versus perception of always being connected).

 

There are many approaches instructors must use to embark on the online venture such as openness to these differences, organization, discipline, ability to distinguish between work and personal life, and flexibility.

 

Adapting the Course Design

 

It is commonly perceived that instructors can take their face-to-face course and move it to the online environment. However, this is a misperception. Adapting a course requires understanding the online teaching and learning environment, planning, and intentional design.

 

For a new online course, the tasks and time spent designing and delivering the course will take longer and be time-consuming. For a course converted from face-to-face to online, you must rethink how you can teach your course in the new environment. For revising existing online courses, you will need to revisit your tasks and time spent to become more efficient when teaching the course again.

 

Course design should be seen as an essential aspect of teaching online. While in a face-to-face course instructors tend to consider teaching from the first to the last day of class, in an online course the course duration spans from design to course delivery. Therefore, to adapt your course to the online environment, you need to envision the “big picture.” We suggest identifying course tasks and using an instructional design framework to systematically design your online course.

 

Modifying Workload Strategies

 

When instructors adapt their courses to the online environment and use a design framework to guide the course development, they become aware of the differences between face-to-face and online courses, tasks to be accomplished in the new environment, and the period for online courses, they realize that they have to modify their workload strategies.

 

Our book, Managing Online Instructor Workload: Strategies for Finding Balance and Success, describes four strategies for managing workload: design, support, teaching, and time allocation. These strategies are influenced by various institutional factors, including the type of institution, policies and procedures that guide the institutional practices, number of courses taught, enrollment, level of instruction, position ranking of the instructor, and infrastructure support. Depending on how these factors are combined, instructor workload is affected.

 

Rethinking How to Prioritize Time and Manage Workload

 

Teaching online can be time-consuming. It involves a combination of institutional factors and requires different instructional preparation. It can increase instructors' workload if they don’t know what designing and delivering online instruction entails. Instructors who have not used a systematic approach to adapting their materials for the online environment tend to use workload strategies that they are familiar with but that may not necessarily be effective or efficient in their work and personal life. To find balance and success in online teaching, instructors must widen their perspectives, rethink their teaching practices, and be open to new ideas.

 

Rethinking means considering and reconsidering your current teaching practices in a new light. When going through this mental process, the tendency is to reinforce old assumptions and ways of doing things. What needs to happen is a change in mindset – abandoning old assumptions about teaching and discovering and accepting new ones. We suggest a four-step rethinking process.

 

The process of rethinking starts with looking at your current teaching practices by identifying your course tasks (design, administrative, facilitative, and evaluative). Then, use an instructional design framework as a systematic approach to guide you in developing a new course or revisiting an existing one. The next step is determining what tasks you are accomplishing when designing and delivering the course and estimating how much time you might spend on the course.

 

Once you can review your process and identify strategies that best fit your situation, consider alternatives, then decide on the workload strategies that will balance your work and personal life. This process of rethinking your teaching practices is a dynamic one. Your work and personal life situation are in constant motion. You need to revisit the process regularly to find balance and success but remember that you are the person who knows what works best for you. Check the table below to see which chapters on our book provide the action steps.

 

Rethinking Process for Prioritizing Time and Managing Workload

Action Steps	Chapter(s) in Book
1. Look at current teaching practices by identifying course tasks	Chapter 3
2. Use an instructional design framework to guide the design of a new course or revisit an existing one	Chapters 3 and 4
3. Determine the tasks for course design and delivery and time estimation	Chapter 3 and 4
4. Consider alternatives and decide on strategies that provide balance between work and personal life	Chapter 5

 

Reference

 

Conceição, S. C. O, Lehman, R. M. (2011). Managing Online Instructor Workload: Strategies for Finding Balance and Success. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

Sandy Manages Workload When Current Information Drives Content

Sandy is an academic staff for an international organization within a four-year higher education institution. Her primary position within this organization involves administrative work; however, she is responsible for teaching one four-credit undergraduate online course. Sandy’s online course has an average enrollment of 20 participants and is offered during the regular academic semester from 8 to 16 weeks in duration. The course content focuses on current global issues. This means that her course must be updated each time she teaches it. Sandy uses design, support, teaching, and time allocation strategies to manage her workload.

 

Design	Bases the design of her course on the textbook and the most current new. The textbook provides a framework for identifying global issues, which she then enriches with more current events occurring in the world at the time of the course delivery. Invites speakers on a podcast and links to other podcasts and news events. Uses discussion forums, team projects, and a mandatory orientation. Does advanced planning and organization because of timely content. The first time she designed the online course, she started planning two months ahead. However, once she designed the first online course, she followed a model for the next offerings. Using the model, she was able to reduce her time for course design and have the course ready to be released for the learners two weeks before the beginning of the semester. Advanced organization is essential when coordinating course speakers who are identified based on expertise in current issues. These speakers may participate either synchronously or asynchronously. For synchronous participation of invited guests, Sandy has to schedule time and equipment in advance. For asynchronous speaker participation, she has to pre-record and post the guest lecture in the learning management system before the course begins.
Support	Uses the textbook, guest speakers, podcasts, and web links as external support. The textbook as a dynamic resource tool, a springboard to identify and search for new content information. Incorporates podcasts from the Internet and web links related to global issues. Models her online teaching on other colleagues who have used effective strategies such as understanding learner expectations and creating rubrics to grade assignments.
Teaching	Uses one-way content presentation of global issues in her course. Participates in interactive activities with learners as content expert, observer, and facilitator. Uses a team project as a teaching strategy to bring content together at the end of her online course. Makes the orientation a mandatory activity because she believes that in this way learners will be more comfortable online and feel a sense of community.
Time-Allocation	Teaches one online course at a time along with her administrative responsibilities. Streamlines her time allocation for the design stage of her online course by pre-planning and organizing her course materials, reusing existing resources, and using a dynamic textbook. Spends 15 to 20 hours each week updating the current news for the online course, checking on the discussion forum, and grading learner assignments. Blocks out specific time for grading on Monday morning and periodically checks the discussion board to avoid intense work at one time. Limits the number of discussion board postings per week to reduce her workload. Checks the course on weekends, but this is not accomplished at a regularly scheduled time.

 

Managing the workload when the course content must be kept current can be challenging. Sandy discovered efficient strategies to reduce workload before the beginning of the course. She plans and organizes course materials based on external resources and prioritizes her time. Planning helps Sandy focus on the teaching rather than the design during the course delivery. Using external resources as a support strategy can enhance learner experience, reduce instructor workload during course delivery, and provide flexibility when reusing the resources in future courses. During the online course, prioritizing time and setting boundaries can be a time saver for instructors whose teaching is one piece of their work responsibility.

 

Reference

Conceição, S. C. O, Lehman, R. M. (2011). Managing Online Instructor Workload: Strategies for Finding Balance and Success. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

Rosalina Teaches a Recurring Mixed-Mode Online Course

 

Image credit: Pexels/Jordan Benton

Rosalina is an academic staff for an outreach institution. Her experience with online education involves co-teaching a grant-funded one-credit graduate-level course in the discipline of education. This online course has an enrollment of 15 participants and is offered for six semesters on a recurring basis for a total of three years. This online course involved considerable preparation in the beginning because it is offered as a mixed-mode approach using synchronous videoconferencing and asynchronous online interactions. Her role in the outreach institution involves instructional design, teaching, training, and instructor support. Teaching counts for 15% of her workload. Rosalina uses design, teaching, and time allocation strategies to manage her time.

 

Design	Puts herself in the role of the learner. Develops the syllabus and course units, gathers electronic resources, creates protocols for videoconferencing, develops videos on DVD, practices videoconferencing before the beginning of the course, and places the course materials in the learning management system. Shares the course design with two other instructional designers. One designer assists with developing content and activities, while the other one incorporates the content and activities into the learning management system.
Teaching	Provides an orientation on videoconferencing and online activities. Uses project-based activities (group and individual) and the discussion forum. Conducts formative evaluation during the online course with the purpose of refining and reshaping the course. Learners work independently and co-instructors serve as content experts, facilitators, and resources during the online course.
Time-Allocation	Co-teaching is a way to manage her workload. Each course instructor is responsible for specific duties related to the online course. Has strict guidelines for the discussion forum including the maximum number of meaningful postings per week, limited number of words per posting, and learner-shared leadership roles. Takes on the role of resource specialist allowing learners to work more independently.

 

Online courses that are offered on a recurring basis can provide time-saving benefits. In Rosalina’s situation, the team knew the mixed-mode online course was going to be taught for the duration of the grant project. Knowing this, the team invested a sizeable amount of time in the design phase of the online course. They also knew that once the course design was completed, there would be less time spent on revisions in future course offerings. The team approach is also a way to balance the workload because each team member can be assigned specific tasks before and during the course. Courses that include synchronous and asynchronous technologies can increase instructor workload. However, with the use of protocols, guidelines, and sufficient practice, workload can be reduced.

 

Reference

 

Conceição, S. C. O, Lehman, R. M. (2011). Managing Online Instructor Workload: Strategies for Finding Balance and Success. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.