- Send announcements on a regular, predictable schedule, i.e., every Monday morning and Friday afternoon.
- Write or record these announcements with a deliberate effort to be warm and encouraging. Don’t turn into a robot teacher. Write or speak in an intentionally supportive tone of voice.
- Schedule time on your weekly calendar to engage with your students online in visible, high-impact ways: virtual office hours, responding to online discussion forums, recording, or writing just-in-time announcements and less visible ways such as timely feedback/grading and replying to individual emails. Your students should know where and how to find you. They should feel reassured that you are there with them.
The two infographics below give further explanation on how to show presence in your online classrooms and how to maximise the use of virtual office hours. Scroll through them on this page or click the links below to open in a new tab.
07Darby-infographic-OneHE 08Darby-infographic-OneHEDiscussion
Do you have any practical tips or activities to share in relation to being present in your online teaching?
Please share your thoughts and questions in the comments section below.