Your presence in your online course is a huge contributing factor to student engagement and success. You can demonstrate your presence in a variety of ways — from creating short, customized videos to sharing your interest in the course content with students. In many cases, merely being responsive and moderately active in discussion forums is enough. How can we build trust with students through our communications, feedback and activity in our course?

Read + Discuss

Check out and participate in the discussion on our #readinggroup channel in Slack. What questions do these raise for you? Did anything surprise you or seem useful? Or is all of this old hat?

Join the discussion anytime. This week’s live chat will be on Monday at 8:30PM in the #live-chat channel in Slack.

Case Study

Check out this week’s case study and share your thoughts on our #case-study channel in Slack.

Build Something:

Create/link your build within your LMS/platform of choice, then share a link with your group in Slack.

OPTION 1: Craft an instructor page in in your LMS or course website. Who are you? What is your basic philosophy for the course? Please include an image that represents you as well as some version of your communication policy: how, when and where are you available to work with students? Will you hold virtual office hours for your course? How can a student contact you? When should they expect to hear back?

OPTION 2: Create a video for your course. Possibilities include an introduction video, a video focusing on content that features your presence, or if you’re ready to dive into a lecture video that works too. While you are welcome to create your video in one of our media studios, your presence will come through just as well in a less formal production. The important thing is to get video content of yourself in the course. We recommend using Kaltura Personal Capture.