Chronicle of Higher Education Op-Ed: How to Find Meaning, Purpose, and Joy in Your Asynchronous Courses, by Flower Darby (Missouri-Columbia):
“Thank you so much for taking the time to treat me like a person,” wrote Stephanie in an email to me. A student in one of my online courses, she had fallen behind and couldn’t see a way forward — until, that is, we talked on the phone and came up with a plan. Having taken many online courses, she wrote: “I have never had a professor willing to speak over the phone and hear exactly what I have been going through.”
Her comment is not exactly a ringing endorsement of online education, and it highlights a pervasive problem: Students in asynchronous online courses often report feeling that the instructor doesn’t treat them like a human, isn’t available to them, and doesn’t interact with them (as in, doesn’t grade assignments promptly or return emails). In fact, surveyed about their worst online courses, students said their number-one complaint was an MIA teacher. Their instructor simply wasn’t there.
Too many of us are not “there” in our asynchronous courses even though we know that instructor presence is critical to online student success. We would never think of ghosting our in-person students. In fact, if we repeatedly failed to show up in our physical classrooms, that would be noticed and dealt with. Yet we fail to show up for class all too frequently online. I think I know why.
My aim is to explore those reasons and offer some suggestions on how to find joy and meaning in online teaching. With a renewed sense of purpose firmly in place, we can come to want to be in our online classes. We can learn to enjoy engaging with our online students. …
I still prefer teaching in person, but I’ve come to enjoy my online courses because I’ve discovered a higher purpose in the work. Online students have a right to a teacher who shows up to class, connects with them as people, interacts with them in online discussions, trusts them, provides meaningful feedback on assessments, and is generally there to help. Here are some ways to overcome your own sense of online teaching ennui: …
All of those suggestions center around enhancing connections and relationships in asynchronous online classes. If you feel like you are languishing in your online teaching, the best way out of it is to plan for more interactions with and among your students. Set appropriate boundaries on your time — you won’t flourish, either, if you make yourself available 24/7. But the time you do give to this will pay off abundantly for both your online students and your own job satisfaction.
