Communicate with Your Learners

As an educator or instructor, I don't need to tell you how important communication is; however, people often assume that because a course is online, instructors don't need to be as hands-on. I beg to differ. The most successful online courses are those in which instructors are actively involved and get to know their learners, even though it's only virtually. Here are few suggestions:

• Complete your profile. Complete your profile with a picture and your skills, likes, dislikes, and a bit about yourself so your learners can get to know you. After all, you tell learners about yourself at the beginning of each face-to-face course or training session. Also, encourage (or make it mandatory) for learners to personalize their profiles.

  Make sure your system administrator has not disabled this capability. By default, all Moodle user accounts can personalize their profiles.

• Keep online office hours. Use the Moodle chat room effectively, followed up with forum discussions.
• Respond to your learners. Allow learners to e-mail or post messages, and then get back to them quickly. Post the good questions (with answers) to the News forum, which Moodle pushes to e-mail all learners in the course. If appropriate, give the learners credit for brilliance; you may just see more forum activity and participation, and you won't have to answer similar questions again.
• Chat with your learners. Chats are great for making yourself available to alleviate test panic by holding a session before it. The answers generated can be downloaded and used for future FAQs — a great resource.
• Blog (and encourage your learners to blog, too). Many people like to blog about themselves or something they're passionate about. Blogs can be individual journals between just you and your learner, or made available to the course or site. They can be used to correct grammar as part of an English course or a foreign language course. Blogs can be topic related and are popular because of the ownership they exhibit.
• Talk. Sometimes talking accomplishes a lot more if you have a situation that needs attention, in much shorter time. If you think it necessary, don't hesitate to pick up the telephone or use Skype with the learner. (Remember, Skype is free.) Your learners will appreciate your commitment.