Connection and Relationship Building

You know what an impact building relationships with your students can have on an in-person course; you can make a similar impact in an online course! The collaborative nature of discussion boards make it a convenient place for students to interact with you and with each other to build a community in an online space. On this page you'll find some suggestions on enhancing these types of activities as well as some ideas you can adapt or implement in your own courses.

Suggestions

Try to keep community-building discussion assignments low-stakes. Consider grading these types of assignments on completion to prevent students from thinking there's a "right" answer.

Participate in the activity yourself, and be open and authentic with them. If you're okay with them being vulnerable or silly or casual with this assignment, then show them by doing it yourself.

Have fun! You'll get into the depths of your content with other learning activities, now is a time when you can keep it light, or even a little silly. You can do that by asking unexpected questions, accepting a variety of ways to complete the activity, or providing multiple topics that they can respond to.

Ideas for Prompts

The key to building meaningful relationship building activities is authenticity--students can smell when you try to put on a persona that doesn't fit. Create or adapt activities that are true to who you are as a person and as an instructor to enhance that authenticity.

Get to Know You

This can be a great place for students to share about their hobbies and interests outside of their studies. Try mixing it up by asking unexpected questions along with the standard "Where are you from and what are you studying?" prompts. This article has hundreds of questions to get you started: 425 Must-Try 'Get to Know You' Questions

Let me Explain

Ask them to create a brief presentation about something they know way too much about that doesn't have anything to do with your course content. It can be an unexpected way for them to share who they are by sharing their passions.

Two Truths and a Lie

This prompt is helpful because it has a built-in topic for students to reply to. Consider asking students to reply to the classmates who commented on their original post to continue the conversation.

Dream Job Scenario

Ask, “What is your dream job, and what inspired you to pursue it?” This helps students relate personal aspirations to their academic journey.

Incorporating AI

ChatGPT Biography: Give some basic life details about yourself to ChatGPT and ask it to write a short biography of your life. Post the biography, but leave some commentary. What did it get right? What did it totally miss the mark on?
ChatGPT Collage: Tell ChatGPT about your hobbies and interests and ask it to create a collage that represents who you are. Post the collage, critique what it came up with, and give some backstory behind some of the elements of the collage.

Resisting AI

Peak of the Week: Share the best thing from the last week that you did, learned, watched, read, listened to, whatever. Repeat this assignment periodically throughout the semester for maximum effect.
- Could they still do this in ChatGPT? Absolutely, but the hope here is that it will be more work for them to do so than to just answer the prompt authentically.
Video Journals: Consider asking them to record a video answering their responses to your questions rather than just typing them out.

Discussion Questions: Have you incorporated similar types of discussions in your online courses? What strategies have you found most effective in building student relationship, and what challenges have you encountered?