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Browse Topics Faculty Focus Articles September 28, 2010 Online Teaching Challenge: Creating an Emotional Connection to Learning, part 1 By: Rob Kelly in Online Education Add Comment Learning research indicates that people learn better in the presence of some emotional connection—to the content or to other people. Creating this emotional connection is particularly challenging in the online classroom, where most communication is asynchronous and lacks many of the emotional cues of the face-to-face environment. Nevertheless, it is possible to do, with a learner-centered approach to teaching and a mastery of the technology that supports it, says Rick Van Sant, associate professor of education at Ferris State University. “One of the things we know about learning is that learning with emotion is a far deeper experience than learning without emotion,” Van Sant says. Citing recent research (see reference below), Van Sant notes that a little bit of stress and the corresponding release of cortisol makes “neural connections grow thicker, stronger, faster.” However, too much cortisol degrades memory performance. Creating an emotionally stimulating environment is something good face-to-face instructors do intuitively. “We live and thrive on the positive feedback from students. Students shape our behavior all the time. When technology is mediating between the learners and me, I lose the capacity to read my audience, engage my audience, and alter my style and cadence. I have no capacity on that kind of intuitive level [in the online classroom]. It all has to be intentional and cognitive,” Van Sant says.

Creating an emotionally stimulating environment is something good face-to-face instructors do intuitively. “We live and thrive on the positive feedback from students. Students shape our behavior all the time. When technology is mediating between the learners and me, I lose the capacity to read my audience, engage my audience, and alter my style and cadence. I have no capacity on that kind of intuitive level [in the online classroom]. It all has to be intentional and cognitive,” Van Sant says.

So far I am enjoying the experience

What are the most effective instructional technology tools available to me to help me meet my instructional objectives?

challenge!

talking with the professor and maximizing perception of student to access instructor are small things I can do to enhance the course and student satisfaction.

I honestly have to say that this is an ongoing process because I learn something new every day that cause me to reevaluate things.

Their most commonly expressed intention was to meet learners' needs.

In contrast, the data from our 40 observations portrayed a type of instruction that was the near antithesis of learner-centered instruction. In each and every case the organizing unit of instruction was a teacher-prepared and teacher-delivered lesson. There was virtually no evidence of substantive learner input into decisions about instruction. Communication was overwhelmingly teacher-to-learner, learner-to-teacher. Learner-to-learner communication rarely occurred unless the teacher directed it to occur through such things as peer coaching exercises.

They enabled the teacher to determine if learners had "learned" the lesson and they supplemented the content of the lesson by reinforcing learners' correct responses and demonstrating the correct answer to learners whose responses were incorrect.

Ian’s post about faculty ignoring technology forced me to reflect on my own biases.