Reading the social cues from your audience during a presentation is already challenging enough, but online, it can seem impossible. If you’re hosting a lecture over Zoom or recording online modules for future viewing, you might feel like you’re on your own. However, no quality educational material should ever be one-sided. Buy-in from students is crucial, and audience engagement is an essential aspect of creating a lasting impression.
Here’s how you can build genuine rapport with your students, even when you don’t share direct in-person interactions.
Humanize Your Delivery
A good teacher or lecturer can get away with a formal (even somewhat bland) base curriculum if they infuse it with their personality, tone of voice, and spontaneous class discussions. When informal interactions are taken away, you have to go the extra mile to bring those elements back. Students need to feel a sense of connection with not only the material you’re providing but also who you are as a teacher. There’s a delicate balance between oversharing and fading into the background as a textbook instead of a mentor.
Don’t be afraid to share some personal anecdotes that relate to the lesson of the day. Stories that your students relate to (such as experiences you had when you were in their shoes) can be especially helpful and entertaining. Education should be fun and interactive. If you expect people to pay for your program, or at least tune in without tuning you out, you have to connect with them. Humanize your delivery by sharing small insights into your life.
Not everyone will connect to every story you share, so it’s best to keep these examples short, sweet, and of course, professional. A little humor goes a long way, as does opening up about mistakes you have made along the way. But, you never want to make your audience uncomfortable. The personality elements you bring to your content should be light and clearly relevant to the teaching material.
Schedule Virtual Office Hours
Office hours don’t have to be relegated to just the office. Allowing your students to book 1:1 time with you is a valuable supplement to your course. Offer a couple of sessions throughout the life of the curriculum so students can check-in, ask questions, or provide feedback. Getting the chance to talk with you individually makes it easier for shy students who might not be willing to speak up in class. Virtual office hours also provide an opportunity for you to gauge whether your audience members are getting value out of the course or if any sections have fallen flat.
Encourage students to be honest and share feedback without fear of backlash or judgment. It’s okay for them to understand that you’re also learning as you go, and you want to create the best learning environment possible. Remind your students about your office hours and encourage them to participate. Even if they don’t take advantage of it, knowing that you’re available and interested in what they have to say only adds to the interactiveness of your class.
Spark Engagement on Message Boards
Message boards are an underutilized platform, perfect for interacting with students and fostering a stronger sense of community within your class. As the instructor, it’s up to you to ignite the momentum behind message board discussions and make sure they serve as a productive and respectful forum. When done right, your students will see message boards as an opportunity to share their voice while immersing themselves in the subject material. Manage peer-to-peer discussions, communications with tutors, and classroom announcements all in one place. The key is to get your students into the habit of logging on, starting with the very first class.
Ideally, a message board is a place for the instructor to plant a seed and the students to nurture it. You don’t want to feel like you’re doing all of the posting or having a conversation with yourself. Instead, use interactive media to share a relevant YouTube video, blog post, or even a meme to get the conversation started. Posting a clear set of guidelines and rules can help avoid rude or inappropriate remarks, giving you the power to remove anything that detracts from the educational purposes of your message board.
To keep message boards from getting stale, schedule regular postings, and ask your students to check-in at a set time each week. Building a habit is easier when it’s done consistently. Use this as an opportunity to post a quote, statistic, question, or idea that will be tackled in the following class. By giving your students a heads-up about what will be covered, they’ll have some time to mull it over and prepare to participate in classroom discussions.
After class, advise everyone to revisit the message board and reflect on the lesson. Not only will you reinforce take-home messages from class, you’ll also build rapport by encouraging interactions with students. Remember, good communication goes both ways. You want your students to listen to you, but also contribute.
Learn from the Best
If trying to build rapport seems like too much work, remember, you don’t have to reinvent the wheel. Try thinking less in technical terms and instead, focus on real-life examples of your favorite podcasters or motivational speakers. What do these people have in common? A good presenter connects on an individual level with each listener until it starts to feel like they’re talking directly to you.
Have you ever responded out loud when listening to something by yourself? That’s because you got lost in the content. Often, this has less to do with what’s said and more about how the message is delivered. An engaging tone of voice, relatability, and enthusiasm from the presenter trigger our subconscious inclination to tune in socially.
In the same way that we tend to smile at others who smile at us first, humans mirror those they interact with. Starting each virtual class with a smile puts your students at ease and sets the tone for a pleasant experience. Smiles are contagious, but so are yawns and bad attitudes. If you’re gearing up for the course with a less-than-stellar attitude, now’s the time to turn your frown upside down.
Set an Example by Showing Up for Your Students
There’s nothing worse than lecturing to the blank stares of a tuned-out group. Even when you can’t see your listeners’ faces, you can gauge their interest level based on participation rates in classroom discussions, willingness to reach out during virtual office hours, and message board engagement. If you’re still unsure about how your class is received, just ask. Give your participants the chance to let you know how things are going anonymously. Don’t wait until the course is ending to reach out. By then, it’s too late. Instead, check-in midway and implement changes as you go. No one is perfect. Showing your vulnerabilities and a genuine interest in improving your work only makes you more relatable. A concerted effort to establish rapport will pay off in dividends when you successfully build a lively and engaged group of students who are motivated to learn even when you can’t see their faces.
