Instructor Personality

When teaching online, the absolute 100% easiest thing a teacher can do is set-up a no-interaction course. For example, you could have each week be a folder which includes a reading assignment, a powerpoint, and a quiz/text. But this would, of course, suck. Big time. Instead, effective online instructors design courses that mimic the social aspects of the face-to-face classroom, and part of doing so involves infusing the course with your personality.

Getting your personality across in an online course is, in my opinion, a remarkably useful way to make the online learning environment feel like a community, and creating a sense of belonging for online students is essential to their success. Both students and instructors should have ample opportunity to reveal their personalities within the online class space. Actually, outside of quizzes and exams, I think every activity should provide students with the opportunity to inject some personality. (I’m not against personality in quizzes and exams; I just can’t quite figure out how to do it. If you know, let me know.)

One method I find quite useful is the use of images both in instructor-created content and in content that students create, such as discussion forums and assignments. Shelton and Saltsman, in their article "Tips and tricks for teaching online: How to teach like a pro", agree that using visuals along with text in communications with students is essential. While their rationale for this is to inject emotion into the communication, the use of images is also a way to inject personality.

In “Personality Matters When Teaching Online”, Sull suggests instructors include “articles, pictures, essays, cartoons, interviews, YouTube (and the like) snippets, and factoids that add richness and depth to your subject” so that the “students will immediately know you really are “into” the subject, and your excitement and enthusiasm for the subject will spill over to your students”. He strongly suggests including audio/audiovisual communication in the course as a method of revealing your personality which “allows students to see and hear an instructor who is excited, enthusiastic, caring, and dedicated to his or her students, the subject, and the course”.

Outside of using visuals (and audio or audio/visuals), faculty and students can also inject personality through their words. In “A Dozen Strategies for Improving Online Student Retention”, Al Infande cautions faculty to beware of humor and sarcasm in feedback as it’s “easy for attempts at humor to fall flat or words to be misinterpreted in the written word”. While I certainly agree with him that such attempts be handled very carefully in grading, I believe the use of humor and sarcasm, if that is your true personality, are very effective in online discussion forums and announcements as a way to inject personality into the online classroom.

A specific discussion post assignment that I have used in my courses is the ‘getting to know you’ discussion forum in the first week of class. Typically I ask students to state their name, major, favorite book/movie, and at least one interesting fact about themselves. Shelton and Saltsman suggest students post about topics such as their “silliest moments” or “animals they identify with” as a way “to alleviate the nervousness and provide insights to the personalities of fellow students”. If a faculty member participates in this forum, both through response and original posts, the faculty member’s personality will also shine through.

What I think it comes down to though is two-fold: 1) You have to put forth effort to assert your personality into the online course environment and 2) You can’t be afraid to do so. No one wants to be in an online class with a bunch of robots. Unlike a f2f class, an online course doesn’t give you the chance to go off on tangents or randomly talk about the latest movies you’ve seen and so on. You have to actually create a space for these discussions and you have to create an environment where you and your students feel comfortable sharing. This means extra work, but I think the payoff is worth it.

Two questions for you: First, do you think instructor personality in an online course has any bearing on your success in the course? Second, how do you inject personality into your blogs?