Education Commons^™

The Importance Of Building A Social Presence In The Online Classroom, Amanda W. Joyce

Pedagogicon Conference Proceedings

While important, many of the guidelines put in place to prevent disease transmission during the Covid-19 pandemic (social distancing, quarantining, facial coverings, etc.) have created challenges to building student-student and student-faculty relationships. However, these relationships are, according to the Community of Inquiry model (Garrison et al., 2000), essential to learning. The purpose of this piece is to explore strategies to build social presence in the classroom to benefit students and faculty alike. Strategies such as the strategic use of discussion boards, collaborative assignments, class announcements, extra credit, and more are discussed in the context of improving student learning without significantly …