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Educator's Voice

Volume 4, Issue 4
April 23, 2003

I'm the New Guy...

I'm the new guy. My name is Jeff, and I'm the newest Instructional Design Consultant at eCollege. You remember being new, don't you? You remember the learning curve, being low-person on the totem pole, or just trying to remember all those names, don't you?

I came from a coordinator/faculty position at a four-year college and had to immerse myself in a whole new world. I'm an academic surrounded by businessmen. I love to talk pedagogy, learning styles, teaching styles, and assessment, while those above me talk about Wall Street, Q2, and timelines. In my short tenure here I have spoken to some of you about course creation, best practice ideas, and interactivity, while your administrators talk to my employers about cost, user fees, and licensing agreements.

You might be asking yourself, why would I choose to start an article by exposing the distance between myself and my employer? It's a fair question, but one that I have a powerful answer for. Immediacy.

Now you may ask, what does speed have to do with online education? Well, actually immediacy doesn't have anything to do with how quickly we respond or how fast we interact with students. Rather, immediacy is an academic word that expresses how we interact with our students at all! Some call it humanization or personalization. Some call it connectedness. I call it the best teaching tool I have.

Think about the best teacher you ever had. Perhaps s/he inspired you to become an instructor yourself, or maybe they brought some subject matter to life. The odds are very good that you know more about that instructor than just what subject s/he taught. For example, I knew what my favorite high school teacher did on the weekends; I knew about her husband and children; I knew what movies she went to; and I even knew where she lived! I connected to her life through immediacy and I liked her. This brings us to another important component of immediacy: We like (and learn more easily from) people who are like us.

Immediacy can be defined as, "perceived physiological or psychological closeness between people" (Richmond et al. 1991:205). Immediacy has a strong correlation to teacher effectiveness, student satisfaction, and higher student retention of information (Givens, 2001). Immediacy is a good teaching tool, whether you teach on the ground or on the Internet, period.

So, how do we, as online instructors, achieve immediacy in our virtual classrooms? It's not as hard as you may think! We obviously have to talk about immediacy in its two forms.

1. Non-verbal Immediacy (Physical closeness): This is not always easy to achieve in person, let alone across the Internet. However, a few things can be done to influence students' perceptions about their instructor in terms of immediacy.
   1. Photos - Don't be afraid to show your students who you are! Many of them feel alone and disconnected from online courses because they never get the sense that their instructor is a real, live, flesh-n-bone human being! Show them your picture, your family, or your dog.
   2. Video / Audio - Allow students to hear the inflection in your voice or see you smile in an introductory video clip.
   
   
   
2. Verbal Immediacy (Psychological closeness): It is not nearly as difficult to achieve verbal immediacy in an online class. There are several strategies that can be employed by instructors to improve learning and community within your classes.
   1. Narrative - On the ground, most every instructor alive exemplifies points from lecture with some kind of illustration, metaphor or story. Why take this valuable learning tool away from students in the online classroom? It is a matter of spending a few extra minutes placing the example in a text box or a different font, but it can make a world of difference for many learners.
   2. Open Discussion - Allowing students to share their own point of view, as well as extrapolate information, can help them feel empowered and important to the instructor.
   3. Humor - An appropriate sense of humor can go a long way in creating closeness between instructor and student.
   4. Check-up emails - Allowing students to see that you, as an instructor, are invested in their success can speak volumes to some students.

These are just a few of the techniques that can heighten the perception of immediacy in an instructor. There are countless others! By the way, perception is an important word. Perception does determine reality…but that's another article.

So, have you figured out why I shared my thoughts and feelings about being new with you yet? Simply, because everyone knows what it's like to be the new person at some point. Everybody feels the same nervousness and apprehension at the thought of a new situation, meeting new people, or being expected to learn new material. You and I connected. For one paragraph, we had something in common. Although by now you know that we have much more than that in common. We are educators. We love to teach. We were hired by our institutions to be the title of this publication…the Educator's Voice! ;-)

(See, a wink is non-verbal immediacy…)

       --Jeff D. Borden, M.A.

For more on immediacy, see also:
http://members.aol.com/nonverbal3/immediat.htm
http://www.communication.ilstu.edu/activities/communication_across_contexts.pdf

TIP

Free or Low-cost Image Editors

So, you want to create, obtain or enhance a simple image for your course, but you don't want to spend a huge amount of time or money buying software to do it. And, of course, you want it to be relatively easy. Have you considered some of the free or low-cost online image tools and services?

For example, if you want to quickly make a simple logo with text to welcome your class, you might want to try out this 3D Text Maker - where you can easily choose your desired font, color, size and text effects, type in your text, click a button to produce a new stationary or animated gif, then immediately save it. If you would care to make a poster-like image with text on it, you might try taking an image (.jpg or .gif) and uploading it to myImager. You can then resize or crop it, alter aspects such as the brightness or contrast, and create a text message that will be superimposed wherever you wish to place it. Perhaps you want a banner for the top of a page; you might then want to explore Quickbanner - an online design tool where you can choose a ready-made template, and then customize it by selecting the text, colors, fonts, and other aspects that you prefer. Last, but not least, should you see some image on the Web, only part of which you would like to use, you really ought to check out CaptureExpress. For $15, this tool will enable you to very rapidly and simultaneously select, copy (totally or partially), and save almost anything that you view on your computer screen.

Now, if you've never done this sort of thing before, you will need to tinker a bit to get a feel for how things work. However, with the exception of CaptureExpress, you need not download any software or pay anything. You do, of course, have to be online. As always, you also need to be cautious of a few things as well. Obviously, you need to be mindful of copyright issues. You might find that some of these sites have some items for sale amongst the freebees, and you will therefore need to keep your eyes open and choose amongst options carefully. Furthermore, don't be surprised that if you search for and visit some free image sites, you may encounter some annoying pop-ups. The bottom line is, however, that these tools are very intuitive and the price is right!

       --Edward H. Ladon, Ph.D.