Building a Supportive Network and Combating Loneliness as an Online Instructor Podcast and Transcript

Corey Floyd:

Welcome to the Communication Corner, a McGraw-Hill podcast for the Communication Discipline. I'm Corey Floyd, and I'll be your moderator for this session. Today, I've brought together two terrific guests to share some insights and strategies for building a supportive network and combating loneliness as an online instructor. We'll start with some brief introductions and then we'll dive right into today's topic. As I mentioned, I'm Corey Floyd, a professor of communication at the University of Arizona. I'm also a McGraw-Hill author, and I have extensive experience in designing and teaching online courses. Before we get into our topic, I'd like to ask each of my guests to introduce themselves and tell you a little bit more about their background. Let's begin with James Stein from Utah Tech University.

James Stein:

Well, that's me. So my full title is Dr. James B. Stein. I obviously just prefer James because it's a mouthful. I am currently in limbo in between being an assistant and an associate professor at Utah Tech. On July one, I will officially be an associate professor, so that's very exciting for me and for my bank account. But beyond that, I also have quite a bit of experience in designing. In fact, in the onset of COVID, my university developed an entire online department, and I've worked with them to build courses from the ground up as well as implement a variety of different strategies ranging from exam banks to activities to synchronous and asynchronous learning strategies. And so I have a pretty good amount of workload under my belt in this arena.

Corey Floyd:

James, I hadn't heard about your promotion. That's fantastic news. Congratulations.

James Stein:

Thank you so much.

Corey Floyd:

We're really happy that you're here with us today. And our next guest is Lisa Dahlgren from Sam Houston State University.

Lisa Dahlgren:

Hi everyone. Thank you. I am Dr. Lisa Dahlgren. I am an associate professor of communication at Sam Houston State, and I've been teaching online courses now for a little over 12 years. We started teaching online courses, James and I actually did our doctoral studies together. So when we were at Arizona State University, we were teaching online courses there. And recently at my university, I gave a presentation in our professional development to teach others how to build community and online courses. So it is sort of top of mind for me right now and I'm looking forward to talking about it.

Corey Floyd:

Well, it makes me even happier that I invited you today. This has been something that's been on your mind for a while. I hadn't realize that you had been teaching online for quite that long. That's excellent experience.

Lisa Dahlgren:

It blew my mind when I started doing the numbers.

Corey Floyd:

You added it all up?

Lisa Dahlgren:

Yeah, I was like, gosh. I mean, everybody I think got a lot of experience when the pandemic hit, but I didn't realize I'd been teaching online for such a long time. So I've seen it evolve over time as well.

Corey Floyd:

Suddenly we all realize that we're older than we thought.

Lisa Dahlgren:

Yes.

Corey Floyd:

All right, well, let's dive into our topic. I think our guests and listeners are going to have a lot to gain from the insights that we can offer them today. And I'd like to start with sort of a broad question first, and I think I'll pose this to you first, James, and that question is, what do you think are some of the unique challenges of teaching online that can contribute to feeling isolated or feeling lonely?

James Stein:

That's such a good question, and I actually have two different answers to that question. And the first actually harkens back to what Lisa was saying, which is that I too have been teaching for maybe 10, nine, 10 years, online classes. But it wasn't really until COVID hit that I spent a concerted amount of time trying to figure out how to connect with students in the online realm. When I was in graduate school or working, for example, for community colleges, and I was assigned an online class, I was like, great, let's work for me. You know what I mean? And I think that that gut reaction is one of the problems. That we assume that when we are assigned an online class, that it is less work or that the students are automatically going to be disengaged. We don't have to engage with them. We are essentially babysitters. We are glorified graders, and that's a really nasty challenge that we kind of impose upon ourselves.

But COVID, it definitely reorganized the way that I think about these challenges because all of a sudden you're teaching... I was teaching at a five, five clip, so five courses in the fall and spring, and I was staring at 150 gray squares every single day. And the overwhelming anonymity of it all really, really made me feel like I was all by myself. And so I think an abundance of online classes just broadly can contribute to those feelings as well as the mentality that you approach online teaching with in general. I think that's my two sort of tandem dovetailing answers.

Corey Floyd:

I think for everybody who taught online for the first time during the pandemic, there was probably this real sense of, as you mentioned, James, just looking out at a bunch of blank avatars or blank squares or black squares or whatever. For those of us in communication who are used to playing with and playing off of the feedback that we get from our students in the classroom, that had to have been kind of jarring.

James Stein:

Oh, a hundred percent. Especially for, I mean, my reputation often precedes me as the person who is out there doing physical activities with students, connecting with students in a way that forces them out of their chairs, often out of the classroom and makes them use their bodies to exemplify communication behaviors, especially with classes like relational communication, nonverbal communication, and public speaking, which we all teach. It was shocking, and I was like, oh, I'll just sit down and think of some online activities that can compensate for that. And that's not enough. You really have to plan things from beginning to end in a premeditated manner.

Corey Floyd:

Lisa, I wonder what your experience has been when you've taught online and if you have experienced sort of that feeling of isolation, that feeling of going it alone. What sort of challenges have you faced in your years of experience?

Lisa Dahlgren:

I really think you both have touched on a lot of the things I was thinking about. When I teach online or when I was beginning to teach online, one of the biggest unique challenges was that we don't get that immediate face-to-face feedback with students. And that's so crucial as an instructor when you are in front of the class and you are almost in a performance, and the atmosphere and the personality of the class can really change the way that lecture unfolds. So when you are recording a lecture and you're recording to a screen and you don't have students giving you feedback, that can feel really isolating because you don't know how people are responding to it. You have to come up with really creative ways to get that back and forth with students, even if it's a little bit delayed. So you can do discussion boards and if you can do Zoom meetings with students, and oftentimes, especially when it's one-on-one, if you have your camera on, most students want to feel like they want to put their camera on too.

It's harder in a classroom when you're teaching online synchronously. If a lot of students have their camera off, that can be really challenging. Putting them into small breakout groups on Zoom can help and they get more comfortable and start turning on their cameras. But really, you just have to... I don't know. It is almost like you have to be even more energetic and even more positive and passionate. You have to find other ways to create that feeling of community with one another online.

Corey Floyd:

Well, that's such a good point, Lisa. I remember times when I've taught synchronously online, and the most disheartening moment is when I tell a joke and I get no feedback.

Lisa Dahlgren:

Yes. So sad.

Corey Floyd:

The camera are off. I can't even see people laughing. I can't hear them laughing. I mean, I think my joke is hilarious and it just falls flat. So given those challenges, this is actually a nice segue into our next question. When you have taught online, and Lisa, maybe I'll stick with you for the moment to sort of extend your thought. How have you stayed motivated? How have you stayed inspired, energized when you're facing that lack of feedback, that lack of direct interaction with students? What's worked for you?

Lisa Dahlgren:

Usually what works for me is trying to update my lectures, update my recorded videos, coming up with new assignments and questions, especially if we can pull things in from events in the media. Students are online nowadays all the time, whether they're doing schoolwork or not. So they're really on top of what's going on out in the world. And when you can bring those events into your classroom and segue into the course content, it's a really nice way of getting students involved because our students are opinionated and it's fantastic when they actually get passionate about what we're talking about online.

I sort of like to do that. Whenever there's a new textbook available, if we can see what new research has come about, if we're talking about deceptive communication, nonverbal communication, relationship, anything like that, there's always new research that's coming out. And it's nice for students to see that even though they don't see what's going on behind the scenes, they can learn that this research is timely and it's happening all the time/ for me, it's one of the ways that I really stay motivated is keeping on top of the new work that's out there. That helps. That helps a lot.

Corey Floyd:

Yeah, I bet bet It helps really personalize and connect with students when they can... You're sort of appealing to that scaffolding effect that they are understanding what you're talking about in the context of something else that's familiar to them, like current events.

Lisa Dahlgren:

Yes. And you know what else ends up happening too, especially when you have discussion boards, students will talk about things in their own lives is happening for them, and not necessarily a topic for us, but when they share that information, I can use that and find material that really resonates and relates to whatever they're interested in, and that all of a sudden pulls them in even more and they say, "Oh my gosh, I didn't know that there was this whole other research program on step children." Or it could be anything but stuff that really resonates with them. And it's a nice way for me to connect with students that I would normally get that face-to-face. But in an online class, you don't have that opportunity. I guess that's one of the benefits of teaching online is that it gives me more time and space to find that material to really connect students with our class content.

Corey Floyd:

James, what have you found has worked for you to stay inspired, to stay motivated when you're facing these same kinds of challenges?

James Stein:

Well, first of all, I'd like to definitely reiterate everything Lisa said. I think it's so important to stay up to date, both with ongoing research and newer editions of textbooks, and then also with what's actually going on in the world to relate to students. And you can do that regardless of your age or experience or whatever. I jokingly say extremely Gen Z words, for example, skibidi or... Nothing's coming to mind, but when there's a moment for it, I'll say it, and it's so corny when I do it, but they like that. You know what I mean? They want to see that we at least know what's going on in the world. But in terms of motivation, when I'm teaching an online course, especially if it's asynchronous, I have accepted the fact that I'm going to physically hear from very few of these students. So one of the things I like to do is really hype myself up by persistently reminding myself that these are humans.

These are human beings, not gray squares. They are more than just their student ID number. And so even in affirming nature, I'll get ready to make an announcement on my canvas and I'll be like, okay, these are humans. These are humans. And then I'll try to talk to them as if I were starting an in-person class. I will, for example, take time out of my day to give video updates rather than just providing instructions for assignments. I will make personal comments about, "Oh, I noticed that you all were doing this on your journal assignments," or, "I was watching everyone's video assignment, and I noticed a trend. I saw that this was happening."

And what I've noticed in my personal experience is that doing things like that, making I adjustments based on exactly which class, I think it reminds students that this is not a cookie cutter situation and that you're a real person, a real professor, who they can and should interact with. And I've noticed an influx of, for example, emails or students sending me work early for my feedback. And those are all good things. And I've noticed that it's kind of like a self-informing cycle. I act more motivated, I do things to motivate my students. They're more motivated. That motivates me and on and on and on it goes. So I really just try to remind myself of the humanity of my online students, which is an element that is often hard to reach. It's often quite vexing.

Lisa Dahlgren:

You know what that made me think of? I have just funnily enough, just in the last year or so, I have been saving images of my students' pets from their introductory posts at the beginning of the semester and posting those pictures at the bottom of my PowerPoint slides. So when we get to the end of lecture, I always have students email me and say, "Oh my gosh, I can't believe my dog was featured on the slide." And they love it so much. I think it's a really nice way to... Exactly what you're saying, show students, we are live. We're humans too. We're not just bots behind a computer screen and we see you.

Corey Floyd:

I think everybody's pets became famous during COVID. So to paraphrase, James, that sounds very skibidi.

James Stein:

No, no, no, no. skibidi is bad. You don't want skibidi all.

Corey Floyd:

No, we don't. Oh, it's not skibidi then. It's anti-skibidi.

James Stein:

I don't think they're saying it anymore, but that would be like poggers or something. It would be very low taper fade. I don't want to say these things anymore.

Corey Floyd:

I see. I see. Well, since you put it in our collective consciousness, we had to acknowledge it. We've been talking about ways that instructors work to create a sense of community with their students. But one of the other things that can be isolating, I think about teaching online is that you lose some of the community with your peers and your colleagues. Lisa, let me maybe throw this question to you to start. When you've taught online or when you've spoken to online instructors, what do you think are some strategies that we can use to make sure that we're not losing that connection with our colleagues, our coworkers?

Lisa Dahlgren:

Yes, it is challenging because when you're teaching face-to-face, you get to see your colleagues in the hallway and you get to decompress and debrief on how your class went, and it's really special. So when you're online, you lose that, right? You're just sitting at home or you're sitting in your office. So you don't get to have that.

One of the things that we've done in the past is to use a... We use Blackboard. That's our big shell that we teach with, and we will make a course that a lot of instructors that are teaching the same course can look at and add to and integrate with. And in that sense, it feels like we're sort of doing it together, so it's not just one person sitting by yourself. And the other strategy that has been really lovely, and I've used with several people in the past is to do guest lectures. It's really nice knowing that you have a friend or a colleague to even record a Zoom lecture with and ask questions that relate to the class content and post that to your Blackboard class or whatever platform that you're using. In that sense, you get to at least feel like you're talking to one other person and not just a computer screen.

Corey Floyd:

And in many ways, the advent of online teaching has made guest lecturing and sort of collaborative teaching experiences much easier, logistically.

Lisa Dahlgren:

Yes, it's true. It would be so hard-pressed to do that before face-to-face. I've talked to you, I've talked to other people in California in different time zones, different countries even, and we're able to do that now, and we couldn't really do that before or we didn't think about doing it. It's interesting the way that when you're forced into a situation where you can't see people face-to-face, you're still trying to... We have such a great need to create that connection with others that we find other strategies.

Corey Floyd:

Yeah, it's so true. James, any thoughts on ways that online instructors can make sure they're not losing that connection with their peers?

James Stein:

One thing I always tell my students in my online classes is I say, "Pretend like this is an in-person class. How many times do you come into class? Two times, maybe three times per week? That's how many times you should be checking your canvas. That's how many times I would want you checking your canvas." And the reason I bring that up is because I think it is our responsibility as instructors and as professors to do the exact same thing. Remaining vigilant is such an important element of conducting an online class, be it synchronous or asynchronous.

And I think doing that ideally along with some of the more collaborative elements that Lisa was just positing, I think that that puts you as an instructor in a position of success. It is better to nanny goat a little bit more so than to just abandon and leave that bit. That would be the one thing that I've struggled with personally where I'm like, "Oh, crap, it's been four days. I haven't checked my online class." So maintaining that regular check-in that schedule helps maintain and preserve the content, but also, again, the humanity of the class. I feel like we really need to blend what my dean likes to call the fuzzy and the techie, given that we're often teaching such intimate subjects in such robotic environments.

Corey Floyd:

Such high-tech ways, right?

James Stein:

Yeah.

Corey Floyd:

That's a really interesting phrase.

James Stein:

It's a book.

Corey Floyd:

Is it? Okay.

James Stein:

It is, yeah. And he put one into everybody's mailbox, and so we all had to read it.

Corey Floyd:

Well, James, I am reminded that you have spent some time as a department head, and so I wonder if you have thoughts on ways that departments or even colleges can support their online instructors to make sure that they're attending to their wellbeing, that they're not getting burnt out, that they're not feeling isolated. We've talked about things that instructors themselves can do, but at an institutional level, are there practices, are there policies, are there just ethics that in your experience or in your opinion, can be useful in supporting online instructors in dealing with these challenges?

James Stein:

Oh my gosh, I have so many thoughts.

The short answer is yes. If I could, I'll start from the top down. Starting at the university level, I'm talking about the level of president, the level of provost, and the level of upper administrators. These folks should be keenly aware of both the desire that students have to take online classes and the ways in which, I wish it weren't this way, but in the ways in which an online program can be financially beneficial to the university and to departments. And so what they should be doing is what my university did. Create an online department. These are people who have expertise in curriculum and course design. They have their degrees in instruction, and you partner them up with your professors, ideally with compensation. My university does compensate for that sort of thing.

So set funds aside for that and give people resources beyond just funding. I learned via COVID that you cannot just throw money at problems that does not fix mental health. If you give instructors people to work with. Experts. That helps them with course design, it helps design things like templates, and you talk about preventing burnout, that really helps at the administrative level because then you have a plug and go course. And so the energy is not spent on the grading or the assignment creation. The energy is spent on interacting and involving students, right? Humans, as we know are cognitive misers, and we preserve our mental energy. And so if we can allow for the mental energy in question to move toward the humanization of the course and away from the design of the course, that helps.

At the collegiate level from college to college, there's work that can be done as well. They should be looking at which classes are most likely to be online, which departments have lots versus not so many online courses, and how those methods that I just described can be fairly distributed. My department has a ton of online classes. Way fewer than, for example, sociology. So when, for example, our online department is making choices about who to work with, they tend to prioritize us because we have more classes to offer. So that sort of bureaucratic managing is necessary. And then at the department level, if you're a chair, and this is something I grappled with tremendously. You need to design a committee to ensure that you're offering the right classes online. For example, I do not offer nonverbal communication online anymore because it is such a tactile class that I noticed students were benefiting so much less when they were taking it online. So I said, "No, we need to scratch it."

Similarly, if you're a department chair, you got to make sure that there's an even distribution. You can't just saddle the same three or four professors with all the online courses and then give everyone else the in-person courses, even if they want it that way. Teaching is dynamic and it is diverse, and it mandates evolution. So those professors who don't want to teach online courses, guess what? It's part of the job. You need to learn how to do this. And if you are a professor who only teaches online course, you may need to learn to come in. Disabilities withstanding or notwithstanding, whatever that saying is. So yeah, there are administrative and bureaucratic steps to take at every level and doing so in one direction or the other. It could be the difference between student success and a struggling department.

Corey Floyd:

That's really interesting. I'm so often reminded that individual instructors have a strong proclivity sometimes for I only want to teach in person, or I only want to teach online. And it's important to remember that both of those are sets of skills, that if we're going to remain nimble in the educational environment that we all live and work in, it's so helpful to be at least conversant in, if not fluent in both skill sets. I think creating some incentives to sort of pass around that opportunity versus that obligation, that's quite an interesting approach from an administrative perspective. Lisa, have you found that there have been ways when you have taught online, either there at Sam Houston or earlier at Arizona State, that the department or the college has been able to support you in ways that have been valuable?

Lisa Dahlgren:

Yes, and I'll probably echo a lot of what James was saying, and he brings up a ton of great points, but making sure that infrastructure of the course is set and ready, so instructors can come in and really alter only the content and the meat of the course itself without having to move pages around. That takes so much time. So as much as can be done to a course, so you really have a blank canvas to work with, can be so helpful. Especially if there is symmetry across courses, because not only do students get frustrated, but instructors get frustrated when students don't don't know where they're going because everybody's doing it a little bit differently. So if there's some sort of mandate on how content is presented, and if you're using modules or units or however it is, that can be really helpful for everyone, I think to create that balance between having your own individuality in the course, but also keeping it the same across everybody.

The other thing that has been instrumental in maintaining at least my well-being when I'm teaching online, is having professional development courses at the university level that can teach me different skills when I'm teaching online. That makes me feel like a much more capable instructor. Just recently, for example, I wanted to bring this up earlier. I don't know if either of you have come across this, but apparently there is this new tool in Blackboard that you can essentially create a profile of a person. It could be real or imagined, and you can feed information into this profile, and then students can ask questions to that AI person about the content at hand.

I could create a profile of Charles Darwin and ask him online in my Blackboard class, what is the theory of natural selection? And it will spit out an answer. It's incredible how... Again, I think it goes back to that idea of this is just different skill set and whether we want to or not, AI is being incorporated into our classes and how can we be on top of it so we can use it instead of being abused by it, kind of thing.

And I just thought that was such a unique idea, and I wouldn't have learned about that for not having a professional development course. So I think universities can do really well to continue to offer those things to keep their instructors trained.

Corey Floyd:

It's almost like having Charles Darwin guest lecture in your class.

Lisa Dahlgren:

Exactly. How fun is that? It's like a study tool too. Yeah, I think that's a really unique way to use AI.

Corey Floyd:

Well, Lisa, James earlier was talking about the importance when you're teaching online, of checking in regularly the same way that you would if you were teaching in person and not neglecting your class simply because it's on the computer and it's online. And I have found when I've taught online that I'm sort of subject to the opposite problem. I can never get away from my class and when the primary way of communicating with students is virtual, is online, I feel, and I think many online instructors feel that in a way they're always available to their students in a way that they're not when they're teaching in person. And so if we think about that issue, I wonder how you, when you've taught online before, how you've set boundaries with your students, with your colleagues, with anyone that you're interacting with to avoid burnout while you're still being open to community and connection, but not being available to people 24/7?

Lisa Dahlgren:

Yes. I like to set non-negotiables. And non-negotiables in my life are things like family time or exercising. And it's these events that are non-negotiable. I will not be working during those hours. Those are not the time that I can be reached. I said in my syllabus that I do not work past five o'clock in the afternoon, and I do not work over the weekend. So if you email me during that timeframe, you will not hear from me until the next available business day. And whether or not... And to a point. If there's an error that's happening in my classes and everybody's receiving a lot of emails, I might attend to that over the weekend. But for the most part, I've tried really hard to protect myself from always being available to my work life and students because that is just one part of who I am.

An important part. But I spend many hours attending to that during the week. So my evenings and my weekend are to myself. And I will say I've tried very hard, I'm not very successful, but I've tried very hard not to check my work email over the weekend either. That's pretty hard. I'm on my phone often, but I've learned, and I've used this tool before, you can download an app that will tell you when someone opens your email. I think if I was a student emailing me or a professor and I can see that they've read my email, but they didn't respond to it, then I would feel quite hurt. I try really hard not to, to really hold those boundaries as much as possible to protect myself. And really, I think it's a great skill for students to learn as they will eventually go into the workforce because also their colleagues and their boss are not going to be available on the evenings and then the weekends. So it's sort of just already building that pattern right there.

Corey Floyd:

Definitely. So you're sort of preempting some of these potential interruption episodes by saying these are times when you're simply not going to hear back from me. James, do you have other strategies that have allowed you to set boundaries and avoid that kind of burnout?

James Stein:

Yeah, so Lisa and I differ in this way. See, I tell myself I'm not going to work past 5:00 P.M. or on the weekends, and then I always catch myself doing it.

Lisa Dahlgren:

We talk about this all the time.

James Stein:

Yeah, I'm the type of person I prefer to do a little bit less work all seven days of the week as opposed to five days of work, and then two... Kind of unimportant. But what is important is that I set a different style of boundaries. I send, ironically, a series of constant reminders to my students. The more I post proactively, the less I find I have to do things like grade late assignments reactively or make accommodations for students at the last minute. I set pretty strict boundaries, and then when applicable, I will sometimes bend them. But above all else, what I'm trying to do here is be proactive with my students and let them know that I expect proactivity out of them. Let me give you a quick example of what I mean.

I am always happy to provide my students with early feedback for their assignments. I tell them, "Send it to me early. I'll get you feedback. And then you can use that feedback to improve your submission." I had a student just this weekend, email me Friday morning about 9:00 A.M. Friday morning on the day that the assignment due. Did I see the email at 10 30 in the morning? Yes. Did I respond to it? No. I had meetings. I had a doctor's appointment. I had stuff to do. And by the time I sat down and was able to attend to that, it was like seven at night. And I sat there and I said, "I'm not going to give this feedback at seven at night because then either the student will be scrambling to resubmit the assignment or whatever." So I waited until the next morning and I said, "I'm so sorry I didn't get to your email. Please remember when you want that early feedback, you need to send it a little bit sooner than the day the assignment is due."

And I didn't feel good about doing that. I'm not trying to shoot my students in the foot here, but I assessed the situation and I was like, well, I was really clear two and a half weeks ago about the expectations for this assignment and when it was due. And this particular student made a choice about when to ask for feedback. And it was unfortunately too late. And I don't have to feel bad or burnt out or guilty about that because I set the expectation weeks ago. And so just doing those little check-ins limits those sorts of situations. And so rarely do I encounter that. Normally students will send things multiple days in advance and gives me plenty of time to get back to them. So kind of what Lisa was saying, but ultimately, the boundaries are not hard deadlines, but rather proactive advice.

Corey Floyd:

Well, one of the things I'm hearing in your two answers is that the way to approach setting boundaries, it depends in part on your own individual style, your own individual work rhythm, whether you like to work in a set schedule, a nine to five type approach and keep the weekends free, or whether you like to sort of spread out the work a little bit more. It's more about knowing and honoring your own individual rhythm and what's going to work for you in setting those boundaries. And that's I think, fantastic advice for all of us.

James and Lisa, I want to thank you both so much for being here today. Thank you for all the great advice and insight and experience that you shared with our listeners today. And for those of you listening, thank you for joining us today. We hope that you have learned something new that might help you build support and stave off loneliness when you're teaching online. We really appreciate you being with us today, and please tune in for the next episode of Communication Corner.