Be a memorable teacher: include empathy in your teaching strategy

In my capacity as Academic Trainer and Consultant at eCollege, I facilitate a professional development course that covers the subject of developing online courses, generally with reference to best practices and specifically with reference to the eCollege LMS. To get a flavor for the student experience, course participants practice using the tools as a student would. For the Dropbox assignment, I ask that participants recall their favorite teacher and that they tell me briefly what it is that made that person so special amongst all of the teachers they have encountered.

Very often the issue of subject matter expertise is brought up, but not alone of itself, but rather in tandem with other qualities that one can classify as more human rather than encyclopedic. A quality attached to expertise is usually passion. Passion is a quality that makes its possessor believable and, if the student is taking the class for a good reason, interesting.

Another quality that is often brought up is that of the teacher’s interest in the students. I particularly look for mention of this characteristic when I use this exercise in workshops on communication techniques in online classes. This helps me to highlight the fact that the special teacher whom we remember is the one who let us know that we are interesting and worthy of interactions that extend beyond the subject matter of the course.

The goal of this exercise is to make the point that, if an instructor possesses the qualities above, these qualities will also naturally occur in the online classroom just as they do in the face to face class. Students will want to learn from you if they perceive that you are present and passionate about what you teach, and if you show an interest in them as individuals. Humor helps, too.

Lately I’m looking into what’s “out there” regarding working with the adult learner—if you’ve read my previous blogs you’ll know I am very interested in making sure that any course or assignment is relevant to why the adult learner is there. In short, most students are there to move forward in the workplace. Many are doing this (giving the educational system a second chance) with a fair amount of trepidation. I teach at the Community College level, and if you hear some of my students’ stories about how the educational system treated some of these students the first time around, it is a miracle that they came back at all….

So how can we help ensure that this second chance is all it can be for the student? How can we be that teacher that they remember in the future? I encourage you to read the article They’re not just big kids: motivating adult learners by Dr. Karen Jarrett Thoms of St. Cloud State University (http://frank.mtsu.edu/~itconf/proceed01/22.html). This is a good primer on the difference between pedagogy (teaching children) and androgogy (teaching adults) and a good discussion of what motivates adults in the learning environment.

As instructors, particularly coming out of the traditional university or college where students’ primary societal role is that of student, we need to shift our understanding of where our adult students come from and who they are—the adult student is a parent, an employee, a spouse. As I have noted before, many adult students “have tangible things to lose so are very cautious in the educational environment” (Thoms) and “have preoccupations outside of the learning environment" (Thoms). I’ve noticed my teaching persona has shifted radically in the years since I went from teaching traditional undergrads to teaching students returning to learning after a space of time. Applying the same class and policy structure to nontraditional students doesn’t work very well. Thoms goes to Wlodkowski for the “four cornerstones,” or instructor characteristics, for working with the adult learner. These are “expertise, empathy, enthusiasm, and clarity.” Expertise and enthusiasm I think we all understand. Empathy and clarity must sometimes be learned.

Clarity we get better at the longer we teach online because being clear saves us time. Empathy, however, is maybe not so intuitive for some. This is a long quote from Thoms, but salient to this point:

Empathy involves the human factor associated with learning; it is separate from the computers, the software programs, the attendance requirements, the late fees for assignments, etc. Empathy does include flexibility, an understanding that babies do come early and miss the spring break by four days (thus the student misses a week of class), families experience the death of a friend or loved one, knowledge that a blizzard keeps a 70-mile commuter at home rather than face slipping into a ditch, or having compassion for a student who has just suffered a miscarriage. Some teachers will argue that these situations should not impact a student’s educational path, but reality convinces us that they actually do. Naturally, our adult learners often have more complex situations with which to deal than do our more traditional learners.

Online learners are largely an adult population. When talking to instructors who are picking up online courses to teach, this fact can not be left out of consideration. We talk about how to transition content, build community, etc. but rarely about how to transition our inner selves to motivate a learner with different emotional needs than those we encounter in traditional students.

--Vicki Galloway Harsh, MA
Academic Trainer and Consultant, Pearson eCollege