Making Connections Tips from Students

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I think that once you find your way around
connecting with the students and the

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professors in online courses, it’s more
beneficial to us as students because

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we do have more opportunities to connect.
As well, if you have a project or if you

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have something going on outside of school,
outside of class, then you have a way to

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publicize it and get people involved. I’ve
never felt like a number in any of my

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online courses. It does feel more like a
community, it’s just an online community,

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it’s just different than being face to
face with the students. It gives you

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that opportunity to build that community
after the class is over because you’ve

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already made connections through
email. And sometimes you reach out

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through Facebook, so you’re able
to keep those friendships.

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The biggest challenge I’ve faced in
taking online classes is not having as

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much in-person interaction with the
other students and with the professor

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and having to do it a different way.

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Through the chartrooms, through the
discussions, through emails with the

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professors, and that’s been a bit of a
challenge having been at UCF before and

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been an undergrad what seems like a
long time ago. But for the most part,

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it’s been very enjoyable to go through the
discussions with them when you realize

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how many discussion strands that you’ve
created over just one topic. And it’s been

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great because it’s not just the feedback
of, ” Hey, great idea!” They elaborate on

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it so it’s a full blown conversation in
comparison to an in-person class where

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the professor may gather you back and
say, “Oops. We’ve got to move on. We’ve

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got to move on to the next thing.” You can
freely express yourself back-and-forth.

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It’s a lot better in an online course than
a face-to-face and actually, in one of my

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face-to-face classes this semester, I have
a group project and we’re utilizing

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online tools to help us stay on track and
keep everything together because even

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though its a face-to-face environment,
we can’t always meet at the same times

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together. So in a way, different tools
that are available online make all of that

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really easy because it just makes it so
much easier to facilitate interaction

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between each other without
actually having to show up at

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a specific place at a specific time.