3.3 Presence in large online classes

Group the icebreaker – Run an icebreaker activity between groups. For example, group your class into groups of 5 to 6 students and ask them to each post an image, meme or gif that best describes how much they like this particular subject. Group members are then required to guess the particular emotion or feeling invoked

Use online polls – Use online polls to ask your students relevant questions on the course materials. Careful wording of questions should allow students select different, but valid, responses. Open up a comparison/critique of the possible answers to the students who have partaken in the poll.

Set up mentor groups – Group students into groups of 5 or 6 and ask them to become mentors for each other during the course. You may wish to allow them self-select the groups. Ask them to allocate a chair who can then come to you with queries that they are unable to answer. Suggest initial postings such as ‘when is the first assignment due? Incentivize this by allocating a percentage of their grade towards continuous participation in this forum.

Themed Forums – Set up three or four themed query forums, based on your past experience of this or other similar courses. For example, you may have one for assignments and another for referencing.  Put FAQ’s into each forum. Allow students query in here, but only respond to those that fall outside your FAQ, and then add this query/response into the FAQ. Inform students of the process and the expected response time. Stick to your guns!