Anybody there? Four Principles to Create Better Human Connections when Teaching Online

In the post-Covid-19 world, when the massive use of web-conferencing subsides, will virtual meetings and online seminars have established themselves as viable alternatives (rather than a substitution) for face-to-face engagements? I believe the answer will depend on our ability as hosts of web-conferencing events to successfully create better human connections in our virtual communication. 

Web-conferencing technology is cost-effective, truly global, easy-to-deploy, and user-friendly. Yet, a barking dog in the background or a simple glitch is all it takes to make us feel disconnected, bored, frustrated, or upset while we use it. I'm not talking about our hesitancy due to our own limited familiarity with the technology, but about the common occurrences during its use: a poor internet connection that makes your voice sound robotic, an annoying echo, someone inadvertently broadcasting their on-hold music for everyone to hear, the realization that you spoke for a minute without un-muting, your day-dreaming during an online keynote... Those are all reminders of the very low quality of human connection that we can experience in many forms of virtual communication, and especially when teaching or learning online.

The experience of virtual communication – says communication expert Nick Morgan – is “much flatter; online conversation requires us to deliberately engage our own and other’s people's emotions.” Let's be clear: we're connected through the web, but unless we are intentional in how to connect with people's emotions online, we might end up effectively alone. This is because, when we communicate virtually, we lose the emotional knowledge to properly understand the context, the key ingredient that helps us build meaning. This loss breeds misunderstanding, and a lack of clarity about what's truly going on, giving online instructors the sensation of teaching “blind” without clues, hints, and nuances as feedback. In class we can feel the audience; we see them reacting to our words; we can judge their feedback instantaneously. We use that information to adjust on the spot our rhythm, content, delivery, and pauses. Without this feedback loop, the result is the commonly-experienced feeling of stunted, sub-optimal connection that frustrates us all as we teach, learn, and meet online.

As hosts of online seminars and meetings, we need ways to regain solid emotional footing in our online spaces. We can write a new code of conduct for ourselves and our students, intentionally and proactively dealing with the loss of social hints, emotional clues, clarity of feedback that we often experience online. Creating high-quality human connections with people when teaching online is a leadership challenge for online educators who are new to this format, but also a healthy reminder to those of us who have been using it for some time.

Despite more than 700 hours of virtual events under my belt, I deal with this challenge, especially when I facilitate large groups' transition to truly connected online teaching. Here, I have found myself being inspired by many of the principles I teach in my leadership classes. These are principles and ideas with an unconventional flair, away from triumphal visions of heroic leaders on white horses. Instead, they are centered on an idea of leadership as the tough work of collective problem-solving, avoiding simple solutions to complex problems, mobilizing new capacities to thrive in a new, changed world.

If like me, you care about creating high-quality, human connections online, the four principles that follow can provide reflection points and they can inspire you to make decisions about the design and delivery of online sessions that are more likely to result in better connections.

PRINCIPLE #1: Your online session's purpose must be crystal-clear

Online events can become more connected experiences if hosts take a moment to understand and clarify better – for themselves and others – the event’s ultimate purpose. Without a good reason to be online, it's hard to conceive an agenda, select activities, align the technology, or just sequence events in an online session. When it’s over, it's impossible even to judge if the session was successful or not. Why do participants want to be online? What’s their purpose? What do they want to achieve? What will they have, after the session, that they don’t have now? What’s their reason to stay logged in for the whole time? What problem are we helping them solve? Is it skill-building? Is it getting to know each other? Is it solving a specific issue? Is it about sharing experiences?

Example of purposes to be online? Strong immediate need attendees share (I.e. finalizing a project deliverable), a shared inquiry (I.e. a critical question people don't yet have an answer to), the need to learn something quickly (acquiring new knowledge, or discuss new practices), building a sense of community by engaging in something important (I.e. dealing with a certain moment together, making sense of something).

Aside from guiding you towards the correct design and choices of resources, technology, and time allocation, clarity of purpose helps you strengthen your holding environment (a concept from psychology describing the physical and emotional space the instructor – online or face-to-face – establishes when teaching a course). The holding environment of an online session is very fragile, as it can be broken with a single click: that’s all it takes to log off. This idea is a critical insight, unique to the online space: the most important job of online hosts is to strengthen the holding environment of their virtual session. Holding people’s attention effectively is critical in an online session because logged in is not the same as tuned in.

PRINCIPLE #2: Your authority is not enough (And you have much less than you think online!)

Unless you have celebrity status, reliance on just your own authority, expertise, or presenter role can be dangerous online. Long speeches, shining slides, clever references don't keep us engaged in virtual rooms. Boredom is more trouble than usual online because people deal with it by multitasking – checking email and leaving your class – without telling you. The danger here is that you might end up, quite literally, talking to yourself, and not even knowing it. While nowadays this can happen in face-to-face sessions as well, online all pretense of observation and shame are gone.

I suggest deploying your own authority online by acting more like a producer or a director, rather than a presenter: you need to orchestrate different activities, use the functionalities of your synchronous app, and vary your mode of instruction so that you never stay on the same instructional mode for more than 10-15 minutes. The key here is to try to be unpredictable... If you end your session by saying goodbye, try something new. For example: ask for a one-word summary on the work, show a poem on the theme of endings and new beginnings, sing a song together, or join in a virtual toast or an online round of rock, paper, scissors. Use your imagination…

New online hosts perceive that their role – compared to face-to-face sessions – carries much less power. They struggle with the anonymity and “face-less” presence of people in the virtual space. Yet, we can use the power that we do have to strengthen the holding environment of our online classes with a set of stated norms: current low standards of human connection online today, force you to spell these rules out if you want a better connection. Establishing, communicating in advance and enforcing online session etiquette, increases the emotional clarity of your online engagements and makes for a more connected online experience.

In my online sessions, I routinely request people to:

• Log in to the session with camera-ready attire, from a quiet room in their home to avoid interruptions;
• Familiarize themselves with the technology by logging in 10 minutes before start time, so that they are able to mute themselves and operate the system well;
• Be ready for engagement with each other and to participate in “live” discussions in plenary, breakout room discussion, polls and chat room exchanges;
• Have access to pen and paper to jot down notes for themselves;
• Refrain from logging in from a cell phone only or while driving.

People might still not show themselves on camera. Your role is to create the expectation that they should, and be clear that peoples' ability to see their peers will enhance the quality of the sessions connections.

PRINCIPLE #3: It's about doing, not about listening (to you!)

Creating something together, solving a problem, creating artifacts, debating a controversial piece, or ranking items based on given criteria engage people online and build connections through shared experience. The breakout room function is great for this, and if you don’t have it in your system, you can still group people in teams, give each team their own conference number, and ask them to connect as a team over the phone.

In the words of Jane Vella, dialogue educator and author of Learning to Listen, Learning to Teach: “The more teaching, the less learning.” Chat exchanges, plenary conversations, breakout rooms, “live” Google docs: these are all chances to pull out the knowledge in the virtual room so that collective learning can emerge and self-organize into coherent patterns. This resembles a choir, rather than a solo performance.

Minimize your presentations, and instead share a few ideas (for a maximum of 5 minutes). Then ask people to talk about what you shared, or for concrete tasks to apply that content to novel situations…. Great online sessions are about what people do collectively together, not about what they hear from the front of the room. Yes, we impart knowledge in online sessions; but we need to make that knowledge conversational by staying focused on building it collaboratively, rather than just transmitting it. For example: instead of showing your session content in slides, create a 1-page document that summarizes your ideas; then present vivid, realistic scenarios and allow people to apply the ideas to those real-world situations.

PRINCIPLE #4: Anyone can teach, anytime, anywhere

Online communication can be experienced as more egalitarian and democratic by participants because people are more likely to speak their minds using chats, polls, etc... The downside is that a large amount of feedback needs to be dealt with from the front of the room. New online instructors often struggle with the handling of this information coming at them quickly. The challenge is how to manage the apparent loss of control of the flow of communication and how to respond on your feet to whatever is coming at you from the audience.

Yet, the sense of being overwhelmed and vulnerable – so hard to deal with for newbies – is the flip-side of the richness of pulling together resources, experiences, teaching and ideas from a large group of people. Frankly, this pales in comparison with a face-to-face session where people can't say what's in their hearts simply by clicking a poll answer.

A successful and connected online session is a conversation that goes on at multiple levels. And one of the harder transitions for the instructor is relinquishing control to make that happen, trusting that learning will come from many more sides than the front of the room only. So, whether the feedback comes at you in the form of emoji, thumbs-up, or chat entries in ALL CAPS, a large flow of information signals that your session is doing something right. People are into it through all the different channels available to them. While this can’t be the sole purpose, demonstrated engagement means a very high chance of delivering a truly valuable experience online.   

Besides asking for the help of a team of host assistants, I've improved my ability as a host to manage the large flow of information of online sessions, by leveraging the recording function of the web-conferencing software I use. I suggest you review your recorded online sessions and see them as valuable sources of insight to feed future ones. Uncover where your audience’s interest and energy is, based on the flow of engagement; then find ways to meet them in that place. For example, many questions on applying the concepts might reveal that your session was overly theoretical; many comments about concepts, theory or framework might reveal the opposite.  

In conclusion, teaching online and achieving a high-quality human connection is possible. The few ideas outlined here offer concrete steps for humanizing our virtual engagements, as well as new opportunities for connection and enduring feedback loops.

By intentionally reclaiming emotions, connection, and empathy in their online events savvy online hosts can make online teaching and meetings truly human-centered, and a more viable option for organizations to come together across distances and differences.