Rapport in Distance Education

Murphy, Elizabeth, and Maria A Rodriguez-Manzanares. “Rapport in Distance Education.” The International Review of Research in Open and Distance Learning 13.1 (2012): 167-90.

As a teacher, I rely heavily on my rapport with students to prepare them to receive my instruction, especially in the case of advanced students, whom I will push harder to improve.  I am interested in how a distance educator can establish rapport.  In this article, the authors begin with the concept that rapport between student and teacher leads to greater engagement and greater learning gains.  Drawing on a review of literature, the authors define rapport as a dyadic phenomenon that involves mutual attentiveness, respect, understanding, and openness, as well as coordinated interaction and movement, all of which are positive, harmonious, smooth, and regular.  The authors identify eight categories of rapport indicators in typical educational settings: disclosure, honesty, and respect; supporting and monitoring; recognizing the person/individual; sharing, mirroring, mimicking, matching; interacting socially; availability, accessibility, and responsiveness; caring and bonding; and communicating effectively.  Scholars writing on rapport in DE have concluded that rapport building in DE must be more purposeful and premeditated.

To discover “why rapport was important in DE and what challenges might be associated with rapport-building in DE” (173), the authors interviewed 42 secondary distance educators about their own experiences and ideas on the topic.  Their interviews revealed information about the importance of, challenges to, and indicators of rapport in DE.  The interviews revealed that teachers see the importance of rapport as related to the type of student who might participate in DE, mentioning single parenthood or emotional disorders that require understanding from a teacher.  Challenges include the asynchronous nature of most instructional tools, teacher workload, and undervaluing of rapport by teachers or students.  Finally, the researchers’ analysis revealed six categories of indicators of rapport in DE: recognizing the person/individual; supporting and monitoring; availability, accessibility, and responsiveness; non text-based interactions; tone of interactions; and non academic conversation/interactions.  In easy-to-read tables that are characteristic of this article, they list specific types of indicators within each category.  It is important to note that these indicators arise form the teachers’ perceptions about rapport; they are not instructions regarding what should be done, but reflections of what practitioners have found to be true.

Many of the indicators are relevant to teaching writing from a distance, but three of them may be particular opportunities in our field because of their connection to invention, delivery, and feedback: “Having students write about their personal interests,” “Having students choose the colors and the fonts to represent their personalities,” and “Returning a lesson with comments.”  A broader view of the first would include allowing student choice in the content of their compositions, even when that content is not of a personal nature.  Similarly, the second could easily be broadened to consider other aspects of delivery, such as mode or genre, in order for students to pursue their rhetorical goals more authentically.  Finally, commenting on and returning student work is an age-old practice in compoaition instruction, and is an important way to show students that we value and take their work seriously.  In using this approach, however, we must consider how our commenting practices transfer to a distance context.  If we have not established rapport  (and even if we have), comments must be chosen carefully to encourage growth, not stifle it.

Boynton's "When the Class Bell Stops Ringing"

Boynton, Linda.  “When the Class Bell Stops Ringing: The Achievements and Challenges of Teaching Online First-Year Composition.” Teaching English in the Two-Year College 29.3 (2002): 298-311.

Writing early in the online education boom, Boynton offers her reflections as a contribution to scholarship, which she justifies by citing George Vaughan’s definition: “’precise observation, organization, and recording of information in the search for truth and order’” (299).  She organizes her online teaching experiences by identifying pairs of achievements and challenges.  

The first is the increased connections with professionals outside the discipline (from tech specialists to other online teachers), along with necessarily redefinition of relationships, roles, and responsibilities. As a pioneer Boynton finds her limited experience to be the equivalent of expertise.  Second, Boynton notes that moving online “reignites discussions about what constitutes good teaching” (301), but that online teachers can also develop an “us versus them” mindset because of the perceived gulf between online and face-to-face teachers.  Third, she claims that online teaching allows for a student-teacher partnership, which also necessitates the sacrifice of some professorial authority.  Boynton’s comparison of online composition instruction to 20 independent studies is telling because of the assumptions underlying it—that online students work independently, and that students in traditional classrooms do not partner with their instructors. As part of the loss of authority, Boynton discusses her decision to make more exceptions to deadlines, which makes the “larger [learning] goal…paramount again” (305), and her experience with prospective students who feel entitled to assess whether certain expectations of instructor performance, such as email response time, will be met. 

Fourth, Boynton presents the increase in genuine moments of instruction because of increased contact time, paired with the enormous demands of increased availability to students.  Actively engaged students want more feedback, and online students know that teachers have near-constant computer access, so Boynton has trouble turning off her teaching and spends many hours giving feedback, even to kids who would just as well revise once, submit, and get a C.  Finally, Boynton notes the benefit of increased diversity but the difficulties of retaining students who have competing obligations, ill-formed expectations, or insufficient preparation. 

I find her personal reflection at the leading edge of online teaching to be a useful contribution, and I am impressed with her willingness to make herself vulnerable by revealing her challenges.   I wonder if her experiences and, more interestingly, her assumptions were/are shared by other instructors.  Specifically, she assumes that online students are more active learners because of the mode of delivery, which further assumes that face-to-face learning is more passive.  Is this true even in classrooms using a workshop model?  Similarly, when she discusses her partnership with each student, she states, “Professionals…collaborate, offer different perspectives, and then end up with something that goes far beyond what either thought possible at the beginning of the process.  This ‘partnership’ approach has been one of the best parts of teaching online” (308).  Why is such partnership a defining part of online teaching and not of classroom teaching? And why is that partnership between student and teacher only?  It seems that fostering collaboration between students would, besides the obvious benefits, reduce the teacher’s feedback load by ending her role as the sole audience.  I imagine that in the last ten years some of these assumptions have shifted, but I know that others are still in effect among many teachers, both online and in the classroom.