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.