The online classroom presents unique communication challenges for both faculty members and online student alike, especially when it comes to building and maintaining a sense of online community. How "connected" the online learners feel with their colleagues and their peers has direct correlation to how well the online students do in classwork, and in their assimilation of alternative learning technologies.

What's more, a good connection to others in the online classroom helps the adult learners understand the course content more expeditiously, and can even help the adult learner apply the course information in their everyday work practice. For example, if adult learners are presented with an organizational management problem in class, and are asked to describe how this problem can be seen in their own organizations -- as well as how it was solved -- the learners can share with each other cases or models for problem resolution that others may be able to apply immediately in their own job situations!

The online "connection" to others in the classroom is demonstrated primarily by how "visible" the faculty members and adult learners are in the online classroom. Following are some tips for building and maintaining a good classroom connection:

I know we keep saying this, but it is important...even in the computer-mediated classroom: Give regular feedback to the individual learners in your classroom. A weekly feedback note, summarizing the achievements of the week, and providing the learners individual grades or assessments, is important. Adult learners like to know how they are doing, and require (according to Knowles' research) a regular status report to see how their learning applies in their lives.

Provide group reports each week, either at the end of a class week or the beginning. A summary report is a great way to give students a sense of closure for one project and a feeling of beginning for another...also, the group report allows adult learners to have a visual "measure" of progress in learning. The report can address how learners fulfilled weekly goals, the new items learned for the week, and the milestones still to be achieved in the remainder of the class.

Send a handout note or, at least a reply or discussion point every day. It is very important for adult learners to "see" the faculty member in the class on a proactive basis. If an adult learner feels the faculty member is absent (when that may not truly be the case), the learner will feel disconnected or that the faculty member does not care about the class.

Ask adult learners for regular feedback to you, the faculty member, in the form of weekly summaries, or status reports. This provides the learner a direct connection to the class and the learning process. Also, this is an excellent teaching feedback tool for faculty members -- it can help you identify information gaps in lesson planning or instructions, or in measuring class activity effectiveness.

The hardest part about online learning, from my experience and research (and from talking with others) is that the learners want to feel like they BELONG in the classroom, so they will feel comfortable enough to open up and to learn!

The online classroom provides enough distance...let's bridge that distance with these very simple, very common, ways of building that bridge.