The Two R's: Relationships and Rapport

It is hard to believe that when Dixson et al. wrote their article in 2017, there were 6.7 million students taking online classes in the U.S.! It is no wonder that ICT scholars started scrambling to figure out the best way for online students and instructors to communicate. How could instructors demonstrate immediacy behaviors through a computer screen? Knowing that immediacy is linked to positive messages of closeness, decreased psychological distance, and increased engagement and motivation instructors had to figure out ways to demonstrate immediacy in new ways. Luckily, emoticons came along and instructors could send a happy face to brighten a student's day. But why else was immediacy important for instructors? Because it also affected student perceptions of the instructor, the class, their learning, and rapport. Yet again, instructors were faced with a challenge because asynchronous classes make it difficult to "establish and sustain" rapport (Flanigan et al., 2022). However, the problems don't stop there. Online students were (maybe still are) struggling with loneliness, leading them to become disengaged and ultimately withdraw from class. These feelings of loneliness affected the students' perceptions of the online classroom climate, which is directly tied to their perception of their instructor. Enter the Communication of Inquiry Model, which necessitated human connection, managing the learning environment, and achieving learning and cognitive goals in online classes (Flanigan et al., 2022). This also brought attention to the Transactional Distance Theory which explains the importance of the instructor/student interaction. Kaufmann and Vallade (2022) discussed the RRG Theory of rhetorical and relational goals. Rhetorical goals center around academic outcomes and cognitive learning while relational goals focus on relationships, rapport, climate, connection, and affect. They go on to so that instructor-student and student-student rapport are positively associated with perceptions of a connected classroom environment and student participation. Within the connections of immediacy and rapport, social presence also comes into play as students learn to establish themselves in the learning environment. It's pretty easy to see how all of the pieces fit together.

In the quest do establish immediacy behaviors and promote rapport in the online classroom, instructors have four important roles:

1. The Pedagogical Role which means facilitating educational experiences that further student learning of concepts, principles, and skills.

2. The Managerial Role which requires organizing the learning space and doing administrative tasks such as sending emails and grading papers.

3. The Technical Role is providing guidance on navigating the online learning platform and referring students to tech support as needed.

4. The Social Role is creating a welcoming environment and a sense of community.

These four roles mean that instructors wear many hats when designing and presiding over online classrooms. To further those roles, instructors are advised to start the class with common grounding behaviors (humanize yourself) and by sharing information (providing an organized learning experience). This initiates rapport, but it must be maintained by implementing student-centered learning (be attentive and provide personalized instruction). They never said that teaching would be easy!

Finally, it is important to note a few things from Swan's (2002) article. Although much of the article discusses the points that were made in the previous articles (and which I have already discussed in my blog so far), there are a few definitions that I found interesting. Affective indicators are personal expressions of emotion, feelings, beliefs, and values and they are used as a way to make up for gestures, facial expressions, and other immediacy behaviors that can be missing from online classes. Cohesive indicators are verbal immediacy behaviors that create a group presence, such as greetings or social sharing. Lastly, interactive indicators support interpersonal interactions between communicators, which can be in the form of acknowledgement or approval. I found these interesting because they are immediacy behaviors that can fall under social support or rapport behaviors. Either way, they demonstrate communication and human connection which is needed within online classrooms.