Being a supportive presence in online courses: knowing and connecting with students through writing

Enacting Narrative Pedagogy, teachers often reflect on how practices, such as knowing and connecting, influence the nature of the experiences they co-create with students. There is a reciprocity in the tone of both students' and teachers' communication-in both classroom and online environments. Through attention to how teachers know and connect with students, the words and phrases they use can help put students at ease and preserve a continual future openness for learning. Without attention to how language "speaks" to students, especially in distance education, teachers perhaps, too often, "look through" experience to the outcomes of learning and do not address the potentially problematic nature of the experiences they co-create with students. Focusing attention on the meaning and significance of language in online learning restores the connective and gathering possibilities of written communication.