When we do get together F2F for an occasional class, the students enter the room and begin their friendly dialog more intently than usual. They surprise themselves with the ease with which they can maintain relationships even without seeing each other on a weekly basis. And they are learning the concepts just as well, if not better than they did in the 15 years I taught these courses on-ground.

The biggest shift for me personally as an online high touch teacher has been capturing my "voice" and electronic personally accurately. At first, when I re-read emails I sent to my students, I heard myself reflected back as a "cold, callous, and uncaring" teacher. What a wakeup call! I went back to the drawing board and started thinking about how I could communicate to reflect the "warm, caring and nurturing" person I think I am. I had to learn a "high touch" e-communication style.

When Neil and I presented our thinking as a workshop at ALN, AAHE, and the Lilly East conferences, we found that faculty were initially skeptics too. After we had them write down one high touch task/activity/value that they liked or used in their classes with a separate sticky note for each one, they discussed their results in "think, pair, share" format. Then they posted their "stickys" on a sheet of newsprint labeled "On-ground High Touch," and the collective group walked around to see what everyone had written.

Next, we presented the E-word list and provided examples. After listening to the list and answering some questions, the participants moved their sticky notes from the first newsprint sheet to a new newsprint sheet entitled "Online High Touch." The few that were left over usually were unique to high touch on-ground sessions (eye contact being the most common). In each of our many workshop presentations, the participants discovered that there were, in fact, workable high touch e-activities that would accomplish much the same "touch" as the F2F ones.

You are welcome to use our workshop with your colleagues to help discover more high touch techniques. Here are the links to our workshop lesson plan and PowerPoint presentation.

McMahon, J. and Davidson, N. "High touch and high tech," ALN National Conference, University of Maryland University College, 2000.

McMahon, J. and Davidson, N. "High touch and high tech," AAHE Faculty Roles and Rewards Conference, Tampa, FL, 2001.

McMahon, J. and Davidson, N. "High touch and high tech." Lilly East Conference on University and College Teaching, Towson, MD, 2003.

Paloff, R and Pratt, K (1999). Building learning communities in cyberspace. San Francisco, Jossey-Bass.

Dr. Joan D. McMahon
Towson University, MD

Dr. Neil Davidson
University of Maryland, College Park, MD

"I could never teach online," Neil said. "I like being able to reach my students individually."

"I feel I can reach them and connect with them online just as well or better than F2F," I retorted.

Our conflicting views launched a brainstorm comparing how we "touch" our students F2F and how we can online. We hope the workshop we developed as a result of our continuing conversation is useful to you and your colleagues.

With my background in psychology, health, and human resource development and Neil's background in psychology, education, and curriculum development, we had the training and combined experience of over 50 years in teaching to know what high touch means and how important it is to learning effectiveness. So we identified the words that describe personalized F2F communication and a corresponding list of "Touch E-words." The lists keep growing.

In team building, group dynamics, leadership, communications and online learning, the basic concepts of interacting effectively are the same, whether F2F or online. Paloff and Pratt (1999, 15) explain that it is the relationship and interactions among people that make a learning community. So there is little difference in developing learning communities on-ground and online.

Online teachers achieve good results using the self-directed learning, experiential learning, and socially constructed meaning that high touch teachers typically employ in F2F classrooms. For example, using names and online interactions including personal stories and case studies help develop engagement.

Neil and I find that online students often feel more connected to their online classmates than to their on-ground ones. Collectively, online students report that they know more about each student in the class, not merely the few sitting around them.