Strategies to Build Student-to-Student Rapport in Online Adult Learning Courses

Abstract

Students in online classes may have difficulty or believe they cannot develop a rapport with fellow students. There is significant research that indicates that this rapport greatly increases the student?s success in a class. Students can easily build rapport in an in-person classroom and often the instructor is not involved. However, in the online classroom, the problem becomes how do students build this rapport when they only see each other in a virtual space in the classroom to help increase their learning and course success. The article presents several strategies for faculty to provide students to help them build student-to-student rapport within an online adult learning course.