Connecting in the Online Classroom: Building Rapport Between Teacher and Students by Rebecca A. Glazier

Abstract

Reviewed by: Connecting in the Online Classroom: Building Rapport Between Teacher and Students by Rebecca A. Glazier Heather E. Yates Rebecca A. Glazier. Connecting in the Online Classroom: Building Rapport Between Teacher and Students. Baltimore. Johns Hopkins University Press, 2021. 251pp $29.95. ISBN 9781421442655 (paperback), ISBN 9781421442662(e-book). The COVID-19 global pandemic redirected our collective focus to the methods of online teaching in a way that no other modern event has. The entire educational infrastructure was temporarily suspended. The public health crisis demanded that universities rapidly migrate courses, in the middle of the academic term, to online instructional formats. It was hurried, at times chaotic, and most everyone was pushed beyond their professional (and personal) capacities. The emergency presented some challenges that compounded some standing concerns about higher education and revealed new ones about declining college enrollment. In cases where university campuses suspended in-person operations and performed rapid pivots to digital spaces, faculty were students' primary, and sometimes, only connection with the university. The demands of the unusual circumstances uncovered an entirely new set of concerns for student learning and retention. The disruption partly reinvigorated a public discourse about the necessities of online teaching and learning, but it also accelerated another lurking problem: an online retention crisis. Much of the discussion around student retention settles on the needs of traditional students, meaning those who are physically present on campuses, while the needs of online students get pushed to the periphery. As it relates to retention issues, online teaching can suffer from negative stereotypes and mischaracterizations that give way to myths of detached, sterile environments devoid of meaningful human interactions, making the face-to-face classroom a preferred method of instruction (Palloff & Pratt, 2013). For students, some may think online classes are 'easier' than in-person courses (Young, 2006). In view of these challenges, Rebecca Glazier, professor of political science at the University of Arkansas-Little Rock, authored Connecting in the Online Classroom: Building Rapport Between Teacher and Students. The book stands out from a sizeable literature concerning online teaching because it is not simply a best-practices guide to improving online pedagogy. It goes beyond that framework to reconstruct how we think about online teaching by offering a balanced treatment of students and professors in the online experience. One of the book's significant contributions is its focus on the lagging retention of online students in higher education. It also effectively dismantles the negative stereotypes associated with online teaching and, more generally, online classes. The book methodically and critically examines the issue of lagged online retention rates. Beyond the best-practices component, the book proposes evidence-based solutions on how best to address the online retention problem. The book's many strengths include its appeal to a wide audience, its applications across academic disciplines, and its utility for any level of teaching expertise. Glazier expertly describes the online retention gap as the differences in retention of student enrollments in online and in-person classes. Glazier observes that colleges commonly struggle with retaining online students more than any other student population. This digital retention gap is further characterized by Glazier's observation that students who want to succeed in a face-to-face classroom, but have limited options, are dropping out of online classes. The problem manifests in an [End Page 407] observable retention gap in enrollments between online and in-person classes where the in-person classes are enjoying more successful retention rates. While online students comprise a significant portion of the college population, many efforts to retain them get folded into traditional retention strategies. There are reasons why universities invest substantial amounts of capital to keep students on campus by focusing on positive student interactions and experiences within those physical spaces, which routinely enlist the energies of the faculty, staff, and the campus environment (Millea et al., 2018). However, an unintentional negative impact of this means that online students are rendered virtually invisible, which effectively relegates them to a second-class status on campuses. In addressing the online retention gap, Glazier provides a straight-forward, yet significant solution: rapport. The author shows the positive influence that human connectedness in digital learning spaces has on student...