Whether you are teaching a face-to-face or an online course, you will want to create a sense of community for your students. Typically, the first day of a face-to-face class is spent reviewing the course goals and syllabus as well as doing introductory icebreaker activities.   You can use one of two online tools – VoiceThread or Glogster – to create this interactive icebreaker activity.

There is a direct correlation between the success of the students and the greater the sense of community, which is supported by countless articles about the importance of a classroom community.  If the students feel comfortable in the classroom—virtual or physical – they will succeed, making the learning environment more enjoyable for everyone.  One of the biggest complaints from students about online courses is that the class is boring or there is not enough interaction. They do not feel connected to either their peers or their instructor, and without that connection, they struggled to understand the course material.  For a majority of students, their entire education has been in a formal classroom setting where they have frequent, if not daily, direct contact with both their peers and their instructor. An online environment for many students feels foreign and devoid of this interaction.

Fortunately, there are two great web-based resources which will allow students to easily create interactive multimedia projects – VoiceThread and Glogster.  When evaluating these two services, you will want to communicate with your institution’s instructional technology support staff to find out if there are any institution-specific limitations for either service.  At least one of these options should be available for you to use.

Glogster (http://edu.glogster.com)

You can have students create a glog prior to the first day of class to introduce themselves. If your classroom supports technology, each student could present their glog to the rest of the class. You could also have them add a link to the glogster in the discussion forum and build a response assignment where other students need to go into the discussion forum and ‘meet’ each other. This really helpful for getting over the first day jitters and can help identify some areas of common interest for the students. The students can decide to use pictures of themselves or use a picture that represents some of their favorite things. This flexibility will respect any privacy concerns the students may have but still allow them to be creative and introduce themselves to fellow students. There are also privacy settings within Glogster that will allow the published glogster to remain private so that it is only shown to their classmates and not the Internet world.

VoiceThread (http://voicethread.com/)

Similar to Glogster, students can use VoiceThread to introduce themselves and embed videos and sound.  The web-based VoiceThread allows for students to not only create their own VoiceThread, but it also has built-in online collaborative tools that will allow for interactive feedback. You can also create a response and feedback component for this that allows students to ‘meet’ each other.

Giving the students this opportunity will help start the year off right and will allow you the opportunity as an instructor to learn more about the students and their creativity. It’s also a great way for you to introduce yourself to the students as well.