The ATA Chronicle - March/April 2020 - 16

TRANSLATION AND EMOTIONS: KEYS FOR EFFECTIVE
ONLINE INSTRUCTION AND COLLABORATION continued
interpretation and reformulation of
students' ideas.5

Socio-affective strategies involve stimulating learning through
establishing a level of empathy between the student and instructor.

incorporate these strategies in their
virtual classrooms successfully. These
strategies are also transferable to a
professional virtual work environment.

communication can help develop this
atmosphere include:
■	

Increased effectiveness in day-to-day
communication. The availability of
electronic media allows the instructor
to respond and initiate conversations
quickly and regularly.

■	

An increased perception of the
instructor's availability on the part of
the students. Communication outside
the traditional schedule of a faceto-face course creates a sensation of
constant attention and contact.

■	

Increased opportunities for shy
students, who might not feel
comfortable in an open classroom
forum, to speak to the instructor and
ask questions or express doubts.

CREATING COMMUNICATIVE
PROXIMITY
Socio-affective strategies involve
stimulating learning through
establishing a level of empathy between
the student and instructor. This can be
done in a variety of ways.
Enhancing the Instructor's Social
Presence: For students to feel the
instructor's presence, the instructor
has to be "visible," which in a
virtual environment usually requires
some type of action. Technology
allows the instructor to create what
Rebecca DiVerniero (a lecturer in the
Communication Studies Department at
Christopher Newport University) and
Angela Hosek (the director of Emerson
College's Communication 100 program)
call "a dialogical atmosphere."4 Three
ways in which computer-mediated
16

The ATA Chronicle | March/April 2020

An instructor might also choose to
create their own social presence by:
■	

Focusing discussions on specific
problems. Donald Kiraly, who taught
in the School of Applied Linguistics
and Cultural Studies at Johannes
Gutenberg-Universität Mainz in
Germany, calls this appropriation

■	

Including additional information from
external sources.6

■	

Scheduling synchronous activities
(virtual meetings).

Students in synchronous courses
usually rate the instructor's presence
higher. Synchronous virtual meetings
also emphasize the existence and
identity of the group and its members
in a more tangible way. In many cases,
these meetings are the only opportunity
for students to have a real-time
conversation with their classmates and
the instructor. Therefore, they play a
prominent role in the socio-affective
well-being of the class. However,
students who are unable to participate
in a real-time meeting (due to time
zone differences, work, or family
responsibilities, etc.) can feel left out.
Therefore, it's important to organize
synchronous meetings at different times
to give everyone the possibility
to participate in the discussion at
least once.
Creating Communicative Proximity:
Research in the field of communication
provides ways for the instructor to
create a sense of psychological closeness
or communicative proximity in a
virtual classroom by means of physical
and verbal behaviors that reduce the
psychological and physical distance
between individuals. In a traditional
classroom environment, physical
behaviors include eye contact, smiling,
and leaning in during conversations
with students. Students who notice
such behavior on the part of their
instructor tend to report feeling more
motivated and perceive their instructor
as more reliable.7 In order to create
such proximity in a virtual class, the
instructor can use:
■	

Video recordings so as to include the
gestural components of language,
such as the feeling of a direct gaze.
Such an effect can be achieved by
filming the instructor in an informal
environment while they look
directly at the camera. A smile and
open gestures can also shorten the
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