What a cool title: “You had me at “Hello” – Maximizing the Power of QM Introductions”! This was the title of the session by Vicki Mason and Mary Amick for a 40-minute presentation at the April 2022 Quality in Action QM conference. Their goals were to define social presence and social capital to envision the potential of introductions and to identify tools for measuring social presence to gather data and assess success. They noted that QM General Standard 1.9 addresses the introduction to the course. The presenters dove into the literature and learned that social presence is “related to “the individual’s perception of how they feel in interaction with others” citing Kim 2011 p 764 and Lowenthal & Dunlap. Dr. Amick spoke about social capital and used Jensen & Jetten’s 2015 publication to define as “bonding social capital with co-students mostly enhanced students’ feeling of belonging and supported students retention” quote to support its importance. They shared research on the importance of belonging and its connection to retention. The three categories of prompts they came up with for introductions were: course-related, course-related fun, and just plain fun. Some of the important considerations they included were the level of the course, type of course… size. They clarified that prompts are often used for forums at the beginning of the course. A course-related prompt they liked was: “which of the Table of Contents are you most interested in and why?” The presenters spoke about balancing course-related content with student interest. Participants shared examples in the chat. One audience member spoke about having students share awkward moments in math. The last part of the presentation shared prompts that were just plain fun. The presenters shared the results of a survey they did. It was interesting to learn about the student responses and the importance of social capital. The presenters shared that the timing of the survey is important because the introduction prompts are at the beginning of the course. They thought they didn’t send enough reminders. The presenters shared that another study they read about used three reminders sent by someone else. The session’s presenters concluded that QM General Standard 1.9 is critical to students AND faculty/organization.
