I am an online university instructor. Well. It’s one of the things I do.
The most overlooked place to connect with students and build relationships is in the grading feedback.
A rule I use is I, you, and we. Let’s look at it in action, shall we?
Suppose the student submitted an assignment. And it’s off the mark completely. I could say, “You were completely off the mark here. Please go back, look at the instructions, and resubmit.” But see where the blame is. It forces the student to put his dukes up and defend. We want to avoid that.
Instead, we might say, “I did a bad job of explaining this one. When is a good time to meet so we can bump your grade up.” That puts the blame on me which, as the instructor, it should be. And then it moves to how we are going to fix it to help them.
But what if they did a fantastic job? In that case, we might say, “You did fantastic work on this assignment. You followed all the instructions perfectly. And I really like how you talked about X because of Y.” Praise is placed on the student where it belongs.
This is a leadership strategy I’ve used for years and it traverses the academic and business gorge well. I’ll bet you get more from your students (and people) using this strategy.