Teaching online and within a course management system to students in remote mode is quite different.  The primary difference between the online teaching classroom and the classroom of the campus-based course is how students and faculty communicate and the range of tools that they use to communicate.

The communication tools that are a part of the course management system is the heart and soul of the online course community, such an important communication tool is the online discussion board/forum. Very simply, the discussion board is the primary place where faculty talk to students and students talk to other students. This is the place where students and faculty get to know one another; this is the tool that helps a widely dispersed group of students and faculty become a learning community.

In the online environment , students can thoughtfully add to a discussion from their own experience or cogitate on other student contributions. Research into teaching online is still in its infancy stage, but as an online faculty I presenting some of my experience based practices:

Apart for "being present" in the discussion forum multiple times, making our expectation very clearly and being helpful, using tones to communicate effectively in a discussion forum helps student better in their learning experience.

It is very difficult to communicate in different tones in written communication but it is very much possible to use different tones in our written communications.  As Online educator we always have adult students with families, jobs, travel etc in our online classroom, with technology very depend on weather conditions (like this winter) we have to empathize with the student and appreciate the effort and commitment to a great extent. Some of the techniques I use in online classrooms are:

• Empathizing and using a language of encouragement always even during a critique your feedback should encourage to the student to improve.
• Using verbal emoticons some time picture emoticons and phrases communicates the tone better.
• Using attractive punch words and punctuations helps communicate the tone in a better manner.
• When students are late in their submissions and are not engaging in the discussion using words that explains the policy of the university rather than pointing out a mistake of the student would help the student realize that it is important for him to be engaging in the forums in a regular basis.
• Informal communication and enquiries about weather and extremities on the cyber café helps the students to feel more comfortable and understanding.
• Encouraging and thought provoking feedbacks in the discussion promotes active learning.
• Asking questions and how they feel about another student's post/views can set the tone of a facilitator; it also enhances student engagement in discussions.

To conclude, the tone of our communication, in the discussion and interactions earns the trust of the student, making him/her more interested in the participating in the discussion. It important that our tone makes our students feel a "sense of community", this helps the student to engage frequently in discussion forums and also open up to more productive discussion and learning. This "sense of community" would motivate the students to freely discuss, deliberate and negotiate in discussion forums.