What is Interpersonal Needs

Becoming a caregiver for two elderly parents in a remote rural area with limited internet access while also teaching online increased the author's awareness of students' challenges and interpersonal needs in online educational modalities. She realized how often students' interpersonal needs, as well as teachers' needs, go unmet in the online classroom. Students' messages may be misread when they are reaching out to teachers in attempt to meet their interpersonal needs through the teacher-student relationship. She argues that online teachers would be wise to rely on William Schutz's Fundamental Interpersonal Relations Orientation to inform their interactions with students. Rather than dismissing students' sometimes clumsily sought or expressed needs, responding to their needs as one human being to another creates relationships that retain and strengthen students' resilience. Vulnerability as a teacher and exploration of our shared “humanness” in all roles within higher education leads to a conclusion that calls for more direct interpersonal contact between teachers and students, not less.