Taking a Picture of Your Non-Virtual Workspace to Add Trust to Your Profile

Posted on 20. Dec, 2008 by Koichi in Teacher Tips, Work From Home

Over at Onlinesapiens (a great blog about online learning and Learning 2.0), Emapey shared a really interesting idea about sharing an image of your workspace in order to build trust. If you are teaching online (and I’m guess you probably are, if you’re on eduFire), then this might be worth a shot! This is one of those things that makes a lot of sense, but I can’t figure out why. Maybe one of our members has a past full of psychology, and can fill us in?

Here’s how I see it. An image of your workspace helps make the “virtual” a little more “real,” which puts a lot of folks at ease. The stuff we’re doing with online video learning is pretty new to a lot of people, and by adding a picture of your workspace, you become a little more solid and trustworthy to those who aren’t used to a virtual environment. I could be making this all up, but that’s my two cents on the issue.

What do you think? Do you think adding a picture of your workspace (versus, say, a picture of yourself) to your profile page would make a difference? If you want to give it a shot, remember that eduFire lets you add HTML tags (which means you can embed an image in your “About Me” description) to your profile. Here’s a little cheatsheet for those of you who are rusty / new to HTML.

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  • that's a cool way to boost someone's image. :)
  • hehe, a pun :) I love it
  • An interesting idea. I'm not sure that providing a picture like that would really bring a lot of credibility... a picture of yourself in the workplace space and/or a video would work better I'm thinking. Be interesting to see what others think about this idea.
  • Hey I have a past "full of Psychology". Ok, well a degree in it anyway. :)

    Although we're all different I think you got it spot on. Being virtual it's nice to actually see where you're tutor is sitting, see what s/he sees when they're teaching you. We all love the virtual aspect of what we do and the freedom it brings, but we like to have a 'real' grounding when we do something that really takes an interest. That's why when you make friends on the internet you swap photos and hey, it's why webcams are selling a storm. Aside from that we're curious creatures anyway right?

    Great idea! I'm going to do this after the holidays!
  • Indeed! Thanks for your professional insight :)

    Let me know if you get any comments about your picture, when you put it up!
  • Debbie H
    I had not thought about this before but it does make sense to me. I would like to see both pictures! By having not only a picture of your tutor but their work environment also, it would give the student a better picture of who is teaching them. Nice!
  • Yes , its really good idea for gaining trust. And this photo in the post ... working space is soo clean :P wish mine to be more often like that :)
  • Hehe, actually, this is messy for me. I like it a little more OCD, personally, but I was in a rush and had to take the picture :(
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