Conceptualising and building trust to enhance engagement, achievement and feedback-seeking behavior of under-served students: exploring instructor antecedents in online tertiary education

Online educators must establish the kinds of trust that are uncommon in didactic, mechanical pedagogies. This conceptual paper asserts the importance of building and sustaining trust between higher education students and their instructors within the online environment. Instilling trust can construct sustainable learning environments that are abundant with collaborative inquiry and dialogue. The themes explored in this paper highlight and investigate the conceptual construct of trust and its antecedents. We address the nature and purpose of interpersonal trust in student/instructor relationships within online higher education institutions. We also explore several factors (in particular, performativity, casualisation of teaching staff, neoliberalism, non-traditional student identities and the digital divide) which influence the development of trust. We investigate the role of trust in influencing student feedback-seeking behaviour, engagement and achievement, in terms of attainment of academic goals. Notably, we highlight the importance of further inquiry into methods of rapport-building in higher education. Theoretical foundations have been drawn from Indigenous scholarship as well as organisational and socio-psychological literature. We close by welcoming further discussion of and reflection on institutional practices and performance measures in the digital environment and whether they allow instructors to embed relational aspects and elicit cognitive and affective trust from their students.