Module 4: Communication
Communication is key to success in any class, of course, and that is especially true now as we are all moving through so many life/work transitions. High “instructor presence,” the feeling that you are still present in an online educational experience, is more critical now than it has ever been. Build your course with the idea of consistent online presence in mind. Liberal use of communication tools such as announcements, discussion board postings, and forums lets students know that you care about who they are, their questions and concerns, and you are available to do the mentoring and challenging that teaching is all about.
Here are some suggestions for facilitating effective communication:
- Check-in on your students periodically. During the week, we suggest checking your email and responding daily, so that you can address their questions quickly. Send encouraging announcements, reminders, and updates.
- Once their work is submitted, provide feedback as appropriate. Sometimes this feedback can be sent to the whole class as an announcement, just as you might in class. Other times, feedback should be sent privately. Click here for information on providing feedback on Word or PDF documents, discussion posts, and other items (such as test scores) in the gradebook.
- Set expectations of when you will and won’t be available and include them in your syllabus. You don’t have to promise a 24-hour turnaround for responses, but a 48-hour turnaround response time is typical.
- Notify students of your virtual office hours. You don’t need to be online all the time, but do plan regularly scheduled times throughout the week. Some language about your virtual office hours is available in this module under “Sample Emails to Students.”
- You can easily hold virtual office hours via Blackboard Collaborate, a real-time video conferencing tool that lets you add files, share applications, and use a virtual whiteboard to interact. If you decide to use Collaborate, direct your students to easy tutorials so they can quickly learn how to join an office hours session.
- Record a short video to promote instructor presence via Blackboard Collaborate. We created a tutorial on how to record video lectures.
- Create a Help Board. Consider creating an area where students can ask questions within Blackboard. This may prevent you from receiving the same question multiple times. See Classmate Discussions/Blackboard Discussion Board to find information about creating and managing different types of discussions in Blackboard.
- For ease of communication, faculty should use Blackboard and/or their UTEP-issued email address for class-related communication. By policy, the @utep.edu email address is the only acceptable email address to be used for UTEP business. Please see UTEP’s Acceptable Use of Information Resources policy.
Click Effective Communication above for more on faculty presence, video conferencing with Blackboard Collaborate Ultra and nettiquette.
We are accustomed to teaching face-to-face classes at a regular time and place; however, the shift to online learning provides new challenges and opportunities. While synchronous learning has some advantages such as maintaining a community with students in real-time, it requires strong bandwidth and careful planning. Issues with access to sufficient Wi-Fi, in addition to different time zones for students who have left El Paso, may cause some stress. For these reasons, we strongly encourage you to adopt asynchronous teaching as you continue to prepare your summer online learning activities.
Asynchronous teaching allows students to access the course and complete their assignments on their own time, usually with a regular weekly deadline, i.e. Thursday at midnight. An example of asynchronous teaching is recording a video that your students can watch at any time coupled with participation in a discussion board.
Synchronous teaching occurs when everyone meets in the same virtual space at the same time. An example of synchronous activities is having a live Blackboard Collaborate session at the same time that your face-to-face class usually meets.
If you would like to hold synchronous sessions for smaller groups of students, consider recording the sessions and make them available in Blackboard to ensure that students can view them at any time and without penalty. If students are expected to actively participate in a recorded live session, provide a notification about the recording and the option for students to opt-out. This notification can be provided in the syllabus, email, or Blackboard announcement. Keep in mind that not all students may have access to a webcam and microphone, and some may wish not to participate for various reasons.
Testing
Just like synchronous sessions, one should also be cautious about synchronous testing – such as activating an exam during a set time frame or using the “force completion” feature so students cannot save and continue at a later time once the test has started. Instead, we suggest allowing students 24 to 48 hours to complete exams. Flexibility (rather than high-stakes, rigid assessment choices) will reduce undue stress among your students who may be dealing with sickness, financial uncertainty, and uncertainty about the future.
Here you will find several email templates you may want to adapt for your classes. If you need assistance getting your students' emails, please see Retrieving Students Emails from Goldmine.