Good communication is especially critical in a largely asynchronous online classroom where visual and aural cues are absent.
Welcome Page
Creating a welcome page for your course is important because it sets the tone and expectations for students in your course. In addition, uploading a picture or a video and a brief professional biography adds a personal touch to your course that enables students to “see” and to feel connected to you.
Course Schedule
Communicating a carefully planned course schedule enables students to work at their own pace and block out time for study in their busy personal and professional lives. This includes open and close dates for modules as well as any assignments, quizzes, exams, etc. for the entire semester.
Overview Page
Starting each module or instructional week with an overview page is particularly helpful to students because it gives them a snapshot of what activities they need to complete in the near-term. Typically, and overview page consists of
- An introduction
- Objectives
- Activities
- Assignments
Use the Dropbox tool in D2L to include all your instructions for course assignments and due dates. It’s important to avoid placing separate copies of instructions and due dates in multiple areas of the learning management system since it makes updates and maintenance from semester to semester more difficult to track. Multiple copies of assignment instructions also increase the likelihood of discrepancies among the copies.
Expectations
Good practice in communicating expectations for assignments also includes providing students with grading criteria such as rubrics, a sample assignment, and a file naming convention for assignment submissions. As part of an effective teaching and learning feedback loop, be sure to return the graded assignments, with any comments, soon after the submission due date, and let students know when they should expect to receive grades for their assignments. Timely feedback on assignments enables students to learn from their mistakes and gives them a chance to work toward successfully achieving the course outcomes.
Guidelines
For general or content-specific discussion posts, e-mail, chats, or Adobe Connect sessions, it is very important to include guidelines and expectations for participation. For example,
- How often should students post in discussions? Should their responses be “off-the-cuff” or should students include a little bit of research in formulating their responses? What happens if a fellow-student’s response is incorrect? Should students correct it? If so, what are some constructive ways to do so? Or, will the instructor correct wrong responses?
- When should students use e-mail rather than discussion posts?
- Are video chats formal presentations or are they informal opportunities to talk through some course material?
Fostering an Online Community of Learning and Inquiry
It is crucial for an instructor to coordinate and facilitate the dynamic interactions among students, faculty, and content when the course “goes live.” This includes being responsive to general and content-specific discussion forums, e-mail messages, and any just-in-time news feeds such as the announcements feature called “Course News” on the home page in each D2L course.
As an instructor you set the tone for interaction among students and faculty through the ways you respond to students in class discussions and e-mail. If you offer encouragement and ask follow-up questions to help students gain a better understanding of course material or case studies, for example, they will take your lead.
Setting up general discussion topics at the beginning of the course can be very helpful in creating a sense of community among online learners. A topic of student introductions helps “break the ice” and provides some professional and personal details that might spark connections among students and help create cohesive groups later in the course. Some instructors also include a separate discussion thread that is strictly social in nature. Some have called it Café Chat, Coffee Break, or Water Cooler. You may wonder why one would bother to do this. Such a discussion thread fosters social interactions, prevents off-topic comments in content-specific exchanges, and helps students begin their professional networks with their peers.
