Communication

Instructor Presence and Communication

Instructor Communication Plan – At the start of a course, a clear communication plan establishes expectations for instructor-student interaction, including correspondence and feedback for submitted work.

Developing an AI Syllabus Statement for Your Course— It’s important to have a conversation with students regarding how you expect them to use (or not use) AI tools in your course.

Helping Students Get Started in an Online Class – Check out these strategies for communicating and establishing connections with students at the start of a new semester.

Humanizing Your Online Course — Learn some high-impact practices for building trust, awareness, empathy and presence, ultimately creating connection with students and positively impacting their success.

Perfectly Imperfect: On-The-Fly Videos – This article discusses how informal, quick, and conversational videos can convey important information and help develop more connections between instructor and learner.

Mid-Semester Check-ins — Learn benefits and best practices for sending out mid-semester course evaluations, see some examples, and consider how to use the results to improve your students learning experience for the rest of the semester.

Real-time Assessments and Check-ins – Learn how interactive tools can foster an active learning environment and enhance your students’ learning.

Providing Effective Feedback – Effective feedback improves students’ learning throughout the learning process.  This resource helps you to explore different options to find the best fit for the instructor or peer feedback for your content.

Use a Course Overview Template – Explain the purpose and structure of the course in a Course Overview document.

Use an Online Learning Expectations Template – Clearly communicate your expectations for behavior and participation in your online course.

Use a Syllabus Template – Provide clarity to students with a syllabus template that includes example language and required university policies.

Use a Welcome Letter Template – Let students know how to get started in your course by sending a welcome letter before the start of class.

Student Interaction and Community

Creating Community Online (Overview) – Promote social interaction to engage learners and maximize their online learning experience.

Course Introductions — Course introductions provide instructors with the first opportunity to connect with their students on a personal level. In this article, we will explore tools such as VoiceThread, Padlet, and forums, along with practical strategies for transforming course introductions into an engaging and impactful experience.

Netiquette – or Best Practices for Interaction Online – As more classes move online, having clear netiquette can help foster respectful and clear communication in an online environment.  Learn best practices for creating and establishing netiquette in your online courses.

Peer Review with Digital Tools – Feedback is a crucial part of learning but doesn’t only have to come from instructors.

Engagement in Synchronous and Asynchronous Environments – Explore ways to increase student engagement in synchronous and asynchronous courses.

Online Discussion

Tools for asynchronous discussions

Get Your Students Talking Online — This article offers a survey of four tools or platforms through which online students can interact with each other in an asynchronous setting: Moodle Forums, Perusall, VoiceThread and Yellowdig. After a brief description of the four tools, instructors who are using these tools share their goals, insights and reflections.

Discussion Forum Best Practices – Strategies for creating more effective asynchronous class discussions.

Get Your Students Talking with Yellowdig — Yellowdig is an online discussion platform designed to build community by inviting students to initiate discussion threads in which they connect their course material to real-world experiences, prior knowledge and their own ways of thinking. Yellowdig’s platform uses gamification principles to reduce grading pressure on instructors.

VoiceThread: Interactive Presentations and Student Discussions — VoiceThread is an asynchronous multimedia slideshow tool that offers diverse applications, including lectures, discussions, student presentations, reviews, and more.

Perusall: Interactive Reading Assignments – Perusall is a text-based social annotation/commenting/discussion tool that can help increase student engagement, build community among your students, motivate them to complete readings, and help them collaborate and communicate with each other.

Tools for synchronous discussions

Leveraging Zoom Tools to Facilitate Engagement – Explore tools and strategies to get the most out of your synchronous class interactions.

Using Breakout Rooms in Zoom – Use the Breakout Room tool to split up your students into separate Zoom meeting spaces where they can talk and work together.

Online Collaboration and Group Work

Group Work in Moodle: Introduction and Examples  — Moodle provides technical solutions for student submission of group work, online group discussion, and peer review.

Assessment and Evaluation of Group Work in Moodle – This article presents four different options or strategies for group work evaluation and provides pros and cons for each as well as resources that can help you apply the strategies.

Tips and Strategies for Successful Group Work — Planning an assignment or project to be completed by a group of students can raise lots of questions and concerns for an instructor. This article provides tips, strategies, and some tools that can make group work go smoothly.

Tools for online collaboration and group work

Digital Whiteboards for Teaching and Learning – A digital whiteboard can provide opportunities for collaboration between students and for student-to-instructor and student-to-content interactions.

Group Work With Digital Tools — Group work can be made easier with digital tools that offer valuable features for collaboration and communication, help streamline the process, and support productive group interactions in online and hybrid environments. 

Increasing Student Success Through Effective Task Management — Resources such as Google Workspace, Google Tasks, and other free programs offer various options to help students organize their time and achieve greater success in their studies. This article provides essential information and tools to make project and task management easier.

Using Breakout Rooms in Zoom – Use the Breakout Room tool to split up your students into separate Zoom meeting spaces where they can talk and work together.

Peer Review with Digital Tools – Feedback is a crucial part of learning but doesn’t only have to come from instructors.

Real-time Assessments and Check-ins – Learn how interactive tools can foster an active learning environment and enhance your students’ learning.

Increasing Student Success Through Effective Task Management — Resources such as Google Workspace, Google Tasks, and other free programs offer various options to help students organize their time and achieve greater success in their studies. This article provides essential information and tools to make project and task management easier.