Fostering Student to Instructor Engagement Online
In a traditional face-to-face environment, this can be pretty straight forward. You lecture. Students take notes. They ask questions. You answer them. They write papers. You grade them and give feedback. But how does this interaction happen best online?
Four Keys
Students desire consistency and clarity. “What is due when? Where do I go in the course navigation? I’m confused, how do I gain clarity? Where are my grades?” There are ways in the online environment you can help mitigate these for a smooth learning experience.
A Little Work That Go A Long Way
- Provide your contact information in your syllabus – Clarify to the student what your response policies are and when they might expect a response. This may include your email, phone number, online office hours, etc. This helps the student feel a sense of connection and commitment from you to them.
- Create one solitary discussion thread called, “Assignment and Course Questions”. In your syllabus and in your “Getting Started” module, coach the students to put all questions there. This allows you to answer one question to all and mitigates you answering similar questions many times. You can then answer one question to many. Saves you time and provides an answer to the student with the question as well as all students.
- Weekly Recap/Vision. Students appreciate a quick recap and vision for each week to know where the course is heading. Creating a quick email and sending it through D2L every week helps the students feel connected to the course and to you. It also helps coach them on whether they are on track or not. You can also triple-publish this as an email, announcement and in your “Assignment and Course Questions” discussion thread. That way you know your students will see it. Consider going a step further and using your phone or computer to record a quick video recap and post it there.
- Timely and Accurate Feedback. Students want and need feedback. You know this in your face-to-face courses. The same is true online. One way to provide this efficiently is through the use of rubrics. This provides students with real time feedback and saves a lot of time on your end with extended feedback. We can assist with creating these rubrics for your course and offer ways you can get quality feedback to your students quickly.
Dig Deeper
If you would like to further explore this topic, here are some resources you could check out:
- Difference Between Face-to-Face and Online Lectures
- Guides for Productive Online Conversations [PDF]
- 8 Ways to Be More Inclusive in Your Zoom Teaching
SOIREE Team:
Design Lead: Sarah Wellman
Content Leads: Kate Sonka, Stephen Thomas, and Jeremy Van Hof
Content Authors: Jason Archer, Kevin Henley, David Howe, Summer Issawi, Leslie Johnson, Rashad Muhammad, Nick Noel, Candace Robertson, Scott Schopieray, Jessica Sender, Daniel Trego, Valeta Wensloff, and Sue Halick