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The interaction between faculty and students can be used to provide the guidance, support, and feedback essential for acquisition and retention of knowledge and skills. Meaningful interactions can also stimulate and sustain learner motivation and engagement. Please review the following topics and reflect on the difference between faculty-student interaction and faculty-student communication.
Understanding Department of Education Regulations
Department of Education Regulations require all courses to include “faculty initiated, regular and substantive interaction.” Faculty-initiated interaction is key to managing an environment that fosters learning.
Without the proper technologies or appropriate interaction, an online course could be declared as a correspondence course and eligibility for financial aid could be called into question. For a detailed interpretation of the ruling, including answers to the question, What are the elements of “regular and substantive interaction”? you may wish to visit the following article developed by the Director of Policy and Analysis for the WCET- WICHE Cooperative for Educational Technologies, and the Associate Vice President of Higher Education Policy and Research for Blackboard, Inc., “Interpreting what is Required for Regular and Substantive Interaction”
Initial Communication
Instructors in an online environment establish the tone for course communication through the initial email and course announcement, so it is helpful to keep these communications upbeat. The first three weeks in an online course (or any course, really) are critical in terms of setting expectations, building confidence and enthusiasm, and fostering a positive learning environment. Well-designed communication documents can reduce the amount of time you spend responding to student questions about your course and can prevent student frustration and misunderstandings that cause them to give up or fail to participate appropriately. In this topic, you will have an opportunity to leverage the experience of previous instructors in the form of examples and communication templates.
Effective online communication between you and your students begins even before the first learning activity.
- The initial email welcomes students, introduces them to the online learning environment, clarifies expectations, and sets a tone for the class.
- A welcome announcement on the initial landing page that students reach when they log into the class directs them to activities to begin the course and starts them on the road to success.
Crafting an Effective Initial Email
eCampus Center asks all online faculty to send a start-up email to the students enrolled in their online classes. This initial email clarifies such logistical matters as when your class begins and what students need to do to be ready to learn — which also helps your course design to meet Quality Matters Standard 1.1: Instructions make clear how to get started and where to find various course components.
Your initial email should include the following:
- Welcome to students in a friendly tone
- Date/time when course site will be available
- Specific criteria for administrative drops, if such drops apply to your course
- Summary of time budgeted/allotted for successful participation in the course and expectations about pace (or refer to syllabus)
- Reminder to obtain the course textbook(s)
- Summary of minimum technology and skills needed (or link)
- Location of syllabus and schedule
- Information for contacting the instructor
- Information for logging in
- Instructions regarding educational access accommodations
PLEASE GO: The eCampus Center website provides more detailed descriptions of what you should include in your initial email to students, along with an example. The second link will download a template that you can adapt for your course.
eCampus Center Initial Email help page
A template email based on the guidelines from the eCampus Center is available for you to customize. We recommend sending your email from the Announcements area in Blackboard and have included a template for the email in your master course site for your revision and use.
Template-Example Initial Email to Students
Writing a Welcoming First Announcement
The Announcements page in Blackboard is typically the first area students see when entering a course. At the beginning of a course, a welcome announcement is a key piece to introduce the course and share explicit directions on how to begin the class. An effective welcome announcement can include some of the information from the initial email, but the announcement generally takes a more philosophical tone. For instance, you might include the following:
- A statement about your own enthusiasm for the subject matter covered in the course.
- Your teaching philosophy and expected teaching methods, which should reflect a high level of enthusiasm and excitement for teaching the course.
- What you think students should do to best benefit from the course.
- A statement regarding students’ responsibility for learning and your confidence in their ability to learn, which again should communicate a high level of enthusiasm for working with students.
A welcome announcement was created for you in the online course template that we imported into your Master course shell. We include the announcement here as well as a few examples from which to draw ideas. Feel free to use what you wish.
Template-Examples Welcome Announcements
Customizing the Getting Started Activities
As you saw earlier in the seminar, the Quality Matters rubric includes several standards for designing an effective course overview and introduction. In the online course template that we imported into your Master course shell, you may have noticed that some Getting Started learning activities have already been included in Module 01. We built these Getting Started activities to save you time and effort in creating a place in your course that helps students get started, and do so successfully. Several items require your involvement to customize the messaging for your particular course.
This page describes the purpose and options for the Getting Started activities, and offers alternative Ice Breaker Activities to the Introducing Yourself Activity on the discussion board.
Getting Started Activities
The table below explains each piece of the Getting Started activities, a rationale for including the piece, and what you might do with it to make it appropriate for your own course context.
INSERT TABLE
Beyond Class Introductions
As mentioned in the table above, icebreaker activities can help students ease into the course/online environment and enable students to get to know one another – and you, the instructor. Creating an atmosphere that lends itself to community building is crucial during the first week of an online course; without the benefit of seeing other students face to face, students can feel isolated in an online setting.
Perhaps the easiest technique is to use the discussion board, which is why we provided a prompt in the Getting Started module of the online course template. However, you can go beyond a routine “Tell us about yourself” to change things up or to invite creativity.
In their book Engaging the Online Learner: Activities and Resources for Creative Instruction, Conrad and Donaldson (2004) suggest using the following checklist when designing an icebreaker activity:
- Is the activity fun and non-threatening?
- Is it person-focused, not content focused?
- Does it require learners to read one another’s entries?
- Does it require the learner to find something in common with at least 10% of the learning community?
- Does it require a person to be imaginative or express genuine emotions or openness?
- Are learners required to respond to one another?
An “Introducing Yourself” activity was created for you in the online course template that we imported into your Master course shell. Feel free to adapt this activity or substitute with another as you prefer.
PLEASE CHOOSE: Review any of the following for more information and ideas:
Icebreakers – An article by Virgil E. Varvel for the Illinois Online Network that explains what an icebreaker is, why it is important to include one in an online course when to use an icebreaker, and considerations when creating icebreakers
Icebreaker Ideas – A definition, rationale, types, tips, and techniques, from the Teaching with Technology wiki site
Top 10 Icebreakers for Adults – Suggestions from Deb Peterson on the About.com site for education
Beyond Icebreakers – A list of suggested activities by Lisa Bathe
Continuing Effective Communication
In addition, you will want to continue to foster the sense of community that you worked hard to introduce at the beginning, because the community doesn’t just happen. If you like several types of icebreaker activities from the suggestions listed above, go ahead and post one or two more later in your course! The fun stuff doesn’t have to be limited to the first week.
PLEASE GO: Read through the following list of suggested points of contact (plus additional tasks), organized according to what instructors must do before, during, and at the end of an online course. The list is further categorized by the four roles of an online instructor. The list was created by the California State University Center for Distributed Learning:
Assessing Online Facilitation Instrument
By the way, the list you just explored is one of the many resources that we include in another professional development offering from eCampus Center. The eCampus Teaching Online Seminar (eTOS) gives guidance to faculty who have a course developed and now want to learn best practices for teaching the course. Taught by Boise State faculty, the eTOS seminar is six weeks long. If you are interested in participating in the next offering, contact the eQIP Coordinator (eQIP@boisestate.edu or 208-426-4223).
Create a Communication Plan for Your Course
Please review the Sample Communication Plan and complete your own communication plan using the provided Communication Plan Template.
Hosting a Web Conferencing Session
Web-based, synchronous (in real time) software is among the plethora of tools available to help you inform or engage students or provide for collaborative projects. In the Activities toolbox, you learned about two of the online meeting tools used at Boise State: Blackboard Collaborate, and Google Hangouts. Trying out the software yourself, with a number of people in the session, can help you determine whether you would like to use it with your students.
Blackboard Collaborate Ultra
Blackboard Collaborate Ultra is best used for course kick-off meetings, recording course lectures, holding class presentation activities, or virtual office hours. The features that make Collaborate attractive include its ability to accommodate a large number of participants, provide breakout rooms for discussion, and automate the recording of a live session. Custom settings are needed that allow Collaborate Ultra to be visible in your course Tools menu.
Google Meet
Google Meet (formerly Hangouts) are best used for small group meetings, collaborating on a shared document, tutoring, virtual office hours, and guest speaker presentations. With Hangouts on Air, you can simultaneously broadcast a hangout over a public connection via a link, and use Google chat to include participants “outside” the meeting space in the conversation. In addition to instructor-led sessions, Google Meet also works very well for student-to-student communication and student-recorded presentations. Google Meets are very easy to initiate. Screensharing is handy, but whiteboard activities require a little forethought. Recording a Hangout on Air is a little trickier than recording a Collaborate session.
Participate in a Demonstration
Your Instructional Design Consultant will conduct a demonstration of Collaborate and/or Google Meet/ Hangouts on your request. The demonstrations will include the following:
- An overview of the features of either web conferencing tool, (Collaborate or Hangouts) including how to show slide presentations, take students to external websites, and “push” students into breakout sessions, if possible
- A walkthrough of how to activate a Collaborate or Hangout session in your course
- An open-floor time to brainstorm or ask questions about use of synchronous tools
We encourage all participants to experience both web conferencing tools during the seminar so that you can get a sense of what they feel like with a number of people taking part.
Establishing an Online Meeting Time with Students
You can create a survey in Blackboard, or use the online tool, Doodle, to propose a few options, poll your students, and then select the best time for an online group meeting with students in your course. Due to the flexible nature of an online course, not every student will be able to attend. You don’t have to make your meeting optional, however. Some faculty require students who do not attend the live session to review the session recording.
OPTIONAL: As desired, review any of the following before the session: