5 survival tips for managing the communication in your online course (part 2 of 3)

This is the second of a three-part series on managing the communication in your online course. In this section I will discuss the importance of setting proper (“realistic”) expectations from your students, extol the use of the discussion board over email as the main mode of communication in the class, and suggest introducing the occasional (and timely) live sessions.

2. Set the communication expectations

If you respond to students within 10 minutes of receiving their email, they will no doubt be impressed by your quick feedback, and you will be pleased with your quick turnaround. But what will their expectations for feedback be the next time that they have a question? I’m all for quick feedback and deleting one more message from my inbox, but one lesson I learnt early in my online teaching career is to be mindful of the expectations I am setting if I am “too” efficient with my responses. I feel awkward mentioning this because it seems counter-intuitive, but hear me out.

Some online instructors claim that they are reachable 24/7 and do their best to abide by that rule. I, on the other hand, would like to remain married to my beautiful wife. This, along with my physical and psychological well-being, would be seriously compromised if I tried to maintain a 24/7 schedule for my online courses. Therefore, I make a point to let students know at the beginning of the semester what they can expect from me vis-à-vis communication. For example, they can expect a response from me within 2 business days for questions (and I insist that they include the word “question” in the subject field so I can prioritize it), and within a week for returning assignments. This does not mean that I necessarily wait 2 business days to respond to student queries, but I do try to be strategic in pacing my feedback. For example, during a day that a quiz is due, I may respond to issues quickly because this will alleviate follow-up tasks (e.g., resetting the quiz due to a technical problem). On the other hand, a question about the final exam, which is two months away, can wait.

Furthermore, I find that if I fight the urge to instantly respond to email, the students will figure out the answer on their own (via the course outline or the discussion board), and send a follow-up email a few minutes later telling me to ignore their previous message. Otherwise, I try to set some time every work day (usually first thing in the morning accompanied by a strong coffee) to peruse through my inbox and/or the discussion board to respond to messages. I find that establishing my own routine helps reinforce the communication expectation and, at the same time, helps manage my inbox and schedule.

3. Encourage the use of the discussion board over email for questions

The discussion board is the most important communication tool in asynchronous online courses. I am convinced that the early introduction of the discussion board in my online course was the biggest contributing factor to the reduction in the volume of email I would otherwise get.

When a student raises his or her hand to ask a question in the classroom, the answer is heard by everyone present. Chances are that the question is one that others in the class also had, or would have at some point. The discussion board serves as a surrogate for these situations, albeit not in real time. This means that responses to questions are recorded and can be found by the students when they are needed, thus saving instructors from having to respond to the same questions via email. 

As an added bonus, since the discussion board can be set up to be open (non-moderated), students can respond to each other, thus further reducing the time for feedback. This welcome side-effect has not only contributed to the reduction of my email queries, but it has also reduced the number of discussion board postings I would otherwise have to respond to. That being said, it is important to correct erroneous information as quickly as possible (if and when it appears), and I also think that it is important to validate certain responses made by the students to show that the instructor is indeed following the conversations. I also admit that I have recruited a teaching assistant or two based on their performance in the course and their participation on the discussion board!

This is not to say that email is not a useful tool. I still use it to send out my mass messages since students are more likely to check their email regularly than the class discussion board. However, if students get in the habit of using the discussion board as the primary platform to pose their questions, then perhaps the response to their question already exists, or a conversation that would otherwise be private becomes available to everyone, and the speed of the response may be shortened significantly if other students are motivated to help their classmates. With that in mind, the challenge is to get students to consult the discussion board first and foremost when they have a question and to find ways to use that platform as the primary mode of communication. Techniques to promote the use of the discussion board will be the subject of another blog post.

4. Host a live virtual orientation session

Despite the fact that the course is delivered asynchronously, I highly encourage some sort of live presentation at the beginning of the semester (if possible). Granted, many students will likely not be able to attend due to scheduling conflicts (or apathy), but I have found that the opportunity to address them in a live setting and answer their questions about assessments, communication preferences, and online learning significantly cuts down on the volume of questions I would otherwise get at the beginning of the semester. As previously mentioned, I have identified the beginning of the semester as not only a rush hour for communication, but a time when I get many repeat questions. So the main reason for the orientation session is essentially to save me from answering the same questions over and over via email. This is no different than what transpires in the first class of a traditional setting where an instructor would normally go over the course syllabus and respond to student questions as they arise.

I am fortunate enough to have access to a live virtual class platform (Adobe Connect), so this is my preferred mode of delivery to host the orientation session, usually at the end of the first week of the semester. The session is announced via email prior to the start of the semester and it is listed in the course syllabus and class agenda. What I especially like about this platform is the fact that I can record the session and make it available for those who missed out by making the URL public and sharing it with the class.

In the case of my statistics course, given the nature of the subject, I prefer to host the occasional live office hour to answer problem-solving questions and to use the interactive whiteboard to demonstrate step-by-step solutions. It’s easier to draw the normal distribution than to write about it in an email! These sessions are usually scheduled a week prior to the assignment deadline, and I also use the platform to host an end-of-semester tutorial to walk students through some problem-solving exercises.

As for scheduling the live sessions, I have been making use of our Learning Management System’s (LMS) logs to see when students are most/least likely to be online (Figure 4).

Figure 4: Student traffic by days of the week and hours of the day

In my case, I have found that weekdays are better than weekends, and evenings are better than mornings or afternoons. I am also aware that many students prefer not to have classes on Fridays, so this is another option. In the end, knowing that I would not be able to accommodate everyone, I opted for Wednesday evening for the orientation session and early Friday afternoons for the office hours. As long as I have some sort of recording available afterwards, all students will have access to the same information.

Prior to having access to the live virtual platform I would conduct the same type of session via telephone conference call, and prior to that, I would actually reserve a classroom on campus and invite the students to come meet me in person. Because those sessions could not be recorded, I would record a video or audio introduction afterwards and post it on the course website (I use Audacity for audio recordings and CamStudio for screen recordings). The focus of such recordings would centre on the assessments (since this is at the root of the majority of the questions I would get) along with other major items from the course outline.  

This blog entry was the second of a three-part series on managing the communication in your online course. In the next and last segment, I will present tips to optimize the use of the common communication tools that you are already familiar with. If you are open to learning some new tools and techniques, I will suggest some free software that you might want to consider adopting to further enhance the effectiveness of your communication strategy.