Today’s discussion focused on strategies for good communication with your students outside of class, These strategies can be effective for those teaching face-to-face, online or hybrid classes.
Strategies
- Have the entire semester planned and as much information posted on Blackboard as you can.
- Even though you might have distributed your syllabus and posted in on Blackboard, it is helpful to give students an overview of what will be taking place in the course for any given week. For example, post an announcement stating the reading for the week, and reminders of any assignments that are due or upcoming exams/quizzes.
- Discussion Board is another way to get students “talking” and engaged with the course content
- limit responses to two-three sentences so you can read the entire discussion
- discussions that ask students definitions don’t really lead to many responses. Design a discussion that requires students to apply topics to their lives.
- request that students post their own response and then respond to one or two other students.
- if the discussion is graded, make the grading rubric available to students so they know what a good response entails.
- if you want your discussion to be student centered, let students know you will not be responded until a particular point. For example, you will only join the discussion if there is a misconception that needs to be clarified. However, students should be aware that you are reading the posts.
