Communicating Expectations
Clearly express your expectations of your student’s interaction online. For example, if you are using discussion groups, let them know how often you expect them to post a message or how many messages they should post. Students are busy, just like teachers, and it is important to let them know what is expected from the beginning and how their online interaction can benefit them. If students are not engaging in the way that you expect them to, contact them and remind them of your expectations of the value of engaging and interacting with their peers. Often, students do not see the value in interacting with peers so you may have to provide some extrinsic motivation such as points for participating in forums, asking students to submit their best 3 posts for grading, or making a clear link between interacting with their peers and their assignments (e.g. they need to draw from the online discussions when writing a report). It may take time for students to begin to value that interacting with their peers has on their learning so you need to support their motivation and make it clear why they should spend time interacting with one another.
Communication is the Key in Learning
For additional information, please read Tanya Joosten’s post, Communication is the Key in Learning: Recommended sections are:
- Communicating Expectations
- Communicating to Build Connections to Learn
Facilitate, Facilitate, Facilitate
Your role is to facilitate interaction among students. Below are few things to keep in mind:
- Be the guide on the side. Instead of dominating discussions, steer students’ conversations so that they learn to learn from one another rather than rely on you for all information.
- Acknowledge students’ activity or contributions online. For example, once in a while, send a message acknowledging students that have made helpful comments to others or summarize the key points arising from a discussion. This shows that while you may not be actively engaging in their discussions, you are reading their contributions. If you have a large class, a tutor could help with summarizing the discussions. Use students’ names where possible in your summaries. This personalizes the messages and if you often change the names of students’ whom you refer to in the summaries, it helps students feel that their contributions have been seen and acknowledged personally.
- If you are having synchronous discussion online, try to use break out rooms so that students have an opportunity to discuss in small groups. Students may feel intimidated discussing in a large class, and break out rooms in Zoom or Adobe Connect (or any other virtual classroom technology that you use), can help them share ideas with peers.
Additional Reading
Crosslin et al. (2018). Creating Online Learning Experiences, Chapter 5: Effective Practices. The recommended sections are:
- Clear Communication
- Types of Communication and Interaction
- Humanizing Online Learning
- Synchronous Interactive Sessions
- Dealing with Student Issues
Crosslin et al. (2018). Creating Online Learning Experiences, Chapter 11: Social Learning:
- Designing for Social Learning
- Social Networking Websites
- Diversity in Online Courses
- Safety Issues and Codes of Conduct