Communicate Often

Create a communication plan.

• How do you plan to communicate to students? (e.g. Announcements forum, Moodle Quickmail)
• How often will you send out regular communication? (e.g. weekly, every Tuesday and Thursday)
• Once you have a plan established, share it with students.

Ideas for what to include in your regular communication

• Remind students of upcoming assignments and due dates.
• Provide a progress update – what have the students done already, and where are they going from here?
• Highlight accomplishments.
• Provide tips that will help overcome misconceptions.
• Let students know when you have graded their assignments.

Set clear expectations

• Make sure that students understand how to interact with the resources and activities you provide.
• When are assignments due?
• How will assignments be graded?

Be Present

• Create and interact in discussion forums
• Incorporate videos that you create
• Lead synchronous class meetings via Zoom
• Hold office hours via Zoom
• Provide assignment feedback quickly

Provide Interactive Spaces

• Introduction Forum – create a forum for students to introduce themselves to one another. This is vital for a Q4 course, but it could be helpful for semester-long courses as well. Students may not know all of their classmates in their face-to-face classroom, so an Introduction forum can be a great place for students to know more of their classmates.
• Course Support Forum – create a forum that provides a place for students to ask questions about content or assignments that can be answered by the instructor or other students
• Prayer Requests – create a forum for students to share prayer requests with each other
• Social Discussion (Just for Fun!) – create a fun forum where you pose a question to the class. For example, what is your new favorite pass time now that we are practicing social distancing? Post a description, photo, or video.
• Group Discussion Forums – for larger classes, separate discussions into small groups
• Collaboration Tools – encourage students to use real-time collaboration features on Office365 or Zoom
• Peer Feedback – create learning activities that encourage peer feedback
• Group Projects – group projects are still possible. Student can collaborate using Office 365 products (Word, PowerPoint), create presentations together using VoiceThread, or meet via Zoom

Resources

Inside Higher Ed: Professors Share Ideas for Building Community in Online Courses

EdSurge: How to Build Meaningful Community for Online Learners #DLNchat

eLearning Industry: 6 Tips To Build A Thriving Online Learning Community

University of Minnesota: Engage Students with Online Discussions

Building Community at a Distance (39:26)

This webinar was conducted by the Online Learning Office in July 2020.