Establishing a discussion and response criteria.

Purpose of Establishing Communication & Interaction Expectations

There are so many options for communicating  and interacting online, that it would be helpful for students to know how you prefer to be contacted, how to interact with peers, and how often they should be checking in to Canvas and other related course learning activities. This can help create a sense of structure and certaintly about how to work within the online environment.

[To-Do]

1. Establish your communication and interaction expectations. (examples below)
2. Communicate to your students about these Communication and Interaction Expectations at the beginning of your course in several areas. For example: send in and email, post in Start Here module, add them into your Syllabus).

Example Expectations

• Be clear about how and when you plan to check for questions from them.
• Set established office hours.
• Set established times you will check into your course for communications.
• Let students know how you prefer them to contact you for questions or concerns. Do you prefer email? or would you like to set up -one-on-one Zoom meetings if they want to go over something with you? or, will you hold drop-in Zoom office hours during established times? 
• What is your turn-around time for getting back to them?  Will you get back to them within 24 hours? or is it  within 36 hours but M-F only?  
• Let them know how often you will use the Announcements feature. (Will you post announcments at regular intervals, such as at the beginning of each week? Every 3 days?) You can use announcements (as at least one form of communication) to communicate what they should be working on that week, and any changes that have been made to any of the class activities. 
• You could also have a Discussion topic built in to your modules for for each week (or per learning unit). Examples: after a lecture or learning activity, post a few questions for the students to respond to or reflect upon.   

Establishing realistic timeframes and boundaries: Sometimes there is an expectation from students  that since it is online you will be available to them 24 hours a day 7 days a week. This is not realistic. This learning format may be very new to them, and so expectations around turnaroud communcation time is important to communicate to them about. Set some boundaries for yourself so you aren't checking your course too often. Just as an example, you could set a scheduled time to check into your course for communications M-F between noon and 2p. 

Communication Tool Options

• Inbox in Canvas 
• LWTech Email
• Phone (Please do not give your personal phone number out. If you do have a college extension, you can work with IT to have that forward calls to your phone.)
• Zoom (group or one-on-one meetings)
• Discussion boards
• Announcements

As stated above, communicate which tools you will be using in your course for communications, and your guildelines for when and how you will be using them with your students.