Module 5: Student Contact

As an online instructor, it can be difficult to maintain communication with your students. We already covered the weekly email. This is essential for keeping your students on track, as well as increasing their participation. But there are other ways to include student interaction. You may find some of these useful in your class. It is important to note that no student will do all of these, and that you may only have a handful of students who participate in any one of these. You do not need to do them all. I would start with one or two, and add more if you like. Remember that you need to break it out for the students, explaining what the tool is, and how they would use it.

In this section, we will discuss:

• Responding to emails

• Creating introductory videos for your class

• Course discussion boards

• Facebook pages

• Twitter feeds

• Instagram accounts

• Padlet (streaming comments)

• Zoom

• Surveys (created in forms)

Email between yourself and your students is vital to creating that class bond. We already know the imortance of the weekly email. Your students may use email to ask you questions, comment or even to provide you with information that they found on the topic.

You can set up your own email response routine, and include it in your syllabus. Recommended is that you will respond within 48 hours. You can also state that you will not be responding on weekends. Whatever your policy, make sure that it is stated in the sylabus and that you inform them ahead of time. If you will be away for awhile, you should include a vacation responder that tells the sender that you are away and when you will respond. You can find that on your SDCCD mail account, under options. and then see all options.

You may hate the way you look, but don't you owe it to your students to face up to them, wrinkles and all, and introduce yourself? Nothing says "I love my job" more than an introductory video with you as the star. Or, if you are particularly brave, you can use videos as a way to teach your content. Videos can be easy to create and very effective as a teaching tool.

The key to these videos is to make them short and to the point. Even if you are using a video to teach an important concept, you should keep it under 10 minutes.

Recording:

You can record with your smartphone or tablet. You can also record using your webcam software, or a program downloaded to your device. My favorite for quick projects is SnagIt from Techsmith. As educators, you can get it for $29.95. Click here to see more. Jing is another option, also by Techsmith. This is free. Click here for details and to download.

Editing:

We have a school computer in the office that has Camtasia, a recording and editing tool. This is a wonderful program, allowing you to record the screen and/or yourself, add multiple sound tracks and add extra things like transitions and callouts. If you want to purchase a copy of your own, again as an educator, you can get a discounted version for $169. Click here to learn more.

Saving:

You can save your finished project as a video on your computer, but it is just as simple to use YouTube as your own video server. Your Google account offers you a YouTube page, and it is a great idea to use the same account that you have used for Sites and Drive. After it is saved on your computer, you can go to YouTube and upload to your YouTube account.

Captions:

Our videos must be closed captioned. This is required by state and federal law. That can be done after uploading to YouTube, and is done in the edit mode. You can listen to your presentation and type as you go along. The sound stops when you are typing and resumes when you are finished. Too busy to create captions? You can share your video with someone else who might do the closed captioning for you. Maybe a student? NOTE: Auto-captions generated by YouTube are often not accurate. Here are two videos which help explain the captioning process on YouTube:

• How to Access Your Auto-Generated Closed Captions On YouTube

• YouTube Captioning – Editing Automated Captions

One more thing: If you are just creating an audio file (like a podcast), you need to attach a transcript.

Sharing:

I recommend sharing your videos as unlisted. This means that someone needs to know the address of your video to view. This way, it can't be found by search. If you save as public, then anyone can find and use the video. If you make it private, you will have to approve anyone who wants to view it.

Uploading to YouTube:

If you are new to YouTube, review this beginners guide on how to upload videos to YouTube. https://lifehacker.com/5804501/how-to-upload-videos-to-youtube-for-beginners

Tutorial:

Instructor Meagan Albrant has created an excellent tutorial which explains in in a clear way the process of the weekly video, an excellent way to build community in an online class. Her tutorial can be found by clicking here. And don't miss the video (below).

In theory, course discussion boards cannot be beat. They offer a quick and easy way to correspond back and forth with your class. You can have a daily email to each student which summarizes what people have said that day on the board. Students can respond either on the discussion board itself or through email. You can embed the discussion board onto your course website so it is there for everyone.

There are options for discussion boards, but perhaps the best for our use would be the one built into your Canvas shell. It would be able to authenticate student participation, and not require any particular extra passwords or sign in requirements on their end, except of course, signing into Canvas.

It is free and easy to set up a Facebook group. You can make it private so that users have to be invited. For users who enjoy Facebook, this will be a seamless way to add them to the discussion. Here is a Facebook page that outlines how to set up a private Facebook group.

If you have Twitter users, you can set up your own twitter feed. For this, you will assign your class a special hashtag, such as #cwtsummer2022 . Then, you can post updates and comments, always remembering to add the hashtag #cwtsummer2022 When Twitter users enter that hashtag, they will be on your special class page. They can comment right on that page as well. Try it! Great tool if your class topic is in the news.

If your topic is more visual, you might want to include Instagram as an option. No need to set up a special account for this. Like Facebook, you can use hashtags to identify your class, and then add another hashtag to describe your picture. I taught a Brain Healthy class this summer. I encouraged students to post pictures of brain healthy activities. They were to include the hashtag #brainhealthysd and a hashtag which describes the brain healthy activity such as #walkingdogs .

A padlet is like a memo board. Users can click on the screen and comment. It couldn't be easier. That said, I've never been able to get the students excited about it. But I am still trying.

As teachers, you get a free account and up to 7 padlets at a time. You can delete some to add more.

Your padlet lives online on the padlet site, and can be accessed with a link. You canalso embed it into your course website.

Unlike the discussion board, where the student has to be logged into a Google account for it to show up on the course website, the padlet shows up on all of the student's websites.

Here is an example of the padlet link on the cloud site. And here is how it looks when it is embedded on a course website.

Go to the padlet site ( https://padlet.com) to sign up and begin.

Zoom is a web conferencing tool, very similar to Skype. I like it because you can set it up ahead of time, and you can always use the same address for the conference. And, users do not have to be a member to join your discussion. They only click on a link that you suupply them, which will download the Zoom app (the first time) and will then open in this app.

Zoom is free, and allows you up to a half hour session. This is actually a good thing because we don't want to make our sessions too long. When you sign up, you will get a personal meeting number which the students can use whenever they want to log in. Basically, your meeting room is open 24/7 even if you aren't there.

Zoom can be used for a group discussion, office hours, or a short lesson. You can record your session and post it on your website.

All faculty in the Community College community (that's all of us) can register for a free, professional Zoom account through sdccd-edu. Here is the information on how to get set up and use Zoom in your online class:

• Sign Up for your SDCCD.EDU account at https://sdccd-edu.zoom.us/

• Sign In to your ConferZoom account at https://sdccd-edu.zoom.us/

• Learn more about Zoom on the Zoom.us site: https://support.zoom.us/hc/en-us

If you will use Zoom, you should create a page on your course website that has the information to join a conference. On the Communicating with Technology site, you can see the Zoom page here.

We discussed creating a quiz in Module 4, Creating the Interactive Lesson. Quizzes are created under forms using your Google account. We described how to use settings to make a form a quiz. But you do not have to make it a quiz. You can instead, ask for reflections or feedback on a topic. You can then set it up so that students can see what others have written after they submit their comments.

Here is how to create a survey:

• Open your Google Drive account

• Go to your class folder that you created

• Click on New and then Google Form

• On this, you may choose not to ask their names (if it is particularly sensitive). There should be a line that the answers will be viewable by all.

• Include your survey questions. They will probably be paragraph answers, although you can use any type of question.

• When you are done, click on settings. Under general, click "see summary charts and text responses". Click save.

• When students then complete the survey, they can click view previous responses and see how others have responded.

HyFlex is a way of teaching a class in a location, while streaming to students at home. Although it is a little buggy, it is one way to teach to all of your students.

Some sites have a technology known as an OWL which can be used in the classroom. This is the easiest way to include HyFlex, as there is support staff available on campus. If you are interested, you can contact Program Chair Claudia Tornshaufer or Online Mentor Ingrid Greenberg for information.

There are many more ways that you can engage the students and create opportunities for contact. If you come up with anything which works for you, let us know!

Your final assignment, the one that will determine if you succeeded in the training, will include all of these aspects for one week's lesson. You will include:

• The weekly email (as discussed in Module 2)

• The handout in a PDF form (as discussed in Module 3)

• The online lesson and your course website (discussed in Module 4)

• And, on your lesson page or in some other manner, an additional method of student contact (discussed in Module 5).

Your assignment will be graded based on how well you fulfilled the criteria mentioned above.

To complete this assignment:

• Create the email and send it to me. The email should include the attachment of the lesson, plus links including one to the site so it can be viewed. Also make sure and include mention of your student contact in this email.