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Instructor Presence
Instructor Presence
Research suggests that the success a student has in a course can be directly correlated to a relationship with a helpful instructor.
"More than content, more than course design, you are the factor of an online course that has the greatest potential to help you students succeed."
- (Karen Costa, 99 Tips for Creating Simple and Sustainable Educational Videos)
How Can I Ensure I Have an Active Presence as an Instructor?
How Can I Ensure I Have an Active Presence as an Instructor?
Be in regular communication with students through the Announcements, Emails, and Task Board
Actively respond to students ideas and posts in the Task Board
Notify students of your availability and when they can typically expect responses to their questions.
Respond to students when they have questions.
Communicate how long it typically takes you to grade and return assignments. Be consistent with following through on these deadlines!
Reach out personally to students who are missing assignments, or are underperforming as early as possible!
Provide meaningful feedback personalized to each student's work.
Email Correspondence
It is best practice for instructors to check their email on a daily basis to ensure they are responding to student inquiries as soon as possible.
In an asynchronous course, recognize that students will be working on the course at different times. Most students will do the majority of their coursework during the evening and weekend hours. It is very likely you will receive emails with questions from students during the evening and weekend hours.
With that said, you may wish to provide students with times that you will typically respond outside of work hours. (e.g. check-ins on Sunday afternoons for any weekend inquiries). This helps students know when they can typically expect a response from you.
Student Check-ins
Beyond welcome emails at the beginning of the course, emailing students periodically throughout the course to check-in is particularly helpful.
You may wish to check-in with students to remind them of an upcoming due date or to send class wide feedback following the completion of an assignment.
Please remember that our courses move very quickly, particularly in the summer session which is only four weeks long. As such, instructors must be diligent in ensuring that all students are accessing course content and submitting tasks on a regular basis.
It is the responsibility of the instructor to reach out early on to students who have not accessed the course and/or are behind in the submission of assignments. Therefore, instructors must stay up to date on their marking and checking the 'Last Access' column. This ensures early intervention in catching any students who have not been actively participating.
If you are not able to reach a student via their Trent email, please contact the AQ office (AQ@trentu.ca) and we can provide you with an alternate email address.
Did You Know?
As an instructor you can check the last time a student was logged into the course. This is helpful when determining which students you may need to reach out to.
Under the 'Full Grade Center' you will see a column that says 'Last Access'.
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