In Practice: Regular Effective Contact among Students

From the Rubric

• Incomplete: Students have no or limited opportunities to interact with other student about course content. 

• Aligned: Regular effective contact among students is designed to facilitate interaction with and about course content. 

• Exemplary: The design and facilitation of student interaction is responsive to the variety of cultures and communication styles in the learning community. 

How to Implement

Provide students with opportunities to connect with each other and contribute to the learning community. Building such a community requires intentional moments of interaction and can be developed in various modalities: in person, remotely (ex: Zoom classes), or fully online asynchronous classes. Canvas comes with several outreach tools for students to connect with each other:

• Pronto: This Canvas-integrated tool can be found on the sidebar and allows students to quickly message their classmates about assignment questions, class material, etc. 

• Discussion Boards: A staple of online learning, discussion boards can be created for classes so that students can share out their ideas and observations with one another.

• Peer Review: Canvas includes a Peer Review tool that allows students to provide feedback for each other through a modified SpeedGrader page that instructors typically use. 

Additional Resources

• Article: Beyond Discussion Forums