Using your Announcements tool is an excellent way to keep the class on track. As stated previously, it is important that you let students know how you will be using this tool early on so that the expectation for frequency is established. The Announcements area, also known as Course News, is an area where you can regularly keep students informed of the course content, any changes to the schedule, opportunities for synchronous meetings, or opportunities for engagement outside the classroom (e.g. events, job opportunities, or speakers).

When using your announcement area to discuss the week’s upcoming assignments and activities, you have the option to link directly to other parts of the course such as quizzes, discussions, articles, and webpages.

Check out this link for instruction: Inserting Links into Course News.pdf

Video: Announcements - Create an Announcement - Instructor

In the online classroom, you aren’t able to walk students through assignments and modules one-on-one in the same way you would in the traditional face-to-face classroom. A consequence of this is that you have to present students with a lot of material in a specific sequence (e.g. readings, then a presentation, then a video, then an assignment). We then expect students to understand and follow that sequence to appropriately receive and interpret the information in the way we intended. This scenario can become overwhelming for students and difficult for instructors to convey. One tool that can help with this is the use of infographics to lay out workflow and instructions.

Infographics are instructional devices that support student performance through the visual representation of data or information. The word “infographic” is the modern term for a long-established teaching tool, the visual aid. Why are infographics important to learning? People forget stuff. Visual aids like infographics allow students to review information on demand. Repeated exposure to information helps embed the memory in the brain. Visuals help increase information retention. Instructors can increase a student’s retention of information by combining text with related visual content (dual-coding). According to Medina (2008), students can recall 65% of the information after three days if relevant visuals are added to the textual content. Dual-channel processing is also efficient. Textual content processed with relevant visual content reduces cognitive load (Mayer & Moreno, 2003).

There are several tools available to easily create an infographic for your students. Two such tools include Piktochart and Canva. These sites offer free templates to get you started. From the template, you can include your own original textual content and add icons using free sites like The Noun Project.

While the tendency is to think of the classroom as existing on the student’s computer, often students are using their phones to check the course, communicate, and perhaps even to do research. It is true that social media offers opportunities for interaction and synchronous communication, but these platforms have several pitfalls such as the inability to keep student’s personal information confidential. Instead, there are some fun and efficient ways that you can communicate in real-time with students by phone while maintaining an academic, relatively anonymous environment.

The Remind and Bloomz text services allow instructors to communicate with one, several, or all students by text without sharing phone numbers or other personal information. The services are free and have an app that students can install on their phone (though the texts will also show up in your student’s email box if they link it). Services include the ability to schedule text announcements (e.g. Don’t forget to reply to your group members in the discussion area by 10pm tonight!), send attachments (e.g. photos, handouts, and files), send office hours quickly, get “read receipts,” and facilitate group discussions. These particular tools were designed with teachers and students in mind, so the functionality is very user-friendly and aimed at improving student-instructor communication. The major difference in the two is that Remind is aimed more at older students while Bloomz is aimed at K-12. Both have features that the higher education instructor will find useful.

Introductions to these services can be found here:

Video Link REMIND

Video Link BLOOMZ

Online office hours can be synchronous or asynchronous. Holding office hours in a synchronous or live format requires the instructor to utilize programs such as BB Collaborate or a third-party program like Google Hangouts, WebEx, or Skype. In such a session, an entire class can attend the office hours to get extra help on the week’s material and can ask questions. In a large class, however, this may not be a tenable option. Instead, instructors may choose to field questions in advance and then answer those questions during the designated office hours. This method is less interactive but more organized than using the office hour time to gather questions and try to keep up with the flow of questions in real time.

There are some programs, such as Piazza, that help stem the flow of questions and ensure that questions are not duplicated. Piazza allows students to direct questions to the entire class, just the instructor, or the instructor and class. Then, answers can be published to the whole class and when questions come up again, a hyperlink to previous conversations can be provided to help alleviate duplication. The same methods can be used in the online classroom Discussion area, but it is less refined than the Piazza platform and not as easy to navigate and search for questions and conversations.

If you choose to hold your office hours synchronously, keep in mind that students expect flexibility in their online classroom and may appreciate a poll asking when they can meet, changing the times/days of office hours each week, or breaking office hours up into multiple short time slots throughout the week (Lowenthal, Snelson, & Dunlap 2017). Further, you should anticipate making the online office hours session available later to students who could not participate live. As Bailey and Spezzo (2018) point out, “studies have shown that while students would utilize synchronous virtual office hours, their preference was actually for a means of asynchronous communication, such as email or possibly discussion boards (Li, Finley, Pitts, & Guo 2010). The key being that with those asynchronous means of communication, students prefer to know a reasonable estimate of when they can expect to see a response. By setting aside a specifically scheduled time to read and respond to communications, an instructor is moving communication on a discussion board or via email from just an ordinary communication to a type of asynchronous virtual office hours.”

Operating successfully in the online environment as a student requires a great deal of self-discipline and dedication. As such, online classes often have “ghost students” who simply seem to disappear from the classroom. These students can easily fall behind and have difficulty catching up. When students are not logging in, have missed turning in a major assignment, or have low averages, communication with the instructor is critical for the student’s success. While it seems simple, reaching out via email, placing a personal phone call, or setting up a personal online office hour appointment with an at-risk student may make a marked difference in the student’s ability to retain and succeed in the class. Such intervention can help the instructor identify the challenges the student is having and lead them to resources such as technical support, tutoring, or help sessions.

Bailey, E. & Spezzo, V. (2018). Stop and Consider: Virtual Office Hours. On Teaching and Learning @ Georgia Tech: Georgia Tech Center for Teaching and Learning. Retrieved from http://blog.ctl.gatech.edu/2018/06/25/stop-and-consider-virtual-office-hours/

Li, L., Finley, J., Pitts, J., & Guo, R. (2010). Which is a better choice for student-faculty interaction: synchronous or asynchronous communication? Journal of Technology Research, 2, 1-12.

Lowenthal, P. R., Snelson, C., & Dunlap, J. C. (2017) Live synchronous web meeting in asynchronous online course: Reconceptualizing virtual office hours. Online Learning, 4 (21), 177-194.

Mayer, R. E. & Moreno, R. (2003). Nine ways to reduce cognitive load in multimedia learning. Educational Psychologist. 38, (1), 43-52.

Medina, J. (2008). Brain rules: 12 principles for surviving and thriving at work, home, and school. Seattle, WA: Pear Press.