5.3 Increasing contact and communication - principle 1 - promising

Plan frequent and diverse communication opportunities

It is important for students to know that you are active and care about the activities and communications within the course. This means responding in a timely manner to individual communication and to group communication activities. It also means making your presence (often known as teaching presence) known by providing individual and group feedback in a variety of ways.

Use a regular cycle of reminders

Individual communications with students

We have also found feedback to be a powerful mechanism to shape learning and to create positive relationships between the instructor and students. Frequent feedback can serve to encourage students, especially if you communicate that you care about the learning and clearly identify applications of the learning to real world examples.

Tip

Create a chart to manage your communication plan and to track your interactions with students. List your students and then make columns for individual, small group, and large group communications. To track, all you need to do is put a checkmark in the appropriate spot. Our suggestion is to use Announcements and the Discussion Board for most large group communication. Individual communication can be feedback on assignments, email, and responses to posts on the discussion board. Small group communication is best accomplished using the Groups feature in Blackboard.