Enabling communication among students is important because it allows you to reproduce any collaboration you build into your module and maintains a sense of community that can help keep students motivated to participate and learn.
Consider these suggestions when planning activities:
- Consider using asynchronous tools to support student engagement: Having students participate in live conversations is really important and can be great. But scheduling can be a problem, especially when everybody is at home, and just like a regular classroom student participation may be low. Consider supplementing recordings and live classes with asynchronous tools like Canvas Discussions or Canvas Quizzes to enable students to participate on their own schedules. In addition, bandwidth requirements for discussion boards are far lower than for live video tools.
- Link to clear goals and outcomes: Make sure there are clear purposes and outcomes for any student-to-student interaction. How does this activity help them meet course outcomes or prepare for other assignments?
- Build in simple accountability: Find ways to make sure students are accountable for the work they do in any online discussions or collaborations. Assigning points for online discussion posts can be time consuming for large classes, so some instructors ask for reflective statements where students detail their contributions and reflect on what they learned from the conversation.
- Balance newness and need: As with any changed activities, you will need to balance the needs and benefits of online collaboration with the additional effort such collaboration will require on everyone else's part. So, if there is no clear benefit from a particular tool, it may be best not to use it.
- Encourage students to engage and interact with each other: If students would like to connect with each other, Google Hangouts is recommended, which they can access by logging into using their @mycit.ie credentials. However, students may already have their own social networks established on various platforms such as Instagram, WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, Snapchat, etc. and they should be encouraged to continue interacting with each other on these platforms outside of class to support each other on their learning journey.
The following may also prove useful:
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Remind students that the following services are still available, albeit remotely:
- Thinking about the students: Three essentials in the move on-line a feature in the Campus Morning Mail an Australian independent newsletter
