Creating a Communications Plan-2

Having a clear communications plan at the start of a course can help students to understand when and how their faculty will be sharing information with them – as well as the proper avenues that they should use to ask you questions.

Establishing A Clear Communication Plan

It is important for faculty to have a clear communications plan upfront and to share it with their students. Just because an online course is available 24/7 does NOT mean that the faculty should be held to the same standard! Establish clear and specific times for when you will be available (including specific days when you will NOT be online in the course), how students should communicate with you (email, phone, office hours, etc.), and the expected turnaround time for when you will reply to emails.

For example, faculty may use weekly announcements to share information with the group, discussion posts to provide links to resources, and instant messaging to troubleshoot technical issues.

Communicate in Multiple Modalities

Faculty should also make it clear to their students what communication modalities they should use to ask different types of questions. Again, faculty might encourage them to post their technical or assignment questions on the discussion boards so that all students can benefit from the responses. Whereas personal questions regarding time off from school, or misunderstanding of content, should best be directed over email.

  • Text: 
    • Asynchronous content.  Canvas course landing pages and modules with text-based notes and presentation slides.  Digital textbooks and articles.  Idea: push those open access and open educational resources.  How about a FAQ page in your course that answers common questions that you receive over and over again? How about rich landing pages that push "Quick Start" content to students during week 1 or "Weekly Welcomes" that provide access to all relevant information to students for the week without the need to click down multiple levels.
    • Download Sample FAQ  |  Download Sample Quick Start  |  Download Sample Weekly Welcome
  • Video: Synchronous (live) sessions and asynchronous supporting content.  Record discussions of readings and assignment walk-throughs.  Post recordings of live sessions of all types.  Transcripts can be automatically generated.  
    • Zoom Security: Protect your sessions from Zoom Bombing and make sure you're following best practices for data security. Check out these resources:

    • Don't forget to schedule a captioner if you need one.  Do you know how to set captioners up in Zoom?  This needs to be done ahead of time: Click Meeting Settings tab from the Zoom navigation menu
      Scroll down until you see the Meeting Advanced section
      When you see Closed Captions, please enable the option. It may allow you to type/view/download closed captions or assign a participant/third party device to add closed captions.

      Notes: You can put a check mark in the Allow participants to save closed captions if you prefer.

  • Audio:  Synchronous and asynchronous content.  Podcasts can be short descriptions of concepts or an audio version of a video.  Consider a podcast version of your zoom recordings or 5 minute podcasts that describe key terms and concepts.
  • Instant Messaging: Synchronous communication.  Experiment with IM office hours to answer quick questions.  Zoom IM and many other applications have an IM feature.  
  • Email: Asynchronous.  Consider blasting information to students via Canvas Announcements.  Have you sent periodic emails out to the class to see how everyone is doing?  This lets students know you care!

Using Announcements

Faculty can leverage announcements to keep students in the loop about what is happening and coming up in the course. Providing a weekly announcement that summarizes key topics and alerts students to upcoming due dates is a good starting strategy. This frequent communication from the faculty to the entire group helps to make that personal connection that is often lost in the online environment and can help to keep the group on track. Faculty might also use announcements to address questions that keep coming up so that everyone in the course has the benefit of the responses. Having a strategy upfront for how they will use announcements can again save the faculty time while the course is running. They should consider the length, timing, and tone of these messages and be consistent throughout the course.

Faculty may also want to vary the format of the messages by using a variety of tools to convey them in text, audio, or video format Links to an external site..

Timescales of Communication

Only you can decide the best times to communicate with students in your course.  The most critical times to connect should be decided upon as part of your course preparation with a focus on strategically selected modalities to boost social presence and student engagement/confidence.  For example, the Quick Start landing pages appear as the course landing page for the first week.  They boost early confidence in the course (among students) by communicating what they need to do "right away" and so that they know who you are and what you expect in the next week.  You communicate your presence in the course by having a living document beyond a set of modules.  Along similar lines, Weekly Welcome-driven landing pages help students re-engage with your course quickly every time they log in.  If they fall behind, this page helps them get back on track (and stay on track).  How about letting students through periodic announcements or emails out to the class?  When are the crucial times to connect to see how everyone is doing?  This lets students know you care!  

Overall, you have to consider your course as a type of symphony that you are conducting with attention paid to when the music starts, ends, and the fine tuning of each instrument's entry, departure, and harmonizing.  When and by what means you connect will impact student response, perceptions of social presence, and (ultimately) learning.