6.4 | Student-to-Instructor Engagement Strategies

Including frequent student-instructor interaction is imperative in any learning environment, but especially in the online learning environment. This includes the instructor being actively engaged in authentic conversations with students and providing timely, quality feedback on student work. 

The following pages includes strategies to help you effectively and efficiently accomplish this. 

Announcements

Announcements can be used for one way communication from an instructor to students or, can be used in a blog style allowing for posting by both instructors and students. Announcements can be added to the course home page so that recent activity is readily available to students. Consider using announcements to: 

  • Remind students of upcoming activities/assignments in the course
  • Provide learning resources to students
  • Use media (audio and video) to humanize the course and create instructor-presence
  • Celebrate and share student successes and important events to personalize your course
  • Use a custom RSS feed related to the topic of the course to bring in real-world content

Canvas Guides: Announcements Links to an external site.

Contact Information and Reminders

Post instructor contact information and availability in an area of the course that is easily accessible and clearly labeled. Include a response statement that informs students of your typical response time to inquiries and when they should expect feedback on graded assignments. The following is a sample response statement: 

I will do my best to respond to you within 24-hours Monday - Saturday. I reserve Sunday as a family day and any messages received on this day will be returned by Monday. I am human, so if you do not receive a response from me please assume your message was not received and send it again. Feedback on assignments will be returned to you within one week of submission. Thank you!

Integrating weekly reminders of your contact information and availability in a modular overview or summary page, or within announcements will increase the likelihood that students know when, where, and how to reach out for support. The Cañada Course Template has wonderful sample pages and language to help you accomplish this in your course. Please see Module 1 for additional information on the Cañada Course Template. 

Canvas Guide: Pages Links to an external site.

Use of Media

Show your instructor-presence and bring your communication to life by using media when interacting with students. Use audio-recorded announcements to let students hear your enthusiasm and tone of voice. Use video recorded discussion posts and replies so that students can see your face and hear directly from you. Include images, graphics and instructor-generated lectures to engage students and help them build a relationship with you. 

Panopto allows you to record media and easily share it with your students. Captions are automatically applied to your media, which helps to ensure that your media is accessible and therefore inclusive to all learners. The following guides will help you learn more about using Panopto in your course. 

Panopto Written Guides

Panopto Video Guides

SpeedGrader

Receiving quality, timely feedback on course assessments will help students integrate the feedback and demonstrate growth in future learning opportunities. This can be challenging when an instructor is tasked with managing a large group of students and/or multiple courses. The Canvas SpeedGrader helps instructors view and grade student assignment submissions in one place using a simple point scale or rubric. 

Most submission types in the SpeedGrader can be marked up for feedback directly within the submission (meaning you do not need to download the submission in order to provide annotations!), and instructors have multiple ways in which feedback can be delivered including text based comments, audio and video comments, and speech-to-text dictation (Google Chrome browser for speech-to-text dictation). 

There are also tools such as "message students who" that will quickly and automatically pull the data for any student based on the following criteria: 

  • Haven't submitted yet
  • Haven't been graded
  • Scored more than
  • Scored less than

This tool exists within the Canvas SpeedGrader as well as within the Analytics tool (see the next page to learn more about Analytics).

Canvas Guide: SpeedGrader Links to an external site.

Canvas Guide: Rubrics Links to an external site.

Be a Part of the Conversation

Instructors set high expectations that students be actively involved in course activities and dialogue and it is strongly encouraged that the instructor also engage with students within the digital space.

Interact with the class daily to help students feel connected to you, to each other, and to the course. If you assign a discussion, jump in and discuss the topic with students! Find opportunities to share your thoughts and provide real-life examples. While this does require time and dedication, it will help students feel that they are a part of a class that has a real teacher who is invested in their learning and success. 

Summary

As mentioned at the beginning of this module, the days that lead up to the beginning of a class can be crucial to the success and retention of students, especially if teaching in the online modality. Please navigate through the next two pages to learn strategies for kicking off your courses with high engagement. 

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