Lisa Dorman

As in the classroom, feedback online is imperative.  Emailing students for various reasons requires effort and good communication skills.  Being a near-constant presence for students helps them be more successful. 

Teaching online presents issues for instructors.  The following needs consideration: organization, discipline, flexibility and distinguishing between work and personal life.

Over abundance of emails, Google Classroom messages and other ways I keep in touch with my students does require a bit from me.  However, it is important to post in several places to allow students to be informed.

During this portion of the class, I value the checklists.  As an educator, I inherently know these things but to have it in a chart format makes it clear and concise  I plan to make a few posters to encourage these skills in my classroom next year.

Having students go through the lessons of typical activities on a computer such as copy, cut and paste in a document, saving a document as a pdf, using spell check and/or the thesaurus, attaching a file to an email and more is necessary.  I learned not to assume they all know how to do these tasks.

We spend 80% communicating with others.  Teaching students how to appropriately communicate via email is important, such as inserting a "topic/subject" in the subject line, using bulleted points for organization and proofing before sending.  

There are factors that determine if students are a good fit for distance learning such as motivation, tech skills, time management and communication skills.  

It is critical to have guidelines/rules for any online group. Students must understand what is expected of them and what types of behaviors are discouraged or prohibited. An expectations statement offers a set of rules and regulations which serves as the value statement. The value statement should be clearly communicated within the community through the syllabus or handbook and subtly through modeling, and using discussion board moderation.  Also learned that rubrics provides consistency when grading/rating assignments.  Students will have a clear understanding of how their work will be graded and then can choose how to perform.

By learning the different communication types/skills between generations explains a lot.  I also learned that even though our young people have always had computers and technology - it doesn't mean that they actually know correct and proper standards when communicating.

Having standards of communication with students helps streamline contact.  Having civility rules and other standards helps students understand how to better communicate.