Kelly Wilkinson

Christopher,

I agree with. My theory is there are some people who are national communicators and they do well; but I do believe everyone can learn to communicate well. You can train/educate someone to communicate well regardless of their comfort zone.

Dr. Kelly Wilkinson

Christina Fusch

Along the theme of this section's approach to helping students - these are some important elements of communication and student support I have held:

Student Support:

There are two specific elements to student support that I would like to highlight here. The first is that student support is regulation, that is rules and laws in place to protect the student's rights and the long held integrity of academia. Two examples of these are the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA), which protects students' grades and records and Plagiarism, which ensures the honesty and academic professionalism that should be awarded to every author. I would like to make an insert here about FERPA. Many of the colleges I have worked at require FERPA training, yet it is an easy law to violate. Case in point, I had a colleague (another faculty member) call me up one time asking what her daughter received for her grade last quarter. This is an extreme situation, but, again, easy to do.

Student support can also be the support and aid that we provide our students, such as office hours, additional resources, campus tutoring, campus advising, etc. I am very fond of the Online Tutoring we have in our CCC courses and am constantly encouraging my students to take advantage of this. I find that it dramatically improves their grammar and sentence structure. Another vital student support aid is the syllabus.

The Syllabus: Extrinsic & Instrinsic Motivation

As I tell my students on their first day, the syllabus is our contract, the written agreement between instructor and students. It tells the students what I will teach them, the toolkit the course will give them to help them succeed in college and the workforce (i.e. the terminal course objectives). It also gives a detailed explanation of how they will be tested on their toolkit and how they will be graded (i.e. grading rubrics). As well as my availability to help them and so on. This is my end of the agreement as the instructor. For the students' end, it is their acknowledgment and understanding that this is what they will come out of the course knowing and will receive the grade according to that knowledge. There are many different elements to the syllabus (instructor bio, course description, course schedule, due dates, and various policies), but it is the idea and concept of the syllabus that I find the most significant to point out here. It is important to have this understanding between the instructor and students so that everyone knows what is expected of them.

Expectations in the Online Classroom:

Alight, I'll make this one brief with just a few examples. E-mails and phone calls are very important in the online classroom because students need that constant interaction with their instructor for success. Reasonably quick feedback and grading is also critical to keeping the students on schedule with both the course assignments and learning the TCO's.

I also stand by my Tips for Success announcement that I put up at the beginning of the course which outlines what to focus on in the reading and completing assignments (such as citations, reading the syllabus, length requirements).

Kelly Wilkinson

Christina,

You make a great point about FERPA It is important we remember we are protection of the students. It does amaze me how students see us as more adversarial that as a team. We want them to succeed; they really don't see us that way.

Dr. Kelly Wilkinson

Kelly Wilkinson

Christina,

You make a great point about FERPA It is important we remember we are protection of the students. It does amaze me how students see us as more adversarial that as a team. We want them to succeed; they really don't see us that way.

Dr. Kelly Wilkinson