Developing a Communication Plan
Tips and strategies for communicating with students
Whether you're teaching an online, virtual or blended course, communication with your students is of the utmost importance. Always be clear on how you intend to communicate with students and what students can expect regarding a response.
Tips and Strategies for Communicating with Students
By Email
Create an email policy that clearly states what option you prefer to use--MSU Outlook or the internal Canvas messaging system. Also indicate that you will respond or, at the very least, acknowledge their email within 24-48 hours. If you find that multiple students are asking the same question or think that it is information all students should know, create a Canvas announcement addressing it for the entire class. If you are unavailable via email during specific timeframes, please ensure students know you will be unavailable. Try not to make the time when you are unavailable close to when major assignments are due.
See an example of a course contact and email policy below.
By Announcements
Canvas announcements can effectively provide important updates to the class, summarize progress, wrap up content, and provide important reminders of due dates. When creating and sending out announcements, follow these tips:
- Be sure to let students know that you will be using announcements to communicate important information and that they need to pay attention to the announcements and have this feature turned on.
- Try to limit them to 1-2 per week. Sending announcements too frequently may make students less likely to read them all.
- Send them out consistently at the beginning or end of the week, so students know when to look for them.
- Start with the most important information in the first paragraph or two.
- Use bolded headings to organize the information.
- Try to keep the announcement to one MS Word document page.
See an example of a weekly online course announcement below.
More information on announcement settings in Canvas
Use of an Ask Your Instructor Discussion Forum
For frequently asked questions, it may be helpful and more efficient to have an online discussion forum where students can post questions about course policies, assignments and course materials to which all students can see the answers. However, you must check and respond to this online discussion forum regularly. The online discussion forums in Canvas have a subscription feature that sends alerts to email when a student has posted to the forum.
Examples
Example of Course Contact and Email Policy
Because of the online nature of this course, I realize that you may need to contact me at random times for questions. The best way to contact me will be via email at _____@montana.edu. I have a 24-hour turnaround policy, meaning I will respond to your inquiry within 24 hours, except for weekends, when I may need more time.
I also hold virtual office hours every week from 12:00 PM - 1:00 PM on Mondays and Wednesdays (excluding holidays). I will be available for Teams calls and chats. Feel free to drop in to discuss anything from academia generally to course material. If you need to set up a Teams meeting outside of that time, let me know via email, and we can set up an appointment.
Example of Weekly Online Course Announcement
Hello Class,
We are approaching the home stretch in the semester with about a month to go! I hope you are benefitting from a break from the readings and routine assignments in the course.
Here is a grading update and a reminder to submit your outline for the Political Crime Problem Analysis and Policy Proposal assignment by tomorrow, Sunday, 11/3, at 11:59 PM.
Module 5 Group Discussion Grades Posted: I have posted the grades and feedback for the Module 5 public corruption case analysis. I was pleased with the results and applications of the definitions, means, levels and CPI index scores to these real-world cases. In addition, the groups offered some interesting historical and recent cases. These include the recent political upheaval in Lebanon spurred by cases of public corruption, the high profile and infamous college admissions scandal perpetrated by wealthy people, and even the performance-enhancing cheating by Russian athletes in the Olympics. Unfortunately, the breadth of these cases across various areas of our world shows that corruption is widespread and systemic but tends to more or less fit the patterns and concepts found in the book!
Current Course Grades: I created a column in the grade book that shows your current course grade. I apologize if that was not available for you to view before. Please let me know if you cannot see this or have questions about your current grade.
Outline for Political Crime Problem Policy Analysis and Proposal and Resource: The outline is due tomorrow, Sunday, 11/3, at 11:59 PM. I came across a good list of leading political science journals offering peer-reviewed material or articles for your political crime problem areas. These journals should be available through the MSU Library. While you may not be able to incorporate these sources into the outline, it may help build out your sources for the final assignment.
Upcoming – Module 6 Controlling Political Crime: We will be returning to the standard two-week module format for Module 6 starting next week, with the reflection due on Sunday, 11/10. Note that the Module 6 Group discussion activity has two due dates: Part 1: Wednesday, 11/13 and Part II: Sunday, 11/17. You will be revisiting some of the previous books on controlling political crime in general and public corruption that may help frame your final assignments.
As always, please let me know if you have any questions, and let’s keep up the momentum and finish the course strong!
Best,
Mr. Silvestri