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4 Tips to Create a Pattern of Communication


One thing you need to determine is how you plan to communicate regularly with your students. I’m sure you have thought a bit about this, but let’s dive a bit deeper. Students often leave their online courses because they feel isolated or become frustrated.  Communication online is different than in a face to face classroom. As an instructor, we need to be deliberate, consistent, and relentless in building student-faculty and student-student relationships. The structure you put in place will help to create a pattern of communication for your students.


Here are four tips for communicating well with your students:

1.    Communicate early and frequently

·      This can ease student anxiety and is the easiest way to show you are present within the course. Send out an announcement in blackboard to the student email on a weekly basis.
o   How to send announcements and navigate blackboard: Video or Handout
·      Let students know how and when they can contact you, as well as how soon they can expect to receive a response.  Be available and flexible.
·      Address students by name this communicates to them that they are a real person who matters.  In Dale Carnegie’s book, How to Win Friends & Influence People, he says this about names “Remember that a person’s name is, to that person, the sweetest and most important sound in any language.”
·      Provide feedback to students along the way.  Giving feedback both individually and to the whole class will help convey to the students what they are doing well and what they are missing.

2.    Demonstrate Compassion 

·      Define Netiquette for your students.  This is a term that includes online etiquette. Setting expectations on how to respond to classmates in a discussion form and how to communicate with an instructor. 
o   Netiquette guidelines - Example 
·      Create a safe space for your students. Design your interactions to be regular, meaningful and relevant.  
o   Blackboard announcements, discussion boards, virtual office hours
·      Continue to let students know you are available. 
·      Personalize your responses to build trust and show students that you care.  I’d encourage you to create a routine that you respond individually to two-three students each week either in their discussion board post or via email. 

3.    Be aware of the communication gap.  

Remember your students cannot see or interpret your nonverbal cues through email, announcements or postings. 
·      Facial expressions, body posture, gestures, eye contact, and tone of voice are all cues that are missing when students are receiving your online communication.
·      Use emoticons - J or ;) or :0( or pictures/comics to help you convey what you are saying with your words.  
·      Use a video tool – either live or recorded videos will allow your students to see and interpret your nonverbal cues.  You can use this to initiate the start of a new week/module, to lecture, or to give class-wide feedback.  The more you use it ,the more comfortable you will be.

4.    Give prompt feedback

·      This is your opportunity to encourage, guide, reinforce, or redirect learning and to build student confidence. If it is done in timely manner….
·      Individual feedback can be given through email, on assignments or on rubrics used within blackboard.  Constructive and personalized responses to students throughout the semester will continue to build trust and will motivate most students.
·      Class feedback can be given through announcements or video recording at the end or beginning of each week.

Being intentional in creating a pattern of communication will increase the success of your students and enhance the learning that happen within the community you are building.  Feel free to share other communication tips or tools you have found to be helpful in the comments below. 
Written by Janelle Reeb
Online Learning Coordinator
Feel free to leave comments below
For additional resources, visit icc.edu/tlc webpage

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