B. During the Middle of the Course: Getting Through

Examples of instructor activities:

• Solicit learners’ expectations and state how you will meet those expectations or let them know what is not possible or reasonable to expect.
• Have a clearly mapped out plan of when key communications are required throughout the course and what information these communications should contain
• Respond in a timely manner to queries, in a time frame that is consistent with what is stated (e.g., within 24 hours on a weekday).
• Be present on the discussion forums.
• Provide thoughtful, detailed, and clear feedback on assignments. This can be written or an audio recording. (Audio recordings can be faster to create than writing text and also provide the advantage of students being able to hear your tone of voice.)
• State how assignments should be submitted, such as via email or the Learning Hub’s Assignment tool, for example.
• Return assignments in a reasonable amount of time.
• Provide encouragement, ideas to help address workload issues, etc…
• Consider phoning each student to provide “human” contact. Doing this early in the course helps
• Use a schedule, share it with your students at the beginning, and stick to it, and if not, ensure that you are always communicating with them the changes
• Using a mid-point evaluation for you as instructor using Survey tool in the Learning Hub
• Provide frequent and timely feedback by offering frequent assessments and getting your marking done
• Add opportunities for feedback with self-quizzes, peer feedback, rubric self-evaluations
• Use the Discussion Forums or the Virtual Classroom for unstructured contact time: open ended questions, Office Hours
• Harvest data from the Learning Hub: Classlist, Quizzes and shows that you care about them.
• Focus the discussion on specific issues
• Summarize the discussions
• Confirm understanding through assessment and explanatory feedback
• Diagnose misconceptions
• Inject knowledge from diverse sources
• Look for every possible opportunity to demonstrate to your students that you are human! In the Virtual Classroom, in your assessment feedback, personalize your communications and show your care for their progress and well-being
• Monitor the discussion forums and watch for participation: who is absent; who is not following the rules regarding respectful communication; who is off-task
• Do what you say you are going to do