DE Oracle @ UMUC

Clear Expectations Lead to Less Confusion in the Online Classroom

Joanna (Xuan) Zhang

Instructional Support Specialist

Center for Support of Instruction

Published: May-June 2010

Category: » Online-pedagogy » Teaching-strategies

As a best practice of online teaching, setting up clear expectations can never be over emphasized. Clear expectations can help students avoid potential confusion and/or frustration and lead to enhanced learner satisfaction. Most adult learners are stretched out with their responsibilities at work, home, and school. Time management is critical for them to achieve success in online learning. When instructors set up clear expectations, students can better plan and manage their learning tasks and schedule in advance.

While most online instructors understand that it is important to set up clear expectations, it is still common to see students being confused about what they need to do. Typical questions from students are where to submit an assignment, where to look for an article posted in the classroom, how many pages a paper should have, etc. From my own online learning experience and the course reviews I have done for many different courses, I have noticed that some professors use effective techniques to help clarify students' understanding of expectations. Below are some practical suggestions for setting up clear expectations in the online classroom that you might find useful.

Provide Expectations for Time Allocation on Course Work

In the beginning of class, it is helpful to set up a general expectation about how much time students should expect to allocate to course work per week. This practice will help students judge whether they can fulfill the requirements with their available time resources. In addition, students are less likely to feel frustrated or surprised later on when they see how much time they have to invest in the class.

For example, I once had to make a decision on whether to take a signature course that could be more time-consuming than others. In the classroom, the professor clearly stated the minimum time allocation per week that was expected of students for them to complete the course successfully. This information helped me decide whether to postpone taking the class or to stay with it. Considering my limited availability at that time, I withdrew immediately and took the class the next semester. I was glad to be informed of this at the beginning of the semester and was able to make a decision accordingly. Otherwise, I would have become very frustrated later in the semester when I learned how much time I had to put into the class. 

Be Clear and Consistent with Content Organization

When conducting class visits, I am always impressed with well-organized classrooms. From a student’s perspective, I would appreciate it if my instructor placed all the materials in the corresponding menu sections so that I don’t have to search all over the place for a particular article mentioned in the syllabus. Time is always precious, especially for adult learners; students will have a higher overall learning satisfaction when navigation and organization of the classroom materials is simple and unambiguous.

Online instructors need to be organized and consistent with classroom setup and clearly explain where to locate particular course materials. For example, readings or online articles should be placed in Course Content or Reserved Readings instead of Conferences; a course schedule should be posted in the Syllabus instead of Course Content. When you have to place an item in a particular section out of normal order, you should make a highly visible note or announcement as soon as possible so that students will understand right away and won’t waste their time searching for it.

To help students understand how to use an online classroom, a good practice used by some instructors is to provide a bullet list with tips or an overview on "how this course works" at the beginning of the semester. The overview explains where to locate particular course materials, when and where to participate in discussion, how to submit assignments, and other important "housekeeping" information.

Set Up Expectations for Conference Participation

Most online instructors post at least one brief paragraph to state the expectations for conference participation because it is a core learning activity that is normally graded. Instructors usually indicate how often a student should contribute to a weekly discussion. They point out that discussion posts should be substantive or content-rich instead of simple, short responses such as “I agree” or “this is a good point.” More often than not, though quality, not quantity, is more of an issue with student responses. Many instructors have to remind students about the quality issue, especially in the first few weeks of class. Sometimes, students do not know how substantive a post must be to meet the expectations. Providing some guidelines can help students gain a better understanding. For example, an instructor may suggest to students: “When responding to a discussion topic or commenting on a classmates' posting, clearly state your point of view first, then support your comment or response with information from course readings, personal experiences, and other sources.” This kind of specific suggestion is more helpful to students than just telling them their discussion responses “have to be substantive.”

In addition to the expectations on conference postings, it is also important for students to know how to use and what to expect in the Conferences area of the classroom. Some conference threads might be for weekly discussion, while others might be used for posting particular assignments such as homework problems. A brief introductory conference note in the relevant thread will help orient students to its usage. Some instructors may provide feedback to students directly in the Conferences area while others may provide feedback via the Gradebook. No matter what the arrangement is, students should be informed of the usage plan and how and when they should expect to receive instructor feedback.

Provide Guidelines and Examples of Assignments

Clear expectations should be provided to students before assignments are due, and specific guidelines can help students get started efficiently. Normally, the essential requirements on when and where to submit an assignment are clearly stated. Students are prone to have questions about how long a paper is expected to be, whether it requires a particular writing style/format (such as APA or MLA), what kind of and how many sources they should use, and more. Although these questions may seem minor, instructors should include all the relevant information when posting the assignment guidelines; every detail that is expected of the students regarding the assignment should be made clear to them—including the acceptable file types. Another good practice is to summarize and share frequently asked questions from previous semesters. It helps current students obtain useful information about the assignment before they think of asking the same questions.

As mentioned above in discussing conference participation, it tends to be harder to set up clear expectations on the quality of writing. A helpful technique is to provide grading rubrics. Carefully designed rubrics can help guide students through their writing process and accordingly be able to write towards specific goals. When receiving grades, students can easily self-assess their strengths and weaknesses based on the instructor’s comments.

Sometimes, providing grading rubrics alone is not enough to help students completely understand how to use them as a guideline. Instructors can go a step further by providing sample writings that are graded at different levels. With concrete examples that mirror the grading rubric, students can obtain a clearer sense about what is considered acceptable and what is considered excellent.

Summary

Setting up clear expectations is a best practice that facilitates students' online learning experience. Although it is not possible and it is not our purpose to completely avoid questions from students, having clear expectations can help keep surprises, confusion, and anxiety to a minimum. Students should know when and how to contact the instructor if they have questions, and the instructor should always closely monitor the classroom and provide clarification when needed. In short, as you adopt some of the above-mentioned techniques in your classroom and tell students everything they need to know upfront regarding all aspects of being a student in your class, you may find that you and your students can spend more time on academic discourse than searching for (or explaining) what needs to be done.