DE Oracle @ UMUC

Preparing Online Students for Success

Susan Pollack

Instructional Support Specialist

Center for Support of Instruction

Published: May-June 2011

Category: » Online-pedagogy » Teaching-strategies

Introduction

There is no question that online students are excited (and probably nervous) when they first gain access to their classrooms—just like any student on the first day of school. But the lack of live, face-to-face contact in the asyncrhonous online classroom means that the students need a little more support in the form of directions and reassurance to help get them moving at the beginning of the semester and stay on track until the course ends. This article offers practical tips and suggestions for guiding and engaging online students from Day One that feed on their initial excitement and show that you are ready and willing to help them in their learning journey.

"I Don't Know What I'm Supposed to Be Doing!"

Just as in a face-to-face classroom, from the moment students first enter an online classroom, it is important that they are able to "find their seats." They need clear guidance on how to get started, what to expect, and where to find things in the digital space where you will be working together. The last thing you and your students need is confusion over what they should be doing.

By providing students with this needed guidance and preview of the class upfront—in addition to getting them active in the class from the get-go—you will help get everyone on board in the beginning and connect with students before you lose them. If you prepare all parts of your classroom carefully, you will also be able to minimize student questions. The first few interactions that a student has with the classroom and instructor set the stage for the rest of the semester, which makes it even more important that students understand right away which end is up. 

Tips for Guiding and Engaging Students

There are a number of ways you can help students become acclimated to the classroom quickly so that they can focus on their learning. Here are eight "golden rules" behind successfully guiding and engaging students, with five suggestions in each category that you may want to implement:

Communicate with students early on.

Interacting with students in the beginning helps get the student-instructor dialogue started as soon as possible.

Keep the classroom clear, simple, and organized.

Keeping the classroom free of distractions helps minimize confusion. Do the "Mom" test: Could your mother navigate the course if she were a student in it? And consider this: If you find any part of the classroom confusing, it's highly likely that your students will as well.

• Remove unused items from the course menu via the Faculty Center if you will not be using them (such as Reserved Readings, Study Groups, Workbook, etc.). This helps reduce clutter and keeps students from clicking on items that will never be populated. If you will be implementing study groups later in the semester, consider not activating this feature until group work commences—and then instruct students in a class announcement that you have added study groups to the classroom.
• When providing Web-based resources, provide a direct, clickable link to the items; do not make students copy/paste the URLs in a separate browser window. Also check to ensure that all links work wherever you put them in the classroom; students, just like other Web users, get frustrated when they click on a link that does not work and have to wait for it to be fixed.
• Check to be sure you are labeling items in the classroom properly. Telling students to read Item X in Course Content will be confusing if they see only Item Y, Item Z, and Item Q in Course Content. Likewise, Item X should actually be in Course Content (where you said it would be) and not, say, in Conferences. Do not assume that your students will be able to figure out such anomalies: They come to class to learn, not to decipher mixed messages.
• If an item for the classroom is not ready, do not make it visible to students (you can show/hide items through the Faculty Center). Otherwise, students may get the sense that you are not prepared.
• Keep items that you post to Course Content and Conferences well ordered so that students can easily find what they need each week.

Have an activity or two for students to do when they first enter the classroom.

Giving students a task to perform right away gets them involved and trains them to expect this kind of active participation in your class. You can have students participate in a variety of activities early on beyond the usual standards of asking them to post an introduction in the Introductions conference and updating their biography in WebTycho.

• Send students on a scavenger hunt to find where things are located in the classroom. This task can be a submittable item through the Student Assignments Folder that allows students to earn points towards their course grade. (Consider allowing students to take it repeatedly until they get it right...this provides an immediate A for the students from the start and ensures that the students know the course.) Ask questions about things that matter, such as how many points is Paper 2 worth, are late submissions accepted, etc.
• Create a classroom poll on the topic of your choice and ask students to respond to it. (See Enhancing Student Engagement with Polling for polling tools and ideas for using them in the classroom.)
• Ask students to show where they are on the class's world map. (Tools such as Google Maps and BatchGeo may be useful for this activity.) 
• Have students post a favorite link or video (ask them to try embedding it in a conference note) and explain why it is a favorite.
• Start a "Name the Cafe" contest in Conferences. This kind of activity promotes the idea that the student lounge is theirs. Students can come up with suggestions and vote on them by the end of the first or second week.

Create an "About the Class" overview/orientation.

A classroom overview/orientation outlines all the student and faculty expectations so that students know what they are getting into. When developing this document, put yourself in the shoes of the student; what information would you want to know?

• Discuss your preferences for writing style and frequency when working in Conferences.
• Provide information related to how often students need to log in to the classroom, rules for communication, preferred file formats, extension policies, late submissions, and other pertinent "housekeeping" information that may not be detailed in the syllabus. The more you explain what you expect, the more prepared students will be. If students later ask a question for which you have already provided detailed information, you can refer them to that information.
• Use past questions from students to help define the details further and/or to create an FAQ section to which you can refer current students.
• Incorporate all this information into an easily accessible stand-alone item in the classroom, such as in Course Content.
• Keep all the information appropriately chunked rather than grouped together in one long document with no clear subheadings.

Build a safe community.

Use the introductory conferences to establish the learning space as a safe place where people of diverse backgrounds come together for a common goal: to learn. Stress what you have in common and celebrate the differences.  

• Ask students the "usual" personal questions and have them answer "fun" questions also (such as favorite TV show or movie, favorite ice cream flavor, country they most want to visit, favorite electronic device, etc.). "Fun" questions can also certainly be related to the subject being taught, but keep them simple so that students can complete the task quickly.
• Participate in the community yourself by answering all the same questions and by responding to all students to personally welcome them into the class and develop a rapport by chatting about commonalities. This motivates students and helps them feel good about being in your classroom.
• Consolidate the student demographics into tables or charts and post them at the end of the first week. Depending on the questions you asked of them, this may include information on time zones, first-time online students, first-time UMUC students, etc. (Note: Preparing these statistics could be time consuming; an alternative is to ask students to volunteer for this number-crunching task or have the students participate in online polls, which can show instant statistics.)
• Ask students what constitutes a safe place for them.
• Remind students that the classroom is a safe place where everyone's ideas are welcome and that students are expected to keep an open mind and be respectful of everyone else in the classroom—just as they expect this from you.

Be extra attentive during the first week of class.

Your visibility, especially at the beginning of the semester, shows students that you are there for them—which can be comforting to those who miss the verbal and nonverbal communication aspects of a face-to-face classroom.

• Log on multiple times per day, if possible.
• Reply to student postings in the Introductions conference as soon as you read them.
• Respond promptly to any message you receive from students via e-mail or Private Messaging.
• Address any issues you come across right away.
• Make yourself as visible as you expect/want your students to be.

Provide clear guidelines and examples.

Do students ask too many questions about what they need to do for a project or assignment? Are student submissions less than stellar? Consider clarifying the instructions before you post them based on previous student input and providing examples (where appropriate) to help reduce student questions and lessen frustrations.

• Be as specific as possible in the instructions provided for every task required of the students.
• Demonstrate "good" and "poor" examples of conference postings/responses.  
• Provide "good" and "poor" examples of assignments that students can use as guides for their own work. (Be sure to remove any student names prior to posting.)
• Post a grading rubric for each graded assignment along with the assignment instructions so that students know what you are looking for and understand what qualifies as an A or B grade. A rubric can help eliminate surprises from students who received lower grades than they were expecting. (Please see the DE Oracle section on Assessment, Feedback and Rubrics for more information on rubrics.)
• Post an exemplary assignment (or two) from a student in the class after all the grades for that assignment are in. (Get permission from the student first.) Treat this posting as an "assignment postmortem": Provide a follow-up note to the class on the assignment in general and this one example in particular, indicating what was good about it, how it met expectations, etc. Students learn not only from the comments you make on their work but also from the comments you provide on others' work that may be vastly different from their own. Posting others' assignments also allows students to see other perspectives they may not have considered.

Leverage the different parts of the classroom.

WebTycho offers a variety of ways to connect with students and develop a learning community. While conference discussions are generally considered the central area where ideas can be shared, other parts of the classroom—as well as some external tools used as supplements to the classroom—can also foster community building and critical thinking among class members.

• Bring your expertise and experience to weekly discussions. Although you are the guide on the side rather than the sage on the stage, students are still eager to hear what the expert has to say.
• Provide summary comments at the end of each major discussion thread or post general wrap-up comments for all the discussion threads at the end of each week/discussion period. (Consider assigning this task to students on a weekly basis.)
• Encourage students to share their own experiences as it relates to the class discussion. This can be particularly insightful for the whole class, since many students have been working for several years and have much to contribute "from the trenches."
• Share important, relevant resources through the classroom Webliography or a tool such as Diigo, and encourage students to do the same. (See Interactive Information Networking Tools for Online Education for more information on using tools like Diigo.)
• Turn on the Class Awareness feature in the Faculty Center so that students can see who is there at the same time and can chat with others quickly and easily if they desire. Note that if you do not want students to contact you this way, you can change your personal account settings so that your own Classroom Awareness capability is set to Disabled. (See Classroom Awareness/People Here in the WebTycho Faculty User Guide for additional information.)

Closing

Online students require much interaction to help get them going and then to keep on going. Your school or department may have standards for the pre-week, first week, or midsemester. Be sure to follow those standards and, where possible, incorporate some of the ideas indicated above. By choosing to actively guide students and engage with them from the beginning, you will help set them on the path toward a successful learning experience for the rest of the semester.