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Table of Contents for "Seven
Principles Collection of TLT Ideas"
The first of the seven principles is 'encouraging
faculty-student contact.' Chickering and Gamson wrote that,
according to decades of educational research, "frequent
student-faculty contact in and out of classes is the most
important factor in student motivation and involvement.
Faculty concern helps students get through rough times and
keep on working. Knowing a few faculty members well enhances
students' intellectual commitment and encourages them to
think about their own values and future plans." In what ways
has technology been used in your courses and at your
institution that makes such contact between you and your
students more productive, satisfying or frequent?
Please send us ideas to add to this page!
(Once you submit this form, you'll instantly see not only
your idea but all others submitted by people who previously
filled it out.)
- I would have to say that I think
email has been the biggest boon and blessing. My
students DEFINITELY ask me questions more often and at
better times than was true otherwise, depending upon the
"note in the mailbox," or office hour contact
possibilities. I have students that just generally
update me on how they are doing -- not necessarily
contacting me to report problems. Further, I also have
students who are forwarding events and happenings that
are of interest to the coursework -- information that I
can share with the class at large very easily via email.
The extended ability to reach and maintain contact via
this function is very useful.
- I am a staff member, completing an
M.Ed. degree at Westminster College (Utah) and have had
positive experiences with professors encouraging
faculty-student contact via email and Web CT. The key
point to make is that it was their timely responses to
my emails that made this successful and valuable. I was
able to check in with them, submit papers, etc.
electronically when it would have been difficult to have
to meet with them on campus. Web CT allowed for student
and instructor feedback outside of class.
- I find that my students ask me
questions much more often about the assignments than
they use to because they can do it through email.
Sometimes students talk to me like their friends, i.e.
"Have a good day" due to the conventions of a polite
correspondence. These simply gestures enhance the
relationships.
- Students seem very comfortable
discussing problems in this manner, especially sensitive
or embarrassing issues.
- I have created an account on Yahoo
that students can use to send me e-mails from. This way
I do not know their identity and allows them to speak
their mind.
- Email is a great way to
communicate with even shy students. (See
also Principle 7: Respecting Diverse Talents and Ways of
Learning)
- Email is the most common means of
increasing faculty/student contact. Students are much
more likely to ask questions or initiate contact if it
only means sitting at their computer rather than
arranging a time for a face-to-face meeting.
- We have several computer class
rooms where students can be exposed to building models
and solving using software packages. Many times even
Excel can provide the required tool. In courses such as
Computer Simulation student email their model which may
be having problems. Instructor can run the model and
point out the errors and respond via email. In my
courses, traditional office hours are used for project
definition, etc. However, email is making it easier for
the students to contact faculty at the time they need to
provided instructor can respond within a reasonable
time. I guarantee (unless I am out of town) less than
half day response time.
- Email is a very effective way to
communicate with students. Advisees often contact me to
set up appointments or ask questions. Often advisees
will seek help with their personal statement on
applications for graduate or professional school. The
students and I exchange drafts of their personal
statement. In this way I can edit their writing and make
suggestions which may improve their application.
Sometimes I have students email their assignments to me
rather than turning in a paper copy.
- For me, sending short positive
messages makes the entire mentor/student relationship
more meaningful.
- The most frequently used
technology at our institution, as is the case at many
others, to facilitate contact between students and
faculty is e-mail. Many faculty, including myself, also
use group messaging, list serves, or other advances such
as blackboard. Personally, e-mail has been a very
convenient and successful tool to disseminate
information on a group and personal level.
- When corresponding with students
about deadlines in a distance learning course, be sure
to mention the exact time and time zone of the
deadline, if any of your students are distant enough to
be in more than one time zone. - Stephanie Sutcliffe,
Drexel eLearning.
- In a class on group dynamics,
students journal weekly and reflect on their thoughts
and feelings about the class sessions. The instructor
responds to each student's journaling weekly as well.
- One technique some of our faculty
have used with the discussion board is to send an
individual email to each student several times in a
semester that draws upon the work the student has
submitted and his/her posts to the class discussion
board. This can also be used to encourage students who
may not be participating much to rejoin the class. This
demonstrates to the student that the faculty member is
paying attention and cares about the students'
intellectual ideas and personal class experience.
- Email has been important for my
students to contact me about class questions but also a
way to keep in touch after the course is finished.
- Having students include the word
URGENT in the subject line when they need a quick
response (with penalty for inappropriate use).
- I often email a group of students to remind them of
special events, deadlines, information or even just to
offer some (hopefully) inspirational anecdote.
- My students have my school as well
as home e-mail addresses. I have theirs, too.
- Use listproc (e-mailing list) to
disseminate information to students
- Some academics are concerned about
the time-consuming nature returning emails and find
discussion forums better for one-to-many correspondence.
- Using email alert on my office
computer, anytime a student sends me a question or
discussion point, I'm alerted immediately, and time
allowing, I can respond instantly. Also, a class
chat-room exists for each of my classes, and the
students are allowed to discuss amongst themselves the
topics of the class.
- I also maintain an online bulletin
board called "News and Notes" which students are to
refer to between class sessions. Anytime a student sends
a question to me that may concern others also, I send an
individual response to the student but also post the
response in News and Notes for that week. All students
are reminded to check there between sessions and
especially whenever questions arise about an assignment.
The additional detail is also added to the online
syllabus itself. That way, the next time the course is
offered, directions for that assignment will have been
improved.
- Sending personal notes of
encouragement when they've written a particularly
thoughtful response on a bulletin board
- I like to email an encouraging message once a week,
and often include a joke - I try to keep them very
neutral, but humor can really help establish a group
identity.
- We are a laptop campus to student
access to the instructor through email is very common.
The fact that we all have standardized email addresses
makes students and faculty easy to find. We also have no
limit on the size of attachments so students can send
faculty and vise versa large PowerPoints, audio and
video files. We have found Blackboard an excellent tool
for bringing students (on and off campus) together with
discussions, easy contact, and better organization of
group work. About 60% of our faculty use blackboard and
almost 100% of our students experience it in at least
one of their courses.
- Just recently I was speaking with
an overseas tutor and they mentioned videoconferencing
as a way to encourage staff-student contact. They were
concerned that without the face-to-face "feel," students
can feel somewhat dislocated. Nothing beats a friendly
face! As verbal communication is only a small part of
how we communicate generally, the more MULTI media is,
the better and more real the interaction.
- I use online chat hours to stay in
touch with my online students.
- Use
Doodle, a web-based service, to help schedule
appointments with each of a large group of students.
- The subject [course] web pages may also contain a
link to a web-based appointment system, where students
may arrange to see staff outside of class hours. This is
also used to arrange demonstration and interview style
assessment procedures. [Monash University, Australia]
-
Speaking from an "on line"
perspective, we encourage our instructors use video to
introduce themselves to those students to put "the face
to the name". Or at least, at a minimum, use a digital
picture. Editor�s Note: the same technique can be
useful in on-campus classes, especially larger classes.
-
Including photographs of me on the
online course.
- While students are completing
three month internship experiences far from the
university, they have the opportunity to e-mail the
instructor/fieldwork coordinator at least monthly. They
are given a set of reflective questions to answer. In
addition, they have the opportunity to interact in an
on-line discussion group where they compare experiences
and ask advice of the instructor and each other.
- We use email addresses for both
faculty and librarians after instructional sessions to
encourage contact and asking questions and further
subject/topic inquiry. Many faculty use web-based
courseware with built in ways to discuss and
communicate.
- We created a ghost account on
Blackboard to which we have all physics faculty and
students enrolled. This will allow us to communicate
with the entire department.
- Telephones and answering machines
are on every faculty desk in our department,
facilitating students' leaving messages and faculty
phoning students.
- Cell phone messaging (SMS).
- In an online
class, it is okay to call a student on the phone! So
many online instructors think the communication is
purely limited to online only... (Tina Rettler,
Wisconsin Technical College System)
- Videoconferencing was used to teach a "Master Class"
where Wheaton music students participated with Master
Trombonists and other students of the instrument in
geographically dispersed locations.
- network file servers for students
turning in assignments with instructor access,
- In some cases, I find myself using
the "comment" feature in WORD to respond to student work
electronically. I particularly like to do this when
students are working on resumes, fellowship
applications, and other high-stakes writing projects.
They rarely give me much time for feedback, so I turn
around their work very quickly but still give them
targeted, detailed response that they can use or ignore,
as they see fit.
- I have developed interactive learning and teaching
websites which involve students completing tasks that
support lectures and tutorials, online. Students are
able to comment, ask questions about this work.
Lecturers/academics are able to view student work,
annotate, read comments and reply to students. Students
report a high level of satisfaction, they enjoy the
regular weekly work, and the contact with staff. (also
relates to Principle IV - Feedback)
- The first assignment--given at the
first class meeting for every course--is to send an
e-mail to the instructor describing the student's
previous experience with...whatever the principle course
content covers. It is my goal to consider, respond to
(and file in a course folder) all of these first
messages within 24 hrs of receiving them. This
accomplishes several goals: 1.verification that the
instructor is accessible and cares about your learning
as an individual--beginning wherever you presently are
on the learning curve. Involves each student immediately
in the course. Establishes that the student has an
e-mail account, knows how to use it, and will respond to
in-class requests. Provides me with an accurate current
address for contacting each student without the error
possibilities of completing an information form,
transferring the information, etc. Determines a baseline
for student perception of prior knowledge of course
content.
- Technology has improved 1:1
contact in my [distance learning) courses. Each
Registered Nursing (RN) student lives in a different
community and often different state. RN's tend to be a
collective subculture, needing supportive and
encouraging communication from not only the professor,
but their colleagues. After four years of Internet
experience with this group and 6 years of classroom, I
can see the advantages with communication by technology
in 1) improved writing skills, and 2) their ability to
own their own thoughts and expressions. Discussion
groups (5-6 in size for some, 15 students in others) are
used. A 1:1 conference is planned between
professor/student once at the beginning of the course,
to help students with their synthesis project. The most
important method of communication has been individually
checking in by email with each student. I post a "What's
New!" and also provide group feedback on
assignments-what I saw in everyone's last assignment
that was effective, what expectations I have, what needs
to be considered next time for improvement. The most
important thing we can communicate to these students is
community cohesiveness vs competition, expectation and
lots of feedback.
- E-mail has proven to be an
efficient and non-threatening way for me to communicate
with students and advisees. In most cases, my advisees
have been in my writing classes, so the communication
avenues established for classes are extended and
embellished in advising relationships. Our in-house web
conferencing software ("Caucus") provides an informal,
asynchronous place for my students to discuss among
themselves and send queries to me. I set up a new
conference for each course, and membership is limited to
those enrolled. No one has to worry about an outside
audience, which means that the discussion is full of
intellectual shortcuts we have developed in the
classroom and employed or invented on line.
- My schedule is posted on my web
page, so students can check there to see when I am
available and when I am not available.
- Easy access advisee and class
e-mail lists through our course web site give ease to
quickly sending notes off to class members.
- In our Japanese language classes,
each student meets with an instructor and a TA
individually two to three times a week so that the
instructor or the TA can assess the student's learning
and the student can ask questions. In order to make time
for this, such things as mechanical drills etc are done
by technology.
- Including jokes related to the
topic, or cartoons, again, to increase the feeling of
being connected
- Streamed/archived videos, mainly,
although this is one-way communication--- at least the
students see and hear the instructor rather than simply
read instructions for assignments
- Students are encouraged to contact
us through e-mail, very few actually use e-mail,
probably due to not having a computer at home, they come
to the college to use the computer.
- Because all students and faculty
have laptop computers and all classrooms, offices,
dorms, library are wired (or have wireless connections),
students check email frequently. As a result, email is a
great way of increasing communications between myself
and my students. It provides a quick way of answering
short questions and setting up appointments for longer
questions.
- We currently use Blackboard, a course [management
system]. I feel that Blackboard allows the student to
feel a stronger tie to the professor by having 24/7
access.
Please send us ideas to add to this page!
(Once you submit this form, you'll instantly see not only
your idea but all others submitted by people who previously
filled it out.)
Return to Table
of Contents for "Seven Principles Collection of TLT Ideas
for Improving Teaching and Learning"
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