2.A2 Regular Effective Contact Course Plans and Policies

Instructor-Initiated Contact

What is your plan for interacting with students within the course? Faculty can provide consistent instructor-initiated contact using Canvas tools. Courses build on this by offering many opportunities for contact through a wide range of communication tools, such as announcements, discussions, grading feedback, the Inbox, and more. 

This may take many forms, depending on your teaching style, and your interaction plan and expectations might be outlined in the syllabus, on your homepage, and/or on a page in your Orientation module.

Regardless of where it is located, your plan for instructor-initiated contact should explicitly state how you will be communicating with students, and with what tools.

• Will you be posting an announcement or two regularly?
• Will you be sending messages via the Canvas Inbox?
• Will you be participating in the discussions? How frequently?
• Will you be providing comments in the grade book? How quickly should students expect to receive feedback on their graded work?
• Will you post videos uniquely and regularly created for your particular group of students? 
• Overall, how often (and how) should students expect to hear from you? 

Student-Initiated Contact

In addition to the above, it's important to specify how students can reach out and connect with you (student-initiated contact). Questions to consider here include:

• What are the various methods that students can use to contact you? (examples: college email, Canvas Inbox, office hours, web conferencing, phone/Google Voice, text messaging, Q&A Canvas discussion, social media such as Twitter, etc.)
• What is your preferred contact method?
• How long it will take to get a reply back (expected response time)?
• Do you observe weekends? Are you available, for example,  before 5 pm Monday-Friday? 

To encourage student-initiated interaction, your contact information should be readily accessible to students, and be very easy to find (e.g., on the home page, in the syllabus, in the orientation module). Please note, though, that while specifying how you are available to respond to students is important, it is not sufficient to meet requirements for regular effective instructor-initiated contact. 

Communication Policy Considerations

Students take online classes for a range of reasons and many do so because they simply are not available during the hours of traditional education. Does this mean you must be available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week for your students? Absolutely not. Does it mean you should be crystal clear about when you are available, how you prefer to be contacted, and how quickly you will respond to their inquiries? Yes, it does.

A clear communication policy is one avenue (well-designed courses have several!) for you to establish regular effective contact with your students. A well-written communication policy is like an open door, inviting students to come in and seek feedback or help. At the same time, just as you are not expected to sit in your office all day with the door open, you are not required to wait at your computer all day, either!

Your students need time away from the course, and you need time away from the course, too! Be really careful not to set yourself up for around the clock availability. There are some things that you should do to be flexible, however, you also should set your boundaries. For example, you can let students know that you are not available on Sundays or on weekends at all if you like. You may also tell students that they should use the Q & A discussions because you check those more often than you do your email, and because other students may respond even more quickly than you on a course forum!

Tips

When you craft your communication policy, here are a few tips to keep in mind.

• Be clear about when you'll be available. If you plan to not work on weekends (or some weekends), then specify that you will respond to emails, phone calls, or the Q&A forum Monday - Friday between the hours of 9am and 5pm (for example).
• Be clear about your response time. If a student sends you an email, when should they expect to hear back?
• You may want to indicate something like: "If you don't hear back from me in 24 hours, assume I did not receive your email and resend it." This is a good way to build in protection for email malfunction issues. The last thing you want to have happen is for a student to sit and wait for a response to an email that you never received. You may also want to specify a subject line or keyword for your students to use to make student inquires easier for you to filter.
• This use of a Q&A discussion may cut down on your email traffic. Students then see each other's questions and your answers and benefit from each other's queries.