Students will want to interact with you by asking questions and getting support. Your teaching experience will also benefit from interacting with your students. Here are some things you can try:
1. Set up virtual office hours
Provide specific times each week where students can connect with you virtually, in real time, individually or in groups, to ask questions and discuss private/confidential matters.
Tools
- Zoom
- Microsoft Teams
- eClass Chat
Best practices
- If you use Zoom to hold virtual office hours, recommend that students turn off their video, or participate in text-based chat only, and use the waiting room feature so that students don’t interrupt each other’s time with you.
- If students email you or drop-in to office hours asking for private/confidential support, you may wish to set up an individual meeting with them outside of your regularly scheduled office hours.
- Remind students of the general virtual reference and ask services provided by the Libraries
2. Set up a Q&A forum
Provide space for students to post questions and contribute to and view answers to all questions. This will replicate the in-class Q&A, which allows you to answer questions for everyone.
Tools
eClass Discussion Forum
Resources
Best practices
- To avoid answering the same question via email multiple times, require students to post all content-related questions in the Q&A forum.
- Reserve email for private/confidential matters (e.g. personal questions) only.
- Manage student expectations by identifying when you will be responding to questions in the forum, and ensure you have a consistent presence in this forum.
- Encourage students to use this forum to answer each other’s questions.
- Remind students of the netiquette you set at the beginning of the course.
3. Ask for feedback periodically throughout the course
Whether you formally ask for feedback through a survey or series of questions about the course, you likely get feedback from your students through observation. This form of informal feedback from students helps improve their learning experience in your course must be reconsidered in a remote environment.
Tools
- Feedback tool in eClass
- Journals in eClass
Best practices
- Where possible, allow students to give feedback anonymously.
- Explain to students why you are requesting their feedback.
- Report back to students and explain how the feedback is being used (or why it isn’t be used) to implement changes.
- Begin with simple questions and move to more difficult ones.
- Encourage discussion – ask questions that provoke elaboration as opposed to “yes” or “no” questions.
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