Oceania

Communicating your&nbsp;teaching&nbsp;approach&nbsp;to&nbsp;your&nbsp;students&nbsp;manages expectations and maintains engagement throughout the semester. When&nbsp;students know&nbsp;what to expect, when&nbsp;to expect it, and how to approach the semester,&nbsp;they are empowered&nbsp;to fit their studies around life.&nbsp;Teachers, too,&nbsp;are protected from feeling permanently&nbsp;“on call”&nbsp;and other habits that can lead to burn-out.&nbsp;

In this&nbsp;article,&nbsp;I describe four proven&nbsp;ways&nbsp;to deliver&nbsp;a successful online experience&nbsp;for&nbsp;your students.&nbsp;

1.&nbsp;Define your communication channels&nbsp;&nbsp;

Be ready from day one! Identify each&nbsp;communication channel&nbsp;that&nbsp;you’ll&nbsp;be using&nbsp;with your students and tell&nbsp;them how and when you’ll&nbsp;be using&nbsp;each channel.&nbsp;Follow&nbsp;through on&nbsp;your&nbsp;communicated&nbsp;approach&nbsp;so that your students trust you&nbsp;–&nbsp;this will build your online teaching credibility with your students.&nbsp;

The&nbsp;channels&nbsp;that&nbsp;you’ll&nbsp;need to define&nbsp;how and when to use&nbsp;are&nbsp;most commonly&nbsp;announcements, discussion boards, webinars, email and one-to-one appointments or office hours.&nbsp;&nbsp;

For example, when defining your email communication channel,&nbsp;you might write:&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;

Using email:&nbsp;I’ll&nbsp;strive to respond to your emails within 48 hours.&nbsp;I’ll&nbsp;be on email every morning from 8am to 9am. If you have not heard back from me within these time&nbsp;frames,&nbsp;please send me a polite nudge.&nbsp;

2. Establish a webinar routine&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;

Communicate the dates and times of your webinars in advance. Try to use the same time/day each week to help your students plan their lives around the event.&nbsp;

Set a webinar agenda and time&nbsp;frames and communicate&nbsp;these&nbsp;at least 48 hours&nbsp;in advance. This will help your students to mentally prepare for the webinar,&nbsp;so they can strategically read and research the topics, as well as prepare questions in advance.&nbsp;

Show up early but begin on time and stick to the agenda. Use the time before the webinar to build rapport between yourself&nbsp;and your students, and&nbsp;with&nbsp;each other. And&nbsp;don’t&nbsp;forget to record the webinar (or set it to auto-record) for those who can’t attend&nbsp;or&nbsp;who need to revisit concepts.&nbsp;

For example, when communicating your webinar routine,&nbsp;you might write:&nbsp;

Webinar routine: Our live webinar will be every Wednesday from 7:30pm for 45 minutes. Each week we will review key concepts and complete one case study together. Please come prepared with at least two questions&nbsp;each week. These sessions will be recorded and shared the following day by 1pm.&nbsp;

3. Create an assessment ritual&nbsp;

Create a three-step assessment ritual for every assessment in your course. Remember that assessments are a stressful time for your students and that rituals cue students to prepare and help to&nbsp;calm&nbsp;performance anxiety.&nbsp;

Step one (student&nbsp;driven): Two weeks before the due date, create a discussion forum dedicated to Q&amp;As&nbsp;for each assessment. Make sure to check this every 24&nbsp;to&nbsp;48 hours. If students think&nbsp;you’re&nbsp;not responding in this space,&nbsp;your email inbox will fill up quickly!&nbsp;

Step two (teacher&nbsp;driven): Also,&nbsp;two weeks out, host a 30-minute webinar to unpack the assessment expectations and grading rubric with the students. This will tell students what they&nbsp;have to&nbsp;do and how they will be assessed.&nbsp;

Step three (student&nbsp;driven): Three to five days out, host a 30-minute drop-in session for students to ask questions, problem solve with you, and get feedback and encouragement on their progress.&nbsp;

4.&nbsp;Use regular&nbsp;feedback loops&nbsp;

Continuous feedback loops&nbsp;–&nbsp;or learning cycles&nbsp;–&nbsp;scaffold students’ learning by catching what needs to change, leveraging what needs to continue, and identifying gaps in a student’s understanding.&nbsp;Your&nbsp;ongoing group and individual feedback will&nbsp;enable your students to build on the content from one week to the next.&nbsp;

Provide weekly group feedback to the entire class. There are ample opportunities to provide group feedback:&nbsp;for instance, in the discussion board at the end of an activity, at the start or end of webinars, and in an announcement after grades are released. Group feedback should focus on high-level themes, trends and observations on what students are doing well,&nbsp;and areas&nbsp;or&nbsp;skills that need to be revisited.&nbsp;

Use a similar approach&nbsp;for&nbsp;all your assessment feedback with your students. Include the student’s name and a holistic feedback message that tells a student where they have achieved on the current assignment (feedback) and what to do before the next assignment (feedforward).&nbsp;

And&nbsp;don’t&nbsp;forget to label all your feedback with statements&nbsp;such as&nbsp;“This is feedback” or “The purpose of this feedback is to…” Otherwise students might not see your feedback!&nbsp;

Remember,&nbsp;setting up and following through on consistent ways&nbsp;to&nbsp;engage&nbsp;with&nbsp;your course will enable to&nbsp;you&nbsp;to&nbsp;facilitate&nbsp;your&nbsp;and your students’ success. Good luck!&nbsp;

&nbsp;

Dawn Gilmore is&nbsp;director of quality and enhancement at the&nbsp;Centre for Academic Quality and Enhancement (CAQE)&nbsp;at&nbsp;RMIT University.&nbsp;&nbsp;

It is important to explain your online teaching plan to students at the start of the course, so they know what to expect. Here, Dawn Gilmore explains why and how to do this.

How to communicate your online teaching structure to students – and why it matters 

Students respond much better to manageable packages of information. Here Paul Moss explains why and how to go about ‘chunking’ online lectures to get the best results from students

Chunking lectures – it’s a no brainer

Why use negotiated&nbsp;assessment&nbsp;&nbsp;Have you ever considered&nbsp;putting&nbsp;your students&nbsp;in charge of their&nbsp;own&nbsp;assessment process?&nbsp;On first impression, this may sound like a recipe for disaster, but for some&nbsp;cohorts, adopting a negotiated assessment strategy will result in more engaged students&nbsp;and&nbsp;higher&nbsp;quality output,&nbsp;which&nbsp;builds&nbsp;confidence and creativity.&nbsp;&nbsp;I have found negotiated assessment incredibly&nbsp;effective in&nbsp;a&nbsp;traditional teaching environment,&nbsp;and&nbsp;now that we&nbsp;have moved online, it seems even&nbsp;more pertinent.&nbsp;There are two key reasons.&nbsp;First,&nbsp;keeping students engaged&nbsp;remotely&nbsp;is more difficult,&nbsp;so using an assessment form&nbsp;that&nbsp;boosts engagement,&nbsp;with a more interactive approach and lots of opportunity for peer-to-peer discussion and learning as well as instructor feedback,&nbsp;is a plus.&nbsp;Second,&nbsp;authentic assessment with minimal risk of plagiarism is a challenge online,&nbsp;but more creative individualist assessment tasks make cheating a lot more difficult.&nbsp;Many students are like tourists on package holidays. We sell them the package&nbsp;and&nbsp;tell them exactly what they need to do, and they get a certificate and eventually the keys to a professional door.&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;This assessment approach creates a series of&nbsp;burdensome&nbsp;hurdles that must be overcome rather than opportunities&nbsp;to create and learn.&nbsp;Negotiated assessment promotes creative thinking – an important skill to be nurtured&nbsp;–&nbsp;in&nbsp;science&nbsp;students,&nbsp;in particular.&nbsp;Creative thinkers are problem&nbsp;solvers, an&nbsp;important&nbsp;life skill.&nbsp;&nbsp;Happily, negotiated assessment&nbsp;translates very easily&nbsp;to a digital&nbsp;setting.&nbsp;A guide to what good assessment looks like onlineSpotlight guide: The practicalities of co-creation with studentsResources exploring how to understand and protect academic integrityHow&nbsp;it works&nbsp;Negotiated assessment is a technique by which&nbsp;you allow your&nbsp;students&nbsp;to&nbsp;negotiate how they will meet the learning outcomes of the course.&nbsp;I was inspired to first try this technique with a&nbsp;class&nbsp;of&nbsp;undergraduate&nbsp;pharmacy&nbsp;students&nbsp;in 2013.&nbsp;&nbsp;Some were very engaged in workshops,&nbsp;clearly understanding the course material, but that understanding was not translating through&nbsp;into their&nbsp;traditional written assessments.&nbsp;After attending a&nbsp;lecture by&nbsp;Professor David&nbsp;Boud, I&nbsp;was inspired to develop a&nbsp;negotiated assessment strategy&nbsp;for the&nbsp;following year.&nbsp;&nbsp;The&nbsp;key to&nbsp;a successful&nbsp;negotiated&nbsp;assessment&nbsp;strategy&nbsp;is&nbsp;to&nbsp;take your&nbsp;students with you on the journey. In the course guide, which I had to complete before the start of semester,&nbsp;I allocated&nbsp;50&nbsp;per&nbsp;cent&nbsp;to&nbsp;an&nbsp;assessment&nbsp;portfolio, with the remaining&nbsp;50&nbsp;per&nbsp;cent&nbsp;allocated to&nbsp;a traditional invigilated end-of-semester exam&nbsp;and their professional skills&nbsp;OSCE&nbsp;(objective structured clinical examination).&nbsp;&nbsp;The first step&nbsp;is&nbsp;to&nbsp;engage your&nbsp;students in an open discussion about&nbsp;the planned&nbsp;negotiated assessment strategy.&nbsp;I explained to&nbsp;my&nbsp;students the rationale for taking this approach&nbsp;and that&nbsp;50&nbsp;per&nbsp;cent&nbsp;of their total assessment was negotiable, to be presented as a portfolio. We&nbsp;started&nbsp;the discussion&nbsp;in table groups&nbsp;–&nbsp;Zoom&nbsp;breakout rooms in an online setting&nbsp;–&nbsp;where the students came up with a range of assessment ideas.&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;As a class, we collated the ideas&nbsp;–&nbsp;this can&nbsp;be done&nbsp;online&nbsp;using any collaborative tools that enable the class to work on shared documents.&nbsp;Surprisingly,&nbsp;to me,&nbsp;the students&nbsp;had&nbsp;not&nbsp;selected&nbsp;easier&nbsp;options like take-home tests.&nbsp;I taught the students about Bloom’s&nbsp;taxonomy&nbsp;of educational learning&nbsp;and we mapped the artefacts to a level in the&nbsp;taxonomy. We then allocated a percentage of marks to&nbsp;each artefact, based on the mapping exercise.&nbsp;&nbsp;The students wanted to include a test (15&nbsp;per&nbsp;cent) in the portfolio.&nbsp;Students could mix and match&nbsp;the remaining 35&nbsp;per&nbsp;cent&nbsp;to complete&nbsp;their&nbsp;50&nbsp;per&nbsp;cent&nbsp;assessment portfolio.&nbsp;To&nbsp;make the assessment process completely inclusive, and to include the students who were reluctant to speak up in class discussion, we had an&nbsp;additional&nbsp;option of an individual assessment option&nbsp;negotiated&nbsp;directly&nbsp;with the course coordinator.&nbsp;As a class we&nbsp;also&nbsp;created&nbsp;the&nbsp;marking&nbsp;rubric. The biggest challenge with a range of assessment artefacts is creating a&nbsp;rubric that can be used across different types of assessments. For us,&nbsp;the uniting&nbsp;rubric&nbsp;criterion&nbsp;was that the&nbsp;assessment&nbsp;artefact was fit for purpose.&nbsp;Again, the students did not pick easy options – their rubric was more rigorous than&nbsp;one&nbsp;I would have created.&nbsp;&nbsp;The assessment&nbsp;contract&nbsp;After the initial discussion, I compiled&nbsp;the options&nbsp;into a document&nbsp;and&nbsp;created an assessment contract for the&nbsp;students&nbsp;to&nbsp;indicate&nbsp;which assessments they would&nbsp;complete. As part of this contract, students had to show how&nbsp;they would meet the course learning outcomes&nbsp;by&nbsp;completing these assessments.&nbsp;This step helps the students make&nbsp;a clear&nbsp;link between their learning and the assessment – rather than viewing&nbsp;the assessment as a hurdle that needs&nbsp;to be cleared.&nbsp;&nbsp;The output created by the students was the most pleasing part of this process. I was no longer marking “first drafts” written the day before submission. They had put hours of work into their assessment portfolio, showing a degree of creativity and initiative I had&nbsp;not&nbsp;seen before.&nbsp;&nbsp;Much of their output had&nbsp;a useful&nbsp;purpose – information&nbsp;resources&nbsp;about health conditions for consumers, therapeutics games for&nbsp;other&nbsp;pharmacy students that included the most complex of case studies.&nbsp;&nbsp;Students created&nbsp;their artefacts through different media, which included&nbsp;websites, videos,&nbsp;blogs, booklets, games and,&nbsp;for some,&nbsp;the traditional essay.&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;The students were proud of what they had created – something I had never seen before.&nbsp;This&nbsp;experience built&nbsp;confidence in students who had just “scraped by” in the past, with significantly increased grades across the cohort.&nbsp;&nbsp;Negotiating assessment with your students can help make assessment more meaningful for your students. It may not work for all student cohorts, but it will work for many,&nbsp;particularly&nbsp;when&nbsp;teaching&nbsp;digitally.&nbsp;This is a way for them to feel more connected with their education and&nbsp;more&nbsp;in control of their own destiny at a time when many young people feel&nbsp;disenfranchised and powerless.&nbsp;This form of assessment offers the opportunity for them to complete genuinely useful projects such as creating health resources for their community,&nbsp;giving them a sense of worth in contributing something back.&nbsp;It is important that you present the concept to your students with confidence and enthusiasm, so they will be inspired to become more than student&nbsp;tourists.&nbsp;&nbsp;Katherine Baverstock&nbsp;is a&nbsp;senior lecturer&nbsp;in&nbsp;pharmacy&nbsp;practice&nbsp;at&nbsp;the&nbsp;School of Health and Biomedical Sciences&nbsp;at&nbsp;RMIT University.&nbsp;

Authentic assessment is one of the biggest challenges associated with online teaching and learning. Here Katherine Baverstock explains why negotiated assessment engages remote students and lowers the risk of cheating 

Negotiated assessment in online teaching – the same learning outcomes measured in different ways 

Using 360-degree video can help create a more immersive digital learning experience, making practical aspects of online classes more realistic. Here Jane Frost draws on her experience of training nurses to explain how it can be used

Using 360-degree video to bring online classes to life 

Learn how to use Microsoft Teams to offer students an engaging online learning experience with David Kellerman, senior lecturer at UNSW 

How to create an engaging online experience using Microsoft Teams 

Effective communication is vital to engaging and positive remote study. Cathy Stone offers advice on how to ensure communication between institutions and students is timely, relevant and inclusive

The secret to timely, relevant, inclusive communication with students

THE Campus Learn, Share, Connect

Oceania | THE Campus Learn, Share, Connect

Oceania

How to communicate your online teaching structure to students – and why it matters

Chunking lectures – it’s a no brainer

Negotiated assessment in online teaching – the same learning outcomes measured in different ways

Using 360-degree video to bring online classes to life

How to create an engaging online experience using Microsoft Teams

The secret to timely, relevant, inclusive communication with students

Discover

More from THE

Sign up

Collaborate with THE

About

Legal stuff