As teaching resources from the University of Michigan states, these guidelines will help.

Setting student expectations

Setting expectations with students around communication methods and timelines. As much as consistency, it’s helpful to create a communication strategy for the class. You may want to reach out to them with information like how often and how you will be updating them:

“I will be sending an email out to our group every Monday and Wednesday with an update. I also ask that you turn on your Canvas email notifications for Announcements as I will be posting more timely updates there.”

As well as how they should reach you:

“Please email me if you have a personal concern about completing coursework due to illness. I will be responding to emails once a day. For a faster response to questions, I have set up a FAQ section of our discussion board. Unless your question involves a personal issue, please ask your question there so that everyone can benefit from the response.”/

You may want to consider setting some expectations for students as well, although remember to be flexible.

“I hope that you will be able to continue to participate in the course during this time. If so, I hope to see that you are logging in at least twice a week to keep updated on assignments and discussions. If, for some reason, this is a challenge, please email me immediately.”

Other communication suggestions:

• Create an Group for the class

• Create an FAQ in your course in Canvas to be able to provide a resource for students (and to ensure you aren’t answering the same question multiple times). The discussion board is a great place to set up a FAQ.

• If you are posting announcements to Canvas, remind students to set their notifications to receive those announcements to email.

Collaboration

If you use discussion, peer-to-peer interaction, or group work there are a multitude of different strategies that you can implement in an online setting. If you have never used some of the tools and are not sure which ones may be appropriate for your class, check out our Introduction to Communication tools.

Discussions

There are many ways to hold discussions and small group work online. If you want to hold a live (synchronous) discussion, you can do so through video conferencing.