Strategies for Course Communications with Teaching Tools

Creating dialogue between your students can be a challenging yet fundamental part of teaching. Effective communication can help to build and foster a safe learning environment where students can thrive, prosper and learn. In addition to the rhetorical moves you may use to structure your speaking style and structure your communication, you can also develop a plan for various ways you use technology to deliver your message. Develop a strategy for when and how your students will communicate back to you as well as use instructional technologies in your class. Having regular two-way communication that invites all students to participate is essential for building trust (How to Make Your Teaching More Inclusive, 2019). Decide when regular, expected communications need to happen, and how you can best fit these duties into your own schedule. The table below (modified from U of Wisconsin and Instructure), provides various examples of communication strategies and when to apply them in your course.

Table of communication strategies to use with students
When Communication Strategy Example Technologies Used*
Prior to the course start Introduce yourself to students Add your photo and a short bio to the course welcome page, and link students here from a welcome email.
During the first week Help students meet each other and "break the ice" Ask students to update their Canvas profile, and use Name Coach to help learn how to pronounce their names
Learn more about who students are and their needs for learning Assign an anonymous survey in Canvas, Google Forms or Qualtrics that asks students to share questions or concerns they have about the course. View their images through the Class Roster
Ongoing weekly Reach out to "inactive" students in Canvas Use "Message students who..." to contact any students who haven't completed the Discussion or Survey in the first week.
Provide a place to ask general questions Create a Discussion board in Canvas that's available throughout the course and intended for general questions. Create a Teams or Slack group for your class
Give students low stake assessments to help master material Conduct formative assessment for instant feedback during a presentation in Top Hat. Create low stakes automated quizzes in Canvas that students can complete and receive feedback on course material
Kick off each unit or week Post an Announcement to start each week that connects the prior week's activities to the upcoming activities. Please note you can preset announcements for each week with reminders of upcoming test or due dates for assignments, or tips on how to prepare for class.
Provide regular opportunities to discuss course content Ask students questions to formatively assess how well they learned material through Top Hat. Use Discussions to ask deep dive questions around course content.    
Provide regular opportunities to ask individual questions Hold office hours, either drop-in or by appointment, Face-to-Face, in Teams or by Zoom  
Provide timely feedback to students Students are introduced to the Rubric as part of the activity directions. Instructor uses the Rubric as part of their feedback, and encourage or require students to revise their submitted work based on the feedback. Instructors use Speedgrader to provide students with audio or video feedback​, and/or students use peer reviews to provide audio or video feedback to their peers.  


Ideas for the first day of class

The following are a few ideas collected from a variety of sources on activities first the first day of class.

From (Weimer, 2017)

  • If it’s a course where students don’t think they know anything about the content, start by dissecting the course title. For each keyword, ask students to submit the first word or phrase that comes to mind to Top Hat and create a Wordle. Point out the ideas that are correct.

  • Share some information that will personalize you – your teaching experience, the reason you entered your discipline, an anecdote from your undergraduate learning days. If you have graduate teaching assistants, introduce them, and let them tell something about themselves. 

  • Play a brief a slideshow or a collage of pictures that shows who you are without prior to the start of class—pictures of you at work, in the lab or library, at home, with kids and pets, you in college, grade school, etc. The pictures can be interspersed with favorite quotes or some pithy sayings about learning.  Run the slide show as students are arriving or make it available online before the course begins. A slide show introduction gives you the opportunity to invite students to send you or share with the class a couple of their own introductory pictures

  • Did you ever take the course you are about to teach or one with closely related content when you were a student? Start the class by sharing some of your experiences as a student in the course. What were you worried about? What do you remember about the course? Did you do well or not so well? What would you do differently if you were taking the course now?

 From Waltje & Evans (2017)

  • Combine an attendance sheet with a mini-questionnaire. You can use a Top Hat poll or paper. If you use paper, on the left-hand side is the column where students sign in with their name, but on the right-hand side we always put a “Question of the day/week”. Here students answer a question or finish a prompt. This is a small addition that can help to develop and deepen the sense of class community and get students ready to learn. If you are savvy and have a good memory you can integrate or intersperse what you learn from these mini questionnaires into future class discussions (“Ashley, you mentioned you are interested in film noir/climate change/macramé…”). Some of the prompts can be about the assignments or readings done for the class (One thing I remember/did not understand), others could be on there just for fun: my favorite movie/song/TV show. You could also start them off with a saying or a sentence fragment they have to finish: This summer I will…., The best things in life are…., After college I plan on…., My dream place to visit is…. Before class begins and during breaks, we often overhear groups chatting about the answers they read on the sign-in sheet.

From UC Berkley

  • Have Students Meet. Have students greet someone else in the class. Even if this ritual takes only 30 seconds, you should find that your class warms up considerably. 

  • Attention Grabber. Use a problem or a demonstration to capture students’ imaginations about what is to come in the course. Often, an intriguing example will provide a guiding context for the material that follows.

From University of Iowa

  • Consider adding a surprising fact or a current event that demonstrates why the content in this course matters. Establishing relevance and promoting intrigue can help motivate student learning right from the start.

  • Set up clear communication strategies for the students. These could include when you have office hours/student help sessions, the best way to contact you, e-mail parameters, phone policies, Teams or Slack course chat., etc

  • Let your students see the enthusiasm you have for your subject and your love of teaching. It’s much more effective to begin the course letting students know that this is a course you want to teach with content you love, and that you are there to help them learn.

Supporting Online Discussions

One of the greatest challenges for faculty is that students often come to class not having completed assigned readings. This makes it difficult for them to participate in discussion, and it may also make it difficult for them to follow the material you have planned for the day/week.

Synchronous or Face-to-face: Spend 5 minutes at the end of class going over key points in the readings you are asking students to do for the next class period. This type of advance organizer will enable them to place what you are asking them to read in a more meaningful and comprehensible context. Spend 5-10 minutes at the beginning of class having students discuss (in pairs or in small groups) two or three quick questions about the readings. Students can assist one another in clarifying the readings, or bring their collective confusion, if any, to you. You may want to have students turn in notes (or a Google Doc) from their discussions, or something similar, as evidence that they had something to contribute to the conversation.

Asynchronous: Without the cues of co-presence in the classroom, it is more important than ever to direct students’ attention before they read, watch, or listen to something. These concrete experiences are the foundation of an effective learning cycle. It is useful to explain the purpose of the experience or give specific guidance on what things students should be paying special attention to or looking for. Students report greater engagement with readings when they are given specific sections or pages to focus on and a purpose for the reading. Tips about how experts in your discipline read an article, a primary source, etc. are also useful (Middendorf & Shopkow, 2017). (A brief example of this from history can be found here.)

Specific strategies include:

Anticipation Guides: Before viewing a lecture or starting a reading, students can be asked to take a minute or two to generate an anticipation guide (Major et al., 2016). Based on the previous content, the main topics, and keywords, each student generates their own list of questions they expect to be able to answer at the end. This can be completed as a mini assignment in Canvas where students generate 3-5 questions before viewing a lecture and submit the answers to their questions after viewing. A video introduction can provide an overview and explain how the activity will help students practice thinking like an expert.

Guided Notes with a Twist: Basic guided notes are outlines or lecture slides with missing words or content that students complete during a lecture (Major et al., 2016). A modified version focuses students’ efforts on higher-order thinking. The shared document includes the lecture agenda, key definitions, and spaces for note taking, plus targeted questions that ask students to apply, compare and contrast, elaborate, or make connections (Golas, 2018). These questions provide great moments to pause a lecture when students’ cognitive load may be reached and switch to different cognitive processes that reinforce their understanding (Harrington & Zakrajsek, 2017).

For pre-recorded lectures, students can pause the lecture to answer the question in their notes or the questions can serve as a discussion forum activity between recorded mini lectures. Students have been shown to be particularly engaged with these notes when they are the same kinds of questions asked on quizzes, major assignments, or exams. Tools such as TopHat, and Kaltura can be used to integrate questions within the lectures and record student responses.

Create a classroom culture of inquiry and mistake-making

Adapted from codetribe.

It’s great if you can answer student questions, but you’re not always going to have the answer, and that is okay. Share with students the reality that the disciplines taught within Luddy are vast, where no one knows everything. Developing software and addressing big questions related to the ethical use of technology is not about having the answers, but about cultivating the ability to figure things out using your resources: your classmates, the internet, the libraries, and your instructor.

Encourage students to follow a personal empowerment protocol to figure things out when they have a question. Similar to, “ask three, then me,” (C3B4Me)

this protocol encourages students to…

  • Ask a peer

  • Google it / Look it up at the library

  • Ask the instructor

This protocol both helps students become independent problem-solvers, and also helps ensure the instructor isn’t bombarded with questions.

Finally, normalize errors and mistake-making.  Every time you compile your code in front of the class, announce that you’re going to check for any errors, which are just a normal part of a programmer’s life. Whenever you get an error or when a student sheepishly confesses that they have 20 compiler errors, remark on how totally normal that is.

Go the extra step and get excited when a student says they have 20 errors, or even better, a “fatal error”! Model being unfazed by errors and in fact seeing errors as an opportunity to learn new things. As a teacher, helping students debug IS an opportunity for you to learn more about how to be a better teacher and anticipate a wider range of student errors!

When you model this attitude, students will follow suit. As a result, they will be less likely to get discouraged by 20 compiler errors and learn to celebrate them with you as a representation of all the things the class has learned.