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.

Considering Feedback

In a recent conversation via the National Institute for Scientific Teaching, STEM educators gathered to discuss practical strategies aimed at improving teaching and learning. One of the outcomes was a discussion on how to provide thoughtful and relevant feedback to students. Some of the key points and related resources are mentioned below:

Wiggins (2012) defines feedback as information about how we are doing in our efforts to reach a goal. Helpful feedback is goal-referenced; tangible and transparent; actionable; user-friendly (specific and personalized); timely; ongoing; and consistent. He notes, “the term feedback is often used to describe all kinds of comments made after the fact, including advice, praise, and evaluation. But none of these are feedback, strictly speaking”.

Ryan (2021) adds, In writing feedback, it is important to ask: What is the goal of this piece of feedback?

Impact: actionable info for students to use to improve future iterations of the assignment

Ex: “Each subsection within Results should begin with a sentence explaining the purpose of that particular experiment.”

Advice: Be clear and specific in what actions should be taken, don’t lump multiple actions together in one comment.

Sensemaking – comments to highlight strengths/weaknesses of the assignment

Ex: “You provided a concise and clear definition of the key concepts.”

Advice: Use specific adjectives rather than general descriptors. When making critiques, avoid the “compliment sandwich” as this obscures the message. Make criticism constructive and focused on the work rather than the student.

Agency – comments encouraging the student to take an active role in improving by seeking support/resources to improve

Ex: “Review the textbook section on photosynthesis,” “For formatting citations, please refer to the style guide.”

Advice: Separate these comments from other types of comments (impact or sensemaking).

How do we give feedback in a way that is mindful of faculty time and energy?

A few suggestions from faculty from a variety of disciplines include:

Weekly Formative Exams and Creative Grading

An outline for weekly learning activities (in-class, at-home) is provided to students. Each week ends with an in-class test during the first half of class (becomes cumulative as course progresses) with a sizable amount of time that day for feedback on performance through peer interaction and faculty instruction.(Baily et. al., 2017)

Use feedback oriented online exercises

Groups of multiple-choice questions surrounding a clinical cases study were created and ordered, so that when combined, they modeled good short answers to a question surrounding a clinical scenario. These were “practice” problems, preparing for a summative exam. Students’ outcomes on the exam were improved if they did the exercises. The question remains if improvement was due to increased interaction with the material or learning the approach to formatting their written answers. (Carnegie, 2015)

 

Student Engagement Structures for Feedback

“Peer feedback and analyzing exemplars are two particularly promising ways of generating internal feedback and promoting student feedback literacy.” (Carless, 2022, p. 145) “Internal feedback is the new knowledge that students generate when they compare their current knowledge and competence against some reference information” (Nicol, 2021).

Use a written response for peer reviews. Students need to be coached to provide meaningful peer reviews in written form.

For large format classes, tools like PeerMark by Turnitin, Hypothesis, or Perusall could be used. Eli Review models a describe-evaluate-suggest approach for student’ written peer review comments. Others?

Students submit a draft, then look at a detailed rubric and/or several exemplars.

“… the input comes from the exemplars and/or rubric and there are incentives for students to engage actively with the material in order to revise their draft….” (Carless 2022, p. 148)

It is also important to remember that it is not enough for students to receive feedback. They also need explicit opportunities to implement and practice with the feedback received.

Assigning students a revision memo or revision report is another promising engagement strategy (e.g., https://owl.excelsior.edu/argument-and-critical-thinking/revising-your-argument/revising-your-argument-revision-strategies/ ).

Further Reading: 

admin. (2021, April 19). Team-based quizzes on no budget. Amanda Loves to Audit. https://amandalovestoaudit.com/2021/04/team-based-quizzes-on-no-budget/

Bailey, E. G., Jensen, J., Nelson, J., Wiberg, H. K., & Bell, J. D. (2017). Weekly Formative Exams and Creative Grading Enhance Student Learning in an Introductory Biology Course. CBE—Life Sciences Education, 16(1), ar2. https://doi.org/10.1187/cbe.16-02-0104

Basey, J. M., Maines, A. P., & Francis, C. D. (2014). Time Efficiency, Written Feedback, and Student Achievement in Inquiry-Oriented Biology Labs. International Journal for the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning, 8(2). https://eric.ed.gov/?id=EJ1135240

Carnegie, J. (2015). Use of Feedback-Oriented Online Exercises to Help Physiology Students Construct Well-Organized Answers to Short-Answer Questions. CBE—Life Sciences Education, 14(3), ar25. https://doi.org/10.1187/cbe.14-08-0132

Carless, D. (2022). From teacher transmission of information to student feedback literacy: Activating the learner role in feedback processes. Active Learning in Higher Education, 23(2), 143–153.

Nicol, D., & McCallum, S. (2022). Making internal feedback explicit: exploiting the multiple comparisons that occur during peer review. Assessment & Evaluation in Higher Education, 47(3), 424–443.

 Ryan, T., Henderson, M., Ryan, K., & Kennedy, G. (2021a). Identifying the components of effective learner-centred feedback information. Teaching in Higher Education, 1–18. https://doi.org/10.1080/13562517.2021.1913723

Ryan, T., Henderson, M., Ryan, K., & Kennedy, G. (2021b). Designing learner-centred text-based feedback: a rapid review and qualitative synthesis. Assessment & Evaluation in Higher Education, 46(6), 894–912. https://doi.org/10.1080/02602938.2020.1828819

Ryan, T., Henderson, M., Ryan, K., & Kennedy, G. (2022). Feedback in higher education: aligning academic intent and student sensemaking. Teaching in Higher Education, 1–16. https://doi.org/10.1080/13562517.2022.2029394

Wiggins, G. (2012). Seven keys to effective feedback. Feedback, 70(1), 10–16.

Ways to Reflectively Conclude the Semester

Student reflections can take many forms: an individual five-minute writing activity, a full-class discussion, or somewhere in-between.

(From https://learning.northeastern.edu/reflecting-on-the-last-day-of-class/) Below is a set of possible prompts that you might use or adapt, based on a four-question reflective learning technique that has been shown to increase students’ retention of material (Boucquey, 2014; Dietz-Uhler & Lanter, 2009):

  • Can you identify one important concept, research finding, theory, or idea that you learned while taking this class?

  • Why do you believe that this concept, research finding, theory, or idea is important?

  • How would you apply what you have learned from this class to some aspect of your life.

  • What question(s) has the class raised for you? What are you still wondering about?

Other reflective activities include:

Summarize the course content

“Have students create concept maps illustrating major aspects of course content”(From Teaching Psychology, A Step by Step Guide – Bernstein, Chew & Frantz, 2020, p.90).

Review Pre-course responses

If you administered a pretest at the beginning of the course to assess what your students thought they knew about [the course], you might also spend part of the last class session reviewing their responses to that test and discussing how their ideas have changed (Bernstein, Chew & Frantz, 2020, p.91).

Celebrate Students’ Work

In writing-intensive courses, end the semester by celebrating the writing of your students.  Before the last day, assign students to select a piece of their work to read aloud in 2-3 minutes.  On the final day of class, each student reads the selection, and the class responds to each reading with applause. (https://teaching.berkeley.edu/last-day-class).

Letter to Future Students: Write a short letter to future students in the class, letting them know whatever you think is most important about the instructor, the course, the assignments, and the reading. https://www-chronicle-com.proxyiub.uits.iu.edu/blogs/profhacker/improve-your-course-evaluations-by-having-your-class-write-letters-to-future-students

Personalized Feedback Form: Provide a link to a Google form which students complete before they leave.  On the form are questions you ask them about what they liked/disliked about your class, what activities/lectures helped them learn, and anything else they might want to share. This always provides me more rich information than any formal school-wide questionnaire can.  Students usually take their time filling out this survey instead of just checking off boxes in the other formal survey. (Example copy of Google form end of the semester reflection) https://www.fierceeducation.com/best-practices/end-semester-tips-how-to-get-students-to-love-your-course

Preparing for the first day of classes: Introducing yourself to your students.

The Eberly Center at Carnegie Mellon University suggests the first class meeting should serve at least two basic purposes: 

  • To clarify all reasonable questions students might have relative to the course objectives, as well as your expectations for their performance in class. As students leave the first meeting, they should believe in your competence to teach the course, be able to predict the nature of your instruction, and know what you will require of them.

  • To give you an understanding of who is taking your course and what their expectations are.

A few actions that can help facilitate those purposes are:

The Center for Excellence in Teaching and Learning at Iowa State recommends that you Visit the classroom prior to the first day your class meets, and try out the technology, microphone, lights, etc.. I add that if you need assistance with technology in your classroom, contact your university’s support team early so they can have a chance to address the problem in a timely manner. If you have not been on campus for a while and your classroom is located away from your department, travel to your class to see if your walking route is the same, or if you need to allot more time for travel. (Especially if you are on a campus that is able to build and redesign).

“Professors who established a special trust with their students often displayed the kind of openness in which they might, from time to time, talk about their intellectual journey, its ambitions, triumphs, frustrations, and failures, and encourage students to be similarly reflective and candid.” 

–From the chapter “How Do They Treat Their Students” in Ken Bain’s What the Best College Teachers Do (Harvard Press, 2004), available in the CFT Library 


Vanderbilt’s Center for Teaching Excellence recommends that you Arrive early on the first day your class meets and greet students as they arrive. Introduce yourself and post how you want students to address you, (Professor, Dr., first name?) course name, and section of the class on the projector screen, so that when students walk in, they know that they are in the correct place. IU’s Center for Excellence in Teaching and Learning reminds that you can send a welcome email to your students, perhaps inviting them to use NameCoach (if you have access to it https://cloud.name-coach.com/) to record and learn the pronunciation of each other's names.

The Center for Teaching and Learning at Washington University suggest you consider, What do students want to know about you as their instructor? Consider sharing with students how you teach and/or how you expect students to learn. One way to help increase engagement with students is to share with students why the subject is interesting to you, or ways of learning successfully in the class. You can also include comments from students in previous classes, personal history of your work in this subject, or examples showing:

  1. how you apply the course content in your work or use it to solve problems

  2. how content is used in industry or other parts of society.

Share some information that will personalize you – your teaching experience, the reason you entered your discipline, an anecdote from your undergraduate learning days. This point is meant to encourage you to 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. If you have graduate teaching assistants, introduce them, and let them tell something about themselves as well.

Set up clear communication strategies for the students. These could include when you will have office hours, the best way to contact you, e-mail parameters, phone policies, as well as whether you will use a backchannel such as Microsoft Teams or Slack in your course, and if so, how will it be used.

Most of these tips align with the key principles provided by James Lang (author of Small Teaching), in an article for the Chronicle for Higher Education. These principles are intended to help faculty decide which activities and approaches will best draw students into the course and prepare them to learn. https://www-chronicle-com.proxyiub.uits.iu.edu/article/how-to-teach-a-good-first-day-of-class/