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Helpful Hints for Effective Online Teaching: Setting Up Your WebTycho Classroom

CSI Staff

Staff Writer

Center for Support of Instruction

Published: 0 2003

Category: » Webtycho » Classroom-setup

This is part two of a multi-part series devoted to keys to success for effective online teaching. This second installment is devoted to approaches for managing your classroom set-up process gleaned from veteran faculty who, through trial and error over years of experience, have devised strategies and techniques that ensure a smooth start to the beginning of the semester. Please note that these suggestions are intended as food for thought and do not replace specific guidelines and procedures provided by individual academic units.

Class Announcements

Upon registration, students can see the first screen of their WebTycho classroom including the Class Announcements area. If nothing is visible, students may become concerned and contact you for information. To minimize individual calls and e-mails from students, we recommend that you post a preliminary announcement in your online class as soon as it becomes available to you. At minimum, you should let the students know you're in the process of building the classroom and provide a date when the course materials will be available. Make sure to include a notice to students that any materials posted prior to the class start date are subject to change.

Faculty Center

From the Faculty Center you can access creation and management tools for all areas of the WebTycho classroom, as well as control link availability on the Class Menu. These include Faculty Biography, Class Announcements, Syllabus, Course Content, Reserved Readings, Conferences, Study Groups, Webliography, Gradebook, Workbook, Chat Room, Class Members, Class Awareness, and Class Import. 

Once you've set up your class, you can eliminate the left-hand menu links to any WebTycho features you're not using. Students benefit from a "cleaned up" menu because it requires less scrolling and prevents them from clicking on dead links.

Importing

Prior to posting any new items, import all materials from previous classes that you intend to reuse even if you don't want to make them visible immediately. If you use the import feature after posting items in a particular area of the WebTycho classroom, the imported materials will overwrite the materials you've posted. Remember to update any due dates that appear in materials you've imported.

Note that when you import reserved readings, UMUC's office of Information and Library Services is automatically notified so that their staff can begin the copyright approval process.

Conference Area: Strategies for Better Management

Unlike the course content area which is read-only, the conference area is the site of discussion and interaction, the "heart" if you will, of the WebTycho classroom. Prior to setting up your conference area consider how you intend to use it. It's best to clearly separate content-driven conferences from those intended for social interaction or administrative questions and answers.

Successful faculty utilize non-content related conferences for a myriad of purposes. For example, it's a good practice to have at least one conference, such as a "Cyber Café" conference, devoted to outside discussions. This is similar to the discussions you hear among students before and after f2f classes, and gives students a chance to interact with each other and build relationships. "One of my favorite activities is visiting the Cyber Café to read my students' postings. They're quite witty and entertaining and give me a new perspective on the class," according to one faculty member. If you're not planning to read and respond to notes posted in the Cyber Café, let the students know up front.

Also, it's useful to set up a "Q&A" or a "Questions to the Faculty" conference. That way you can deal with all administrative issues in one area. As one seasoned faculty member explained, "It's convenient for me to receive all administrative questions in one location in the online classroom. I've found that if one student has a question, chances are many more do too, but don't necessarily take the initiative to ask. By posting my answers in the conference area, all the students have access to the information." Some faculty members create a "How I'm using WebTycho" conference to inform students about their specific approaches and expectations including details on which WebTycho functions will be utilized and for what purpose. "I find this particularly helpful because students don't get confused about where to post their questions or submit assignments."

To promote interaction among students in the early weeks, consider using an icebreaker in addition to requesting brief biographies in your required Introduction conference. For example, one instructor asks students to tell a brief story about themselves. You can further facilitate interaction by requiring that each student respond to at least two other students’ entries.

Even before the class officially begins, another faculty member establishes a Pre-week conference to promote early interaction. She asks probing questions such as "What do you think participation is?" and "Do you think that interaction enhances the learning process?" This serves both to help students get into the right mind-set for the online experience, and to clarify the faculty member's expectations for her students.

While the norm for content-related conferences is to hold week-long sessions (i.e. Sunday to Saturday), some faculty members have experimented successfully with two-week sessions on particularly complicated topics. On the other hand, try to avoid modules that last less than a week in duration. It's difficult for students with demanding schedules to manage short turnaround times. If you elect to use short-duration modules for quizzes and/or exams, please notify the students well in advance.

Regardless of the types and number of conferences you establish, your goal should be to actively engage the students in the learning process throughout the semester. Too often faculty experience great student response in the conference area at the beginning of the semester only to notice participation decrease over time. Of course, this is due to a number of factors, only some of which the faculty member can control. One effective means to maintain a high level of student activity, however, is to require students to respond at least weekly in the conference area. Depending on the level of participation you require, student class participation should count for between 10-30% of the total grade.

To avoid an entire classroom full of students posting basically the same response to a question you've posed, try to post multiple questions and set a limit on how many students may respond to each question. On the other hand, don't post so many questions that you become overwhelmed and unable to respond adequately.

Also, consider limiting the length of student conference entries. This serves two purposes: first, it limits the overall amount that all class members have to read, and two, it teaches the students to make their points concisely.

Conference Area: Set-Up Fundamentals

For clarity and ease of navigation, label your conferences with a title and session dates. For example, "Risk Assessment, Session Three, Week Three (9/13-9/19)." This serves to reinforce your class syllabus by reiterating the time frame for each session and alerting students to assignment deadlines.

Within each conference, also clearly label each topic with a title and due date. For example, "Conference Activity: Week Three Discussion Questions (Due 9/19)." In your topic text, provide clear directions including indicating where the student should turn in the assignment as well as assignment due dates.

Another technique faculty have employed successfully is to make conferences visible one week at a time. This allows you to customize later conferences based on how the class is progressing and to avoid overwhelming your students at the beginning of the semester.

When you add a new conference or topic, reorder the existing items so the most recent one is on top. Upon logging in, students will easily notice and access the newest material.

For additional assistance, refer to the Beginning of Semester Checklist.

Study Groups

If you're planning to use study groups in your class, to avoid extra work for yourself and potential confusion among your students, wait until the late registration period is over to assign study group teams and activities. In part three of this series (scheduled for the March/April 2003 issue of the DE Oracle) we will examine various strategies for effectively managing study groups in the online environment.

Preparing Content-Related Materials

While preparing content-related materials, try to keep static pieces including lectures, handouts, and PowerPoint presentations devoid of specifics such as semester, session, and due dates, or links that might change over time. That way you can reuse the same materials for multiple sections of the same course and from one semester to another with a minimum of (or no) revisions.

Of course, you must provide the semester-specific assignment due dates and other information in your class syllabus, conference area, and/or gradebook area as appropriate. Students need class due dates in order to properly plan for their semester. Post due dates prominently and in a consistent location so students can find them easily.

In the event of a change in an assignment due date or exam date, always post the new information in the announcement area in addition to editing the original site. One faculty member also suggests adding "revised date" next to the change. As that same faculty member explained, "I started out with due dates in multiple locations, but that quickly lead to confusion among my students when I made a change but neglected to correct the information everywhere it was posted. After responding to way too many individual e-mails from "confused" students, I learned to post a schedule of dates in one location only (course schedule, lesson guide, or syllabus)."

Summary

Time and again in our discussions with successful online faculty members, they reiterated that the more pro-active planning and preparation they completed, the smoother the class ran. Another point they stressed was that once they had achieved an effective teaching strategy and approach in one class, it was much easier to replicate that success in subsequent semesters.

We want to thank our experienced faculty members for their valuable insights.

Other articles in this series

• Helpful Hints for Effective Online Teaching: Introduction
• Pre-Class Preparation
• Managing the Online Classroom