Online Course Communications

Ahhh, that pesky aspect of classes, in which we have to do work outside of a course to extend our knowledge, ask questions to clarify ideas, and even check in about being sick. Take a moment and think: how many emails have you written in your life? A quick search on my work Gmail notes that in my "sent" folder, I have 23,383 sent emails. That's just that account, which was at one point new since we switched over from Outlook about 10 years ago. Communication and connection is central to learning and creating community, so it follows that there are a variety of ways to communicate. Today, I'd like to note three ways of communicating digitally (especially necessary for online or hybrid courses) and end with one good idea to have moving forward. 

Discussion boards: Asynchronous and (sometimes) Anonymous 

Many of us have used some sort of online discussion board at one time or another, and this format is especially helpful for courses that occur fully online or are asynchronous in some way. The benefits of this format are myriad: people can comment and post at anytime, can follow up on a point without the pressure of being in class, and can allow for deep participation for students who might not want to comment in class due to a variety of reasons (shyness, a form of processing delay, self-consciousness are a few of many). This can be a powerful way of capturing everyone's voices and also extending the class. One excellent use of it was in a grad school class of mine in which the professor set up a blog called "l'esprit d'escalier," or "staircase wit." The idea was that, at times, people would come up with the perfect reply to some discussion after the discussion had ended, when they were in the staircase on their way out of the building. That blog allowed us to extend our ideas (for some, it meant to show of some intellectual idea, but that was more about the culture of my grad school than anything). The drawbacks of the discussion board really boil down to connection: it is harder to connect via a post, and it is easier to participate as an online avatar rather than as a fully-realized human, warts and all. Reddit comes to mind: it can be a place where people get help in cleaning their gutters, but it can also be a place filled with hate. For the purposes of education, of course, blogs are monitored more intentionally, and people generally are more of their best selves. 

Zooms: Connection and Bad Memories from Lockdowns 

I remember the first Zoom meeting I had maybe two years after the lockdowns in 2020, and it was a chilling moment: it brought me back to sitting in my office teaching class while hearing my wife try to do "mommy school" to our small kids in the other room. We all know online meeting spaces, and they are a marvel of our modern world: we can easily meet with anyone, anywhere. Online meetings can be incredibly effective for replicating the best parts of in-person meetings, as we can follow an agenda, hit our topics of conversation, and walk away with action items and tasks to accomplish. They also allow for human connection, whether it be moments of checking in and laughing about something that happens, or even noting the intimacy of being in someone else's home (remember the Twitter account "Room Rater"?). Online meetings can be a wonderful way of seeing someone and getting to know them in as close to as "in-person" as possible, but of course there are challenges too. It is hard to schedule. People can be distracted (how many of us had to remind kids to turn their video on during class, only to have kids say they had tech problems...which we couldn't fully address from our end?). And there's always the question of "could this meeting be an email?" Most effective online meetings, like in-person meetings, need to have actionable items at the end so that people can feel like they connected and productive. 

Emails: Direct and Time-Consuming

Then there is the staple of our modern era: the email. It functions to make announcements, ask direct and pointed questions or give feedback, and so many other ways of connecting. Email is one of the most direct ways of connecting with people, and I've found it is very effective in notifying my classes of some idea - it's great for letting them know that I've handed back their essays digitally, or reminding them that they need to bring their books to class in two days. It's also been a very effective way of giving feedback or asking questions, and my students often email me for specialized support for class. It's very helpful in that sense. Of course, if they read the emails... A full inbox can be demoralizing, too; 100+ unread emails is a lot, and takes time to slog through. We often overthink email etiquette, and can be more formal than we need to be. 

One Good Idea: Intention, Intention, Intention

I'll of course say all of these are helpful, and each serves a purpose. Since we have been back full-time and in-person, I have used Zoom much less frequently, but there still are times when we "hop online for a chat." I also think back to when I was in high school, the early days of the internet. I couldn't email my teacher over the weekend for an extension, and online boards only functioned on AOL chatrooms. Education looked and felt very different then, but it still came down to communication and connection. My takeaway is to think about the "why" behind each of these ideas. If there is an articulated intention for each form, that communication strategy will be much more effective. So give it a try!