STRATEGIES FOR ORIENTING STUDENTS TO ONLINE INSTRUCTION! !

Orienting students
Objective
The objective for this session is to o!er strategies you can use with your students to help orient them to online instruction. Below are the specic topics that will be highlighted in this document.
1. 2. 3. 4.

Explain why it is important to orient students when teaching. Highlight why this is even more critical when using online communication. Help you understand the di!erence between face to face and online mediated courses and communication. O!er strategies you can employ with students to help with online communication. Tie the above strategies to tools at your disposal in the LMS.

1. Why is it important to orient students?

When using online instruction in your courses, you have to assume the mantle of not only the content expert of your given subject but also, as a technology expert for the tools you have chosen to use. Just like you would not walk into a class the rst day and begin the instruction without rst explaining your expectations and the students responsibility for the semester, so to you cannot simply turn on your online course and expect students to understand what they are required to accomplish. This is where you have to help the students understand everything from where they are required to go, to how they complete the corse successfully. What follows are a few ideas to help you understand what your students need from you. Begin anything you do online from the perspective of the student. You can make no assumptions about student prior knowledge of systems, processes or procedures. The only assumption you can make is that your students know nothing and will need help to navigate the semester successfully. Below are some questions you can ask yourself (putting you in the student role) to help you with this process.
Where do I go? How do I log in? What am I seeing when I look at my course? What skills must I have to be successful? How do I communicate here? Where can I see my grades? Where do I go if I have problems? What do I need to access this course? How often will I need to come here? How do I complete assignments? How will I be graded? How will I know when my Etc.

assignments have been graded?

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STRATEGIES FOR ORIENTING STUDENTS TO ONLINE INSTRUCTION!

2. Teaching online is not the same as teaching face to face.

As you can see from the previous section, your students need your help. You are the go to person for your courses. When students have questions you will be the person they will turn to. If you are unable to help them they will stop asking and become frustrated. You must become the expert of your courses. This means that not only must you be a content expert, but you must also become an expert of what is required of student within your online courses. This is not to say that you must be the expert of all things, but you must have a strong knowledge of what you are requiring of your students. The following are examples that will highlight to you the di!erent requirements online instruction places on the instructor.

Food for thought

Online courses are available on a 24/7 basis. Online courses are designed to allow for the greatest exibility in time management for the

students.

You can hold your students more accountable for the work they complete online. You can see when and what your students are doing within your course. You can make adjustments to help student success, based on data. You must draw boundaries for yourself. You must communicate more with online instruction. You must communicate within a reasonable timeframe (24 hours). You must have set channels for communication to happen. You must demonstrate how to complete each assignment.

When thinking about the previous statements, you can begin to understand that your students need your help for them to be successful in your course.

3. Strategies for orienting students.

What is meant by orientation? In simplest terms it means helping students understand what they need to know when they need to know it. The orientation will change depending on the given task. One thing is certain, your students need your help. Your evaluations are largely dependent on student satisfaction with your course. When student expectations are not aligned with your expectations, conicts and dissatisfaction are likely outcomes. This has nothing to do with your knowledge of the subject you are teaching. The following are strategies you can employ to help your students with your courses
1. 2.

Cover the who, what, when, where, and why the rst day of class.
Understand that you will probably need to devote the rst day of your course to this task.

Cover the syllabus including grade distribution in the rst class day.
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STRATEGIES FOR ORIENTING STUDENTS TO ONLINE INSTRUCTION!

This sets tone for the course.

3. 4.

Log into your course and literally show your students what is looks like. Highlight how you have your course laid out and where they can nd the tools within your course. Create assignments that will help students self orient to your course. Make sure to o!er points as an incentive for completion.
Have the students log in and/or nd the required online resources. Have them nd the grade book. Have them send an email from within the course Have them post to a forum Etc.

5. 6.

Explain to the students what technology they will need to complete the course. Demonstrate to your students how to complete each assignment before they become available to the students.
When covering this in class it is important to use orienting language that will focus your

students on the task you are covering. Phrases like This is important, You will need to know this in order to complete the assignment, This will be on the test are examples of orienting phrases. Once students have become better at self orientation these phrases are less necessary but still useful.

7.

Demonstrate to your students what you expect to receive depending on the given task.
It is helpful if you have a student account which you can show the process students will

need to go through to complete a task. This is not only helpful in showing the students how to complete a task, but will demonstrate for them what a completed task looks like from their perspective. Student and instructors do not see things the same way within an online environment.

8.

Explain what your preferred communication channel is and set what you consider to be a reasonable response time for communication with your students
A channel may be email, telephone, text, or course forum. Students must know where to

reach you, and must understand how quickly they should expect to hear a reply from you. The student expectations will vary depending on the channel chosen. If you do not clearly state what you deem to be reasonable, you can cause frustration. An example would be texting. Students may assume that you will respond instantly, if they text you. If you think that 24 hours is reasonable for this channel you must let your students know this.

9.

O!er study tips to your students on how they can manage their time and complete assignments.
It is a good idea to have some assignments due in stages. Complete part A by this day and

then do part B to nish. This will help build the types of study habits you expect from your students.

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STRATEGIES FOR ORIENTING STUDENTS TO ONLINE INSTRUCTION!

Moodle tools to help students self orient

Because we teach hybrid courses, (courses that have an online and face to face component) it is possible to orient your students in your courses. This only works if the students are there for the time you cover the material. If you have not planned on covering this material again for students who have missed the session or for student reference, your students may be aware that you expect something from them but still do not know what. It is a good idea to create resources that your students can use to help themselves self orient to your course. I will list some ways in which you can achieve this and align tools within moodle you can use.
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Lecture Capture - It is a good idea to record your courses so that students have access to the material you cover. This is called lecture capture and is a relatively easy process. By doing this you not only provide a way for students that have missed your courses to have access to the material you covered but it also provides a resource for students to use as a study reference. Quizzes - Quizzes are a great way to develop self paced orienting materials that hold students accountable. Quizzes can be created to cover your syllabus, course layout, due dates, Etc. Forums - Forums are a good vehicle for peer help. During the semester there is much material you are responsible for. If you create forums where students can post issues they are having di"culties with in the course, and o!er extra credit to students who help within these fora, the students may get the help they were seeking before you have had a chance to even know about the issue. Many hands make light work. Email - This is a quick one to one communication option that is a asynchronous that can solve many issues that arrive. Lesson - A lesson is a way to present instruction in a given order to students. When you create lessons you are saying that students must do X before they do Y before they do Z. This is a way to ensure that information is not skipped by the impatient student. Book - A book is a way for you to collect many sources into a single resource. If you had a video, some text and a picture that you wanted to have your students look at, you could compile them into one book rather than three separate links. Page - a page is a web page that you create in your course to provide text material to students. Rather than having documents that students download, a page keeps information bound to the place that it is relevant within the course. URL - a url is just a link to an outside web page. The di!erence is that rather than simply providing a link to the page it will display it in relation to your course. This will help keep your students from not returning to your course once they have navigated away.

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