Active blended and online teaching - Supporting your students
How to support your students
When teaching online, there are five key important questions to ask yourself at every stage:
- How can I best communicate with students?
Students need clear guidance on expectations, assessment, tasks and how to ask for help. When students no longer have access to educators before, during or after classes, they need new avenues for support. Part of the communication strategy is to think about the flow of the unit/week to be able to adjust your learning/teaching to meet students’ needs.
- How can I ensure that learning is meaningful?
Simply broadcasting information such as streamed classes or recorded videos do not necessarily result in effective learning! It is useful to ask yourself how you might get students to engage with your ideas in meaningful ways, such as: synthesising, practising, debating, defending, solving, interpreting, applying, teaching, and evaluating.
- How will feedback be provided to students?
When creating online activities, whether synchronous or asynchronous, consider how feedback will be integrated. Decide whether you will provide students with immediate or deferred feedback, whether feedback will be between students or from you to the student, and what level of feedback you will provide. Make sure there are opportunities for feedback to be actioned.
- How do I engage students in the online environment?
An engaged educator is likely to have engaged students. When you develop your online presence, share your ideas, knowledge and even emotions with students. By doing so, you will create a positive and supportive educator-student relationship and an engaging learning environment.
- How will I know that learning is successful?
In every good teaching sequence you should build in opportunities that help you and your students know if they are learning and engaging in expected ways. This helps you and it helps your students to consider what extra information or support could be provided. Some related questions include: How do you monitor and assess whether students are comprehending the content? Do you know if students are keeping up with the delivery of a synchronous class? How do you know if students are able to apply what they are learning?
There's a good chance you're already addressing the above questions in your teaching and learning activities, and successful learning sequences can have many different combinations and approaches.
What resources and services are available to students
Learning online or in a hybrid format can be a new and stressful experience for students. Here are some key resources that you can share with them in your unit to support them in their learning journey.
Student Support: Learning online
This guide provides Monash students with information about studying online. They have resources on study support, specialist support, learning technologies, enrolments, units and timetables, resources to study successfully online.
Learn HQ: Build digital capabilities
Suite of resources for students to develop their digital communication skills, make the most of technologies and study, share and create online.
Learn HQ: Moodle
An excellent resource that will help students learn how to navigate Moodle. The resource inlcludes guidance on how to set up individual preferences, submit assessments, and post in forums.
LearnHQ: Zoom
A resource introducing students to the use of Zoom for a variety of online learning and teaching contexts at Monash University, from large-scale sessions, to small classes based on groupwork, as well as study group or teamwork collaboration meetings.
Use Microsoft Teams for study groups
This resource will guide students to effectively use Microsoft Teams for online communication: create and manage teams, share screens, collaborate on whiteboards, participate in discussions and share files.
Counselling service
Share this link for counselling services so that students can obtain additional support around a number of issues from managing motivation, coping with stress and/or anxiety, prioritisation and managing perfectionism. This is a free service for Monash students.