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Active blended and online teaching - Supporting your students

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.

Enabling students’ learning

There are times when students have a legitimate reason for missing an activity. There are also students with disabilities or medical illnesses who must be provided with reasonable adjustments to enable their learning. While educators should make every effort to ensure students are not at a disadvantage, ensuring at least one activity is recorded allows us to meet these needs as a reasonable last resort.

Record your class View

Class recordings play an important role in supporting student learning, revision and accessibility. They complement active and engaging teaching approaches and help ensure a consistent learning experience across units for students.

Educator responsibilities

Educators are responsible for ensuring students clearly understand:

Which activities are recorded, and
How and where recordings can be accessed in Moodle as part of a clear weekly routine.

This information should be communicated to students at the start of the teaching period. Consistent application of these expectations enhances clarity for students, strengthens continuity of learning and supports alignment with unit delivery best practices.

What activities need to be recorded?

All scheduled lectures and seminars should be recorded and made available on Moodle within 24 hours of being recorded (or by Monday morning where a recording occurs on a Friday). Confirm this timeline to students at the start of the teaching period so that the routine is clear.
Where a class is delivered more than once, only one class is recorded.
- If your class is recorded automatically via Echo360, normally the first class is recorded. If you would prefer a later activity to be recorded, you can request this by contacting the Timetabling team.
- If your class is recorded manually via other platforms, you can make the decision on which instance to record. The recording must be uploaded to Moodle within 24 hours of the class and students must be informed of when it will be available.

Other activities, including tutorials, workshops, applied or other learning activities, may also be recorded, as determined by the faculty or unit teaching team.
If the platform supports it, you should enable automated captions and transcripts for all recorded and live-streamed classes and other video and audio learning resources that are available on the Learning Management System.
Guest speakers who are not Monash staff should be asked to sign a release form before the activity is recorded and/or live streamed

Find out more in the Unit Delivery Procedure.

Recording timing

The automatic recording will start two minutes before the scheduled class time and stop seven minutes before the next hour to allow time for class turnover. Educators should ensure they are aware of the recording windows so that class content is delivered within the recording period and captured accurately.

When recordings cannot be provided on time

Where an activity is not recorded due to special circumstances or where a recording cannot be uploaded within the expected timeframe, educators must:

Inform students in advance, and
Provide
- An updated timeframe for when recording resources will be available, and
- Alternative ways for students to engage with the class content.

Helping students to plan their studies

Recognising that students must plan their studies and other activities, Scheduling Operations expect that faculties have in place a Seat Management Plan that would indicate the actions to be taken if all available classes are full and new classes are required.

Such a plan facilitates quick actions (under 24 hours) that enable students to complete their timetables.

Helping students plan their studies relies on a set of principles as follows:

Scheduled assessments (including in-class tests) are not scheduled on a Friday, Saturday, Sunday or a public holiday recognised in Malaysia for any units taught at Monash University Malaysia.
The timetable is finalised and available to record student preferences for class allocation at least 4 weeks before the teaching period commences.
The students’ personal timetables is available at least 2 weeks before the teaching period commences. This timetable includes teaching staff information where available.
Students can request a change to their personal timetable, however, their requests are assessed on being clash-free and the availability of seats in the requested activity.

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.

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