ITS 106: Collaborative Communication Tools for Teaching and Learning

Overview

There are multiple communication tools available to New River students and employees and knowing how to use them most effectively helps to improve communication for us all. Effective communication requires that we know how to communicate depending on the context of the message and tools available.

Choosing the best communication tool for your message enables the sender and receiver of the information to benefit from commonly accepted expectations of urgency, while remaining least intrusive so that your message is well received. Learning style preferences can also be a factor, as individuals vary in how they prefer to communicate and how best they are able to interact with others (see an overview of these preferences).

This workshop provides an overview of these communication tools and considerations for using them, while focusing on their practical application for teaching and learning.

After completing this workshop participants will be able to:

1) Categorize synchronous and asynchronous communication tools available at New River with at least 75% accuracy.
2) Choose the appropriate communication tool based on the urgency of the message with at least 75% accuracy.
3) Create an instructional objective (comprised of behavior, condition and standard) that applies to the Brightspace D2L discussions tool.
4) Access and use the various communication tools available at New River with at least 70% accuracy.

Communication Diagram

Choosing a Communication Method

With so many communication tools available it is sometimes difficult to select the most appropriate one for the message and audience with which you might want to communicate. One approach to communication is to begin with the least intrusive method and then progress to more intrusive methods as the urgency of the message increases.

Why is this? Some communication methods allow each party opportunities for thoughtful responses and reflection and a response when convenient, while other approaches require the recipient of the message to stop all other activities for the sake of immediate communication. Also, for record-keeping purposes, some forms of communication leave excellent records (e.g., emails and text messages) of the conversation while others might not (e.g., phone calls and walk-in meetings).

There may be exceptions to the information in the communication diagram above. Can you think of any?

There are also other considerations for choosing communication tools, and within a classroom setting it is important to be aware of communication expectations and preferences that learners may have. One outcome of the Remote Learning Readiness Survey exam (or other freely available online learning style assessments) is that students learn about their own learning style preferences, which can be helpful in improving communication skills.

Learning Styles and Communication (PDF)

Email

The New River email system includes accounts for all students and employees at New River. There are three ways (maybe more?) that instructors can locate a student's email address.

1. Typically, instructors use Self-Service Banner to obtain a copy of the "official course roster" as well as other information, including student email addresses.
2. Perhaps the easiest method for locating a student email address is to query the online People Search. You can use the student last name for the query. When using the Microsoft Outlook application or the browser-based Outlook Web App as the email client, the built-in address book provides access to the Global Address Book. This information is identical to the People Search site, but rather than performing a query from the People Search web page the query is performed from within Microsoft Outlook. The results are the same.
3. A third way of finding a student email address is to locate the student's username from within your Brightspace D2L course shell. By appending @newriver.edu to the student username (e.g., white_aa) you can figure out the email address (white_aa@newriver.edu).

Email is asynchronous, meaning that you send it - you wait - you get a reply. The conversation doesn't occur in real-time but may realistically take a few days. A reasonable expectation that I establish with my students is trying to reply to all my emails within 24 hours. Sometimes that response might be as brief as "I recieved your email and will need to get back with you soon regarding that question." If a student emails you and doesn't receive any response for 2-3 days you've lost an opportunity to provide timely feedback and/or information. Remember, keeping the student engaged is a key to successful learning.

The New River email system also has group addresses to facilitate communication. These group addresses should be used sparingly and only for communications related to the essential mission of the College. We also have access to listservs through WVNET to create ad hoc groups or groups focused on a specific issue (like nrctc-bannerusers-l@listserv.wvnet.edu for all New River Banner users). While these groups and listservs might not directly help instructors needing to communicate with students, it is helpful to be aware of them and how they are used.

Email can be one-to-one or one-to-many. You can include multiple recipients in your TO field and you can also use the CC and BCC fields to add even more recipients. You can attach files up to 25MB to an email (e.g., PPTX, TXT, DOCX, RTF, PDF).

Discussion Point: Describe an example of when New River email might be the most appropriate method for communication?

Brightspace Email

Brightspace D2L includes an email tool that sends messages to New River inboxes. Within a course, as you begin to compose an email message you must select the recipients from a list or choose the entire course roster. You can select multiple students easily without needing to search for each student's New River email address. This tools is great for sending emails, but emails are not received in Brightspace. Instead, emails sent from Brightspace are received in New River inboxes.

1. You can attach files to Brightspace emails (up to 25MB).
2. You cannot send an email directly from an Internet email system (like Outlook or OWA) to a Brightspace inbox, because replies to New River emails (like those sent from Brightspace) are delivered to the New River email inbox rather than to Brightspace. Essentially, Brightspace emails are being forwarded to New River inboxes for every user.

Brightspace D2L email is also asynchronous and it can be one-to-one or one-to-many.

Discussion Point: It is up to the instructor to establish expectations regarding effective and appropriate communication methods for the class. How might Brightspace email be included as an effective communication tool?

Brightspace Discussions

A discussion board is an online area where you can post a question, comment, or statement and then others can view it and reply to it. This doesn't happen in real-time, so it is an asynchronous form of communication. An appropriate use of Discussions might be an instructor posting a discussion question (also called a thread or topic) and then requiring students to reply to the question within a specific period of time.

When you post a comment to a discussion board it is one-to-many communication.

Discussion Point: What are some effective approaches for assessing a student's discussion comments?

Brightspace Chat

An online chat session is real-time, meaning that when you make a comment the readers are viewing it immediately. Managing an online chat session involves a few challenges. Generally, these challenges can be easily overcome but each one requires a different approach. First, someone has to be "in control" of the chat room. Otherwise the conversation quickly gets diverted off topic. If there are more than a few participants the conversation can quickly develop multiple threads or topics. Since you'll see this one line at a time it is awkward to follow so keeping the chat session focused on topic is important and possibly difficult. Managing a session of 25 participants who are actively communicating is nearly impossible, so reducing the chat session to fewer than 10 greatly increases the focus of the session. As a result, chat sessions are best for small focused groups rather than entire class conversations.

Discussion Point: How might you incorporate chat into your course?

Instant Messaging with Zoom

New River CTC uses Zoom as the College's official instant messaging application to facilitate communication among employees and students.

To accommodate students at a distance, instructors must avail themselves in some way for "virtual" office hours. Instant messaging with Zoom is one way to accomplish this. It is typically a one-to-one same-time method of communication although it does support one-to-many (more than two participants). Zoom also includes features for sharing content and polling, which can be used to deliver content and assess learning. Zoom works well for virtual office hours by providing communication and opportunties for engagement and interaction.

Two additional features of Zoom include (1) messages sent to someone not logged in are retained and received when the user logs in next time, and (2) you can use drag-and-drop to exchange files with Zoom. There are video tutorials that provide quick training for using Zoom.

The following information is from the Educause site "7 Things You Should Know":

Instant messaging (IM) is a form of online communication that allows real-time interaction through computers or mobile devices. Although typed text remains the primary convention for IM, the technology now allows users to send images, audio and video files, and other attachments. Hundreds of millions of people use IM to stay connected. In many ways, it epitomizes the notion of the always-connected, multitasking student, sending and receiving messages at all hours, from a wide spectrum of devices, while doing several other things at the same time. IM has become such an integral part of students' lives that many colleges and universities are working to move it beyond the social sphere into teaching and learning.

Discussion Point: After reviewing the Educause information about instant messaging, how might you use instant messaging within your class?

Exercises and Assessments

1. Synchronous and asynchronous forms of communication each have distinct advantages for education. Educause provides Best Practices for Excellent Digital Communication. Please review that information and we will engage in a short discussion of it regarding its merit and appropriateness for improving communication within our New River environment.
2. Is the following statement true or false? Virtual office hours can be scheduled by meeting in a pre-designated chat room or by scheduling specific times you will be available via Zoom.