Communication Tips

Communication with students should be done early and often when teaching remotely. It is important to tell your students how you plan to communicate with them and how often. This can ease student anxiety and streamline your communication.

Encourage students to share their communication needs. If they are unable to acquire the necessary technology to attend online classes, direct them to their school dean.

The following are your most useful tools for communication with students:

Canvas Inbox

This can be an effective tool for communicating with individuals and groups, especially when you want recipients to have the opportunity to reply to your messages directly. You can use the inbox to send messages to individual students.

Using the Canvas Inbox

Canvas Announcements

A great way to provide updates that do not fit into other course categories in a way that calls attention to new information. Any new announcement you make will show up on the student dashboard, the syllabus page, and home page.

We highly recommend using announcements to share your remote class session links/meeting IDs.

Creating Announcements

Canvas Discussions

Creating a discussion board within a Canvas course dedicated to any questions that arise related to remote teaching.

Creating Discussions

Zoom Video Conferencing

You may need to communicate with an individual or a group of students in real time. Zoom allows you to hold remote class sessions or office hours - this can be done through the Zoom app itself or through Canvas.

Talk to your students about proper Zoom etiquette. This includes muting themselves when they're not talking, choosing the "Raise Hand" button in the chat when they have a question or comment, and if/when/how they can share their screens.