Both email and online discussions are commonly used to provide feedback for students on their assignments. Regular users of these approaches caution that it cannot be assumed that all students know how to use online technologies. Your class may be their first experience with online learning and so there is a danger that they may not perform as well online as you expect. As a consequence it is a good practice to introduce your students to the features of Canvas.
The main advantage of online technology identified by lecturers at UTS is the greater flexibility in providing faster feedback on their students work. Students also like the immediacy implied by being online. It gives them a greater opportunity to communicate with their lecturers and tutors. While the online environment is a good forum for communication and group discussions, the more immediate nature of communication can create expectations among students that their lecturers will respond to their requests instantly.
Academic who provide online feedback to their students comment that responding to the volume of personal email messages from students can become time-consuming if not closely managed. They recommend an alterative approach whereby students are required to post questions online. This is one way lecturers can make themselves available to a large group of students and still allow individual students to ask questions and receive answers that everyone can see. As with all feedback lecturers need to clearly indicate the likely turn-around time it will take for them to respond to student questions.
A number of lecturers report that there are some students who will not contribute in the online environment unless it is part of an assessment task. One way to encourage reluctant student participation is to allow them to ask their questions anonymously. Even when students answer each other’s questions they can be permitted to do so anonymously. This system has worked in Business, Engineering and Law, though anonymous posting raises its own challenges of monitoring mischievous behaviour.
When participation in online discussions is required as part of the criteria for the subject, lecturers needs to determine how the online interactions will be assessed. Online discussion forums are somewhere between tutorial discussions and essays in style. They have the informality of a tutorial but provide a permanent written record of what was discussed. It is usual to assess the extent a student contributes to the discussion and how they draw on the resources of the subject to formulate their answers (Lea, 2001). As with essays, coherence, style and presentation may all be essential criteria that are assessed in the students’ online contributions.
