Title: Online Course Dynamics
Course: Dev_TOPKIT_SAMPLE_COURSE_Bauer_S_67 > Section: Week 7 - Managing Your Online Course

Like the old saying, “even the best laid plans of mice and men often go awry (Robert Burns, 1785),” there will be times when unanticipated circumstances arise and knowing exactly where to go for assistance is key in managing a successful online course. Please remember that the following CDL teams and resources will assist you with issues that may arise within your course:

<Replace - Your LMS> Support – provides technical assistance for you ( e.g., course reset, instructor name or course name change, adding other faculty as section instructors/designers, upload a quiz, extend quiz time for students with disabilities) and for your students (e.g., provide assistance with course, assignment, and quiz access). Their support page <Link to support web page> provides contact numbers, email addresses, and support hours which includes evening and weekend hours.

Instructional Designer – While you are employed at <Replace - Institution Name> you will always have an assigned instructional designer to help you redesign your course and develop improved strategies with teaching your course.

Other Faculty Resources – <Replace - Institution Name> offers a variety of resources that are available to assist you with any additional questions you may have. Refer to Module 5 for listing.

Instructional Strategies and Best Practices

This section consists of several subsections. The first two contain the categories where most problems generally fall. The final section discusses some <Replace - Your LMS> tools designed to assist you in minimizing concerns with classroom dynamics.

Technical Issues

First and foremost, don’t try to solve all of the technical issues that students might encounter in your online class since this can easily become overwhelming. Utilize the following strategies that will help ensure you have a smoother start to your course.

- Create a course orientation such as a Module 0 or a Getting Started module for students to review the first week of the course. This also gives your students the ability to add/drop without having missed important assignments.
- Not only should you have virus protection software, insist that your students do the same. This will protect everyone’s computers from harmful software.
- Provide and require students who are unfamiliar with online courses to complete the Knights Online Orientation, which helps teach students how to use the available tools in your course.
- Require your students to complete basic assignments that help you informally assess whether or not they know how to use tools (e.g., post an introductory paragraph, submit an assignment, complete a syllabus quiz).
- Download a copy of your Grade Book at crucial intervals throughout the semester to keep for your records.
- Electronic coursepacks or e-packs can be great additions to your course as they contain material that has already been created, but be sure to fully investigate all aspects of these products before you implement one. They might be easy to load and use yet some offer quite a challenge to organize and deliver your course. Thoroughly familiarize yourself with the content before adding one to your course. Be aware that some e-packs may require additional costs or technical requirements for you and your students or they may no longer be available after a specified time period. If you are considering using a commercially available e-pack, discuss it with your publisher first to obtain all the pros and cons of the product. When contacting your publisher, request the epack for Instructure's Canvas.

Visit UCF’s Pedagogical Repository to learn more about how one faculty member designed their course orientation module.

Student Management

Managing the online student is more or less similar to your face-to-face student counterpart. Although this particular generation of learners may be more adept at using technology, they may not necessarily be the most intuitive with online learning technology. For these reasons, utilize the following strategies to help minimize common online student concerns:

- Utilize virtual or face-to-face office hours. You can use the chat or conferencing tools in Webcourses@UCF to communicate with distant students. Keep accessibility concerns in mind when using these tools.
- Locate, advertise, and utilize campus support resources for students.
- Use a course ‘contract’ in the form of a quiz to entice students to read the syllabus, schedule, and expectations/policies.
- For students with disabilities, allow extra time or attempts for quizzes. (Webcourses@UCF Support can help you with this task.)
- Provide a student discussion board, generally called a student lounge or coffee shop, where students can communicate with each other for items not directly related to the course.
- Use the survey feature in Webcourses@UCF to save and collect frequently asked questions semester to semester. Publish the most pertinent questions and answers in a “Tips for Your Success” section located in your course.

Visit UCF’s Pedagogical Repository to learn more about how UCF faculty members designed their syllabus quizzes.

Student of Concern

The Student of Concern Form allows students, staff, faculty, and UCF community members to report concerning behavior exhibited by a student. If you are aware that a student is experiencing challenges or difficulties that concern you, please report the concern using the Student of Concern Form. The entire UCF community will benefit.

The following signs of distress should raise concerns. These may be behaviors that you observe or that are reported to you by coworkers, other students, or faculty, etc. If you see any of these signs within a student please submit a Student of Concern Form and provide some of the signs you've witnessed like the ones below:

Online Behavioral Problems

- Irritability
- Unruly online behavior/outbursts in chat/discussions
- Intense emotion
- Inappropriate responses
- Inability to communicate clearly
- Loss of contact with reality
- Written references to death, dying, or suicide
- Disconnection from classmates
- Preoccupation with gaming, social media, or online personas

Online Academic Problems

- Career and course indecision
- Excessive procrastination
- Uncharacteristically poor preparation/performance
- Many requests for extensions/special considerations
- Disruptive classroom/chat room behavior
- Excessive absence/tardiness/infrequent or no log in
- Avoiding or dominating online discussions
- References to suicide or harm to others in written/verbal statements or tests/exams

Interpersonal Problems

- Always asking for help with personal problems
- Dependency
- Withdrawing from social situations/online groups
- Disruptive behavior
- Inability to get along with others
- Complaints from others

Webcourses@UCF Tools

Analytics in Webcourses@UCF gives an overview of 4 areas of student performance:

1. Participation
2. Communication
3. Assignments
4. Grades

When entering Analytics, the initial view shows the entire class. You can view the individual student by clicking on their name.

Course Statistics shows the last date/time and a record of when particular student logged into the course. During the first week of class, it is strongly recommended that you check the course statistics area frequently to ensure students are logging into your course.

In addition to Analytics and Statistics, access and interaction reports are available. Access reports display the total number of times a student has gone to an area of the course.  An interaction report records all of the interactions between an individual student and an instructor throughout the duration of the course.

Academically At Risk and Interventions for Online Students

Online (W) students may wander off or forget to log in to their online course. A few will have legitimate reasons for not showing up online, others might not. Faculty should play a proactive role in detecting these ‘at risk’ students. Interventions should be developed to help the student regain their activity in the class.

When do you contact or ‘intervene?’ You have to decide that based on your course, assignments and how likely it is for the student to make up or recover. Weekly might be appropriate. We like to encourage student success and recommend you do the same.

Depending on the population of your online course, you might not be able to track or remember each student. Simple methods of student tracking might involve noting if they are participating in Discussions, Quizzes and other assignments.

The Canvas learning management system offers several different tools to detect a struggling student. First, from the Course Homepage, Click on View Course Analytics. This will give you an overall visual of all student activity in your course.

Second, to zoom in on an individual student, click on People from the course menu. Then you may select an individual student and view their Access Report, or you may view individual Analytics from that same page. These two pages will identify a struggling student and then you need to reach out and offer assistance to bring the student ‘back to class.’

Visit UCF’s Pedagogical Repository to learn more about how one faculty member designed their discussion postings to manage a large class size.

Optional Further Reading

Everson, M. (2010). What Does Michelle Everson Learn from her Online Students and other Insights eLearn Magazine Accessed by: http://elearnmag.acm.org/featured.cfm?aid=1609990

Roper, A. (2007). How Students Develop Online Learning Skills: Successful online students share their secrets for getting the most from online classes, focusing on time management, active participation, and practice. EDUCAUSE Quarterly (30, 1) Accessed by: http://www.educause.edu/EDUCAUSE+Quarterly/EDUCAUSEQuarterlyMagazineVolum/HowStudentsDevelopOnlineLearni/157435

TOPKit Sample Course was prepared by the University of Central Florida (UCF). This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.