T&L: Classroom Management

Teaching and Learning

Classroom Management

This module will address issues such as record keeping and communicating with your class. Teaching online could be a record keeping nightmare if you let it get out of hand. You could potentially receive thousands of messages from students via the discussion postings, responses to your announcements, and private messages. How do you save and organize all of this?

File Organization
It is up to you how "digital" you want to be in a course. It is not unusual for instructors to want to keep copies of student work for future reference but there are some advantages to using SpeedGrader while you are grading papers for the course. Using SpeedGrader is much more portable as you can review and grade papers from any computer or tablet at any time without losing your place. I know some instructors prefer to print out papers and make notes in the sidelines but you can do this commenting in SpeedGrader as well.

You will want to keep some documents on your computer or in your OneDrive space. We recommend that you dedicate some space on your computer to save and organize files related to your online course. You may want to set up your folder structure similar to this:

Webster>course name> term>

Then within that folder, you could have sub-folders such as students, expectations, quiz questions, additional resources, etc. You are able to download all of the student submissions that come in the form of word, excel, or pdf, though, if you use Speedgrader for papers that your students write, you do not have to download anything! More information on using Speedgrader can be found here : How Do I Use SpeedGrader? Links to an external site.

Grading
WorldClassRoom has a grade book built in for each course and you are encouraged to use it. This is area where students will be able to see the grades and feedback that you are providing on their assignments, quizzes, and discussions. The grade book is driven by the assignments that are listed on the Assignments tool.

You may want to create a document for each student or class to keep notes on their progress or discussion postings. Keeping track helps you to get to know your students – who they are, their experiences and environment, their style of writing.

Major information for the course
Take a look at the course you will be teaching to see what is included and what, in your view, might be missing in terms of how the course is run and your expectations. Write your important course information in a word document first so that you can spend some time composing and revising then link it into the course or copy and paste it into a Pages page. Writing the information in a word doc allows you to save it for future use in this course or another course.

Design Your Communication Structure
One of our Principles of Effective Online Instruction, Building Community, talks about the importance of communications and building your community of learners. There are a variety of ways to do this in WorldClassRoom and it is up to each instructor to design a communication that is effective for both themselves and their students.

WorldClassRoom has its own built-in messaging system called Conversations and it is labeled as "Inbox" in the global navigation area of WCR. It is recommended that you keep all communications from your students within the course in case you ever have to prove your interactions with a student and so the class emails do not get lost in your personal email. Let your students know this is your preferred method so they can be aware of how to reach you in the most efficient way. The Conversations tool will show you each conversation you are having with each individual student so that you are not reading their messages in isolation. If you want to make copies of these messages, you will have copy and paste the dialogue into word documents and store in the file structure that was mentioned above.

Plan how you will be involved in the discussions before they get started. You certainly do not need to respond to each student posting but you must be available to facilitate the discussion and answer any questions just as you would in a face to face classroom.

  • Do not respond to each post
  • Ask follow up questions
  • Be aware of the diversity of your students when requesting personal information

Announcements

Announcements are the go-to tool for providing dynamic information to your students. We recommend that you begin the term with a welcome announcement and then continue to create and deliver information to your students on a regular basis. Some types of information that you could include in an announcement would be:

  • Weekly overviews
  • Weekly summaries
  • Due dates or changes to due dates
  • Encouragement
  • Awareness of technical issues
  • Reminder of any out of the ordinary events or due dates

 

Common questions

  1. What can I change in my fully online section?
    You do have some flexibility in your course. You may add material to enhance student learning and to bring in your own expertise on the topics. You are encouraged to modify assignments and discussions, as appropriate for the course, but these will not automatically be carried over into the master course.(** see note below)
    You should not delete any content in the weekly areas. The content has been developed to meet the course learning outcomes as stated in the syllabus. 
    Instructors are encouraged to work with the mentor to see if changes can be incorporated into the master. You can also save your files in My Files in WorldClassRoom and then add them to future section.
    **Instructors in the Walker School of Business and Technology should not delete any Assessment Instruments that may be in the course as a part of the SBT Assessment Project. 
  2. What else do I need to consider when setting dates?
    Open the assignment when changing the dates to take a look at all of the settings. Ensure that the assignment is accepting file uploads, Turnitin is enabled (if desired), and the availability dates are consistent with the due dates.
    Due dates are viewed by students almost as soon as they enter the course so be sure to have them up-to-date on Day One.
  3. Can I just copy the changes from my previous online or face to face course into my current online course? 
    No, online course material must come directly from the Master course. This ensures a consistent, high quality experience for Webster University students.