100 Tips for Asynchronous Communication:
ANNOUNCEMENTS
1. Make the homepage of your course web site (or any other
page that is hard to bypass) an announcements page.
2. Take a digital picture of yourself (smiling!) and use
a digital editing program to shrink it and cut it out from
the background. Post this on the announcements page.
3. If you don’t update your announcements regularly,
people start to ignore them. Change your announcements page
every day if possible.
4. Use different fonts. However, if you use uncommon fonts,
make GIF images out of them so they’ll display properly
(otherwise, computers substitute common fonts for any fonts
not contained on a user’s system).
5. To make announcements more valuable, include valuable
time-dependent information (e.g., "Exam 3 grades have
just been posted")
6. Include "teasers" for upcoming class sessions
(e.g., "In Wednesday's class, I'll show you how you
can save $1500 on every new car you buy").
7. Include some personal touches like holiday greetings.
8. Write short comments about notable occurrences in web
areas (or class class sessions if it’s a web-enhanced
or hybrid course).
9. Occasionally, and when it’s warranted, praise
students.
10. Consider sharing responsibility for a "joke of
the week" (stress keeping it clean!).
11. Add useful free tools to your main page (weather, the
Google search box, etc.)
12. Many course management systems allow students to create
a personal homepage by filling out a simple form. Use these
repeatedly during the semester.
STUDENT HOMEPAGES
13. Have students create a biographical page introducing
themselves.
14. Students can post answers to Webquests
15. Find an online book and have students create book reports
on their homepages.
16. Ditto for movie reviews, as well as
17. Guest speaker reviews
18. A fun assignment is to search for and review “Best
of the Web” web pages.
19. Even more fun is to have students find and report on
“Web Pages that Suck” in your discipline.
EMAIL
20. Consider establishing a separate email account just
for class emails.
21. Alternately, if your email system allows “rules”,
set up a rule that automatically routes students’
emails into a folder (you may have to require students to
include a “code” word in the title of each email
for this to work).
22. If you use a course management system (like WebCT)
with an internal email system (i.e., sends mail only within
the course), make students use this email system---that
way, all emails will be easily kept together and will “zip
up” into your post-class archive of the class.
23. Always send sensitive information (like grades) via
private email.
24. Don’t send mass emails about poor performance
using the “CC” email field (where everyone can
see who else received the email).
25. You can use email to approximate a listserv by using
mass emails to send reminders to students about deadlines
and events. However, contact your systems operator to make
sure this doesn’t place too much of a burden on your
course management system.
26. When sending mass emails, when possible use the “BCC”
(blind carbon copy) rather than the “CC” (carbon
copy) field. That way, people can't see each other's email
addresses and potentially stigmatizing information isn't
made public.
27. After each major assignment, search your grade spreadsheet
for high and low grades, then send emails to high/low scorers
and those with dramatic changes in scores.
28. To greatly increase your capacity to send “personalized”
emails to students, develop a repository of “boilerplate”
comments. Then, when you send an email, add a few personal
details.
29. Search your web site statistics for most frequent visitors/posters,
and then surprise these “heavy hitters” with
praise and recognition.
30. Based on your web site statistics, send personalized
emails. It often shocks students to realize that you care
about their effort (or lack of it!).
31. Consider using Electronic Pen Pals: messages are exchanged
with peers in another school, state, or country. May be
done at individual or group levels.
32. Consider cross-cultural or cross-age pairings or groups.
33. Consider Peer-to-Peer Tutoring (aka electronic mentoring)
where email links students with others who provide one-on-one
content or technical assistance and guidance.
34. Consider email games (i.e., turn based gentle competitions).
A sample game is “Quack, quack, quack”, where
students find and nominate the worst web sites in your discipline,
you disseminate the nominations, and students vote to select
the “Best of the Worst”.
GROUP WORK
35. Isn’t it funny how most school assignments are
solitary while most “real world” work involves
collaboration? Include group work.
36. Help forge a group identity by asking group members
to come up with the group's name.
37. Create gentle group competition (e.g., be the first
group to complete a scavenger hunt). Don't make the prizes
all-or-none---just give the winning group slightly better
prizes.
38. Consider using more than one type of group:
• Base: support, encouragement, assistance (2-5 persons)
• Formal: project-based (2-4 persons)
• Informal: focuses on selected material to be learned
(2-4 persons)
• Consider using both ad hoc and permanent groups.
39. Consider giving each group member a role:
• Technical support person: responds to technical
questions.
• Recorder: writes minutes.
• Facilitator: checks that all members are contributing.
• Checker: assures all work is completed on time.
40. Consider Round-Robin Publishing: a group starts a story
with one paragraph and emails it to another group. Students
add a new paragraph to the story, and the story variations
rotate to the next group.
41. Rotate responsibility for an "observer report"
from each group.
42. At some point in the semester, meet with each group
member individually via email.
43. In WebCT and Blackboard, groups can have their own
bulletin boards, chat rooms, a way to email group members,
and a file sharing area.
DISCUSSION BOARDS
In an initial posting:
44. A few years ago, when use of discussion boards was novel,
any type of discussion was seen as valuable by students.
Now they’re more discerning and distain mandated discussions
if the purpose and value aren’t clear.
45. Clearly state the purposes of the discussions--e.g.,
How will discussion help each student to achieve the learning
outcomes? What are the benefits of discussion to students?
46. Clearly state the minimal number of postings expected,
per student, per discussion.
47. Provide exemplars of good vs. poor discussion messages.
48. Post rules, hints about writing style, and conventions
regarding use of the discussion boards.
49. Advise students of the extent to which you will participate
in or monitor the discussions.
50. Enforce guidelines for respect and responsibility in
discussion postings.
51. Guide individual students privately (via email) if
their contributions do not follow the agreed conventions.
52. At least in the beginning, use qualifiers (e.g., "it
appears...", "don't you think that...") to
reduce defensiveness. Also, use "I-messages"("I
believe...") in place of "You-messages" ("You
are...") whenever possible.
53. Use private email messages to encourage participation
in, and reinforce contributions to, the discussion boards.
54. Clarify misunderstandings or inaccuracies in postings.
55. Refer students to comments made by others in the class.
56. Occasionally summarize discussions in progress.
57. Consider bomb throwing--- getting a lagging discussion
started by asking controversial questions.
58. Consider an anonymous bulletin board for sensitive
topics (like instructor feedback!).
59. Require students to reply not only to your initial
message, but to the replies of other students as well.
60. Consider peer review of writing via the discussion
boards (it eases the logistical burden, plus no more stacks
of notebooks for the instructor to lug home!)
61. If you use group work, consider creating separate discussion
boards for each group in addition to the class discussion
boards.
62. Consider modeling how to facilitate virtual discussions,
then requiring student-led discussion. For example, using
a seminar format, students (individually or in small groups)
can be given opportunities to identify critical issues in
the lectures and readings and lead discussions related to
those topics.
63. Solicit topics for discussion both publicly (via the
discussion boards) and privately (via email).
64. Discussions should occur during a specified time frame.
For example, students may have two weeks to participate
in ongoing discussions, starting with the date of their
first posting. The conversations are then “locked”
so they still can be read but people can’t turn in
late work.
65. Once a discussion is closed, provide feedback that
1) summarizes the discussion and conclusions, 2) refers
students to enrichment opportunities, and 3) evaluates the
quality of the students' overall contributions.
66. Combat “free rider” behavior by setting
up discussions and group pages in such as way as to be able
to ascertain each student’s “hits” on
group pages and group discussions.
67. Combat free rider behavior by posting several types
of quizzes: one where each students ranks the group efforts,
one where they assign a rating to the effort of every member
of their team, and an essay where they can report commendations
or frustrations.
68. At the end of the semester, use searches to collate
each student's contributions to the discussion boards (overall
quality is easier to assess if all the messages are grouped
together). Make the resulting file part of the student's
electronic portfolio.
IDEAS FOR BUILDING COMMUNITY & PARTICIPATION
69. Take or solicit digital pictures of each student and
post the pictures on your web site. However, be mindful
of the overall file size of the page, and if necessary make
several photo pages.
70. If you use students’ names as file names, each
student's name will be displayed when a user's mouse "hovers"
over the person's picture. This allows for a fun “guess
the name” game.
71. Solicit unusual facts about students and use student
pictures and use them to create a weekly "guess who?"
web feature.
72. Bring a digital still or movie camera to document class
activities and events, then post the results on the class
web site (if the activity lasts long enough, you can even
post the photos before its over!).
73. Personalize your site by adding student profiles. Then
email each student with a personal note responding to something
the student said.
74. Require students to use homepages or discussions to
share personal experiences related to a class topic.
75. Give short surveys via the web site, and then report
the results.
76. Download the survey data into a spreadsheet like Excel
and use the quick-chart options to display the data in colorful
charts.
77. Enlist students' aid in deciding on virtual guest speakers.
78. Even though a virtual guest speaker appearance usually
takes place via a synchronous communication tool, cull the
best parts for an asynchronous “archive” page.
79. Host "events" rather than assignments (e.g.,
a poster session rather than a term paper).
80. Save time by saving your writing! It can serve as boilerplate
for emails in subsequent semesters.
81. Incorporate warmth into written text by including occasional
personal details. As long you don’t let them sidetrack
you, such details serve to humanize you.
82. Describe the setting from which you are writing (e.g.,
the weather, the music to which you're listening.
83. Use humor (but not sarcasm)! Use gentle jokes, even
corny ones.
84. If you require it, they will come. Make web assignments
mandatory (especially participation in communication activities)
a significant part of assessment and clearly communicate
this policy to students.
85. In addition to their contributions to public areas
like student homepages, group pages, and discussion boards,
build “buy in” by requiring students build parts
of the web site: e.g., picture gallery, event reports.
86. "Where's Waldo?"-type activities reward web
site participation.
87. Similarly, sneak actual exam questions into practice
tests and hide them elsewhere on the web site.
88. Make "value added" materials (e.g., study
guides, practice tests) available only via the web site.
89. Early in the semester, give surprise awards to frequent
users or thoughtful contributors.
90. Make it fun with doctored pictures (I use a running
gag where my intrepid basset-hound, Belle, and I are posed
in “Indiana Jones”-type situations, all courtesy
of Photoshop!).
91. With apologies to David Letterman, I like to use top
ten lists in a “countdown” format.
FLEXIBILITY
Offer opportunities to exercise creativity:
92. Give students some choice over when and how they complete
assignments.
93. Give students some degree of freedom to pace themselves—i.e.,
to go a bit faster or slower than others taking the course.
94. Provide enrichment: allow students to choose, through
links, whether or not to explore topics in more depth.
95. Provide remediation for students who are falling behind.
96. Provide assessments that students can take more than
once to improve their score.
97. Open closed discussions for a short period of time
near the end of class, but with more stringent requirements
for posting.
98. Whenever possible, post documents in HTML format. Students
may not have the necessary software to open other types
of files.
99. Remember that Rome wasn’t built in a day. Don’t
stress out---have fun! Just do a little this week, next
week, and so on and your course will steadily improve. Then,
years from now, you’ll look back and say “Wow---did
I really do all THAT?!”
100. Of course, this list isn’t comprehensive---add
your creativity and drop us a line to tell us about it!
