I disagree with this statement. I work in a hybrid course, so I have my online students for a resident portion of class as well. This way I am able to have a face to face conversation to those that need the extra help. They tend to respond a little better especially when given a little time in class (even if only for a few minutes). I try to work with each student with a level of compassion and understanding no matter the situation that they face.
I disagree with this statement. Right off the bat, there are at least two things an online instructor can do. First, the online instructor can email or call or send a text message to the student. Second, the online instructor can notify the student's program administrator of the student's non-responsiveness.
Jared,
I agree with your ideas. It is very important to try to reach all students through all means necessary to help them succeed.
Herbert Brown III
I don't know if there is little you can do, but you do have to have all the data available before you give up. I need to know what the student's challenges are before I contact them so I can have suggestions to help.
This situation is so frustrating! Thankfully, my school has excellent online student advocates, so if the student does not respond to me, then they might respond to the advocate. I think an online professor's job is to keep reaching out week after week, in as many different ways as possible, to try to reach out to the student.
Herbert,
If a student does not respond to my initial email or phone message, then I take two other approaches :
(1) have an adviser that is a male contact the student (some students have issues with specific genders or personalities)
(2) send something light comical and personal to lighten the discussion and hopefully provide a safer environment for discussion
Lauree Lee
If an online instructor does not respond to my offers to help I can always talk with the student academic advisor to see if he or she needs additional help. Sometimes the student is afraid to ask for help. I will make sure that all of my resources are available.
I do not necessarily agree with that statement. It is true that we are more limited because we are not meeting with the students face to face. The standard protocol is to contact the student‘s advisor in order to try and get some response. I have found that my directly contacting the student has worked well for me. I have contacted them on their personal email as well as their school email. My school has a form letter that we can send out. However, I try to personalize my letter. I will say that about 50% of my students respond back after my sending them a personalize message. I will admit that this a much more time consuming but I do feel that this personal touch lets the students know that I care even though we are not face-to-face.
It is very hard to force an online student to respond to your help. So I do agree with Mr. Brown's statement. I usually start out each semester (or quarter/session/module) with optimism that all students read the feedback. But by the 3 assignment I am fully aware of which students are and are not using my feedback. The one way to reinforce the necessary reading and use of the instructor's feedback is by creating a building assignment. This is where the use of feedback from one assignment is mandatory for a subsequent assignment. The university does this by allotting 20% of the students grade to be based on using the instructor's feedback. I have found this to be a very effective means in getting students to respond to feedback.
At one level, this is correct, as the old saying goes "you can lead a horse to water ...," but there is something to be said for persistence. If a student doesn't respond to a first or second request, there is still a third and a fourth, right?
John wise
John,
I certainly try to provide every opportunity to reach the students as often as possible.
Herbert Brown III
I disagree; I would engage the assistance of the student's academic online advisor in contacting the student to offer assistance with the class. If this strategy is not successful, I would reach out to the program chair to seek guidance in rectifying this situation. On occasion, students are in precarious situations that disallow them to continue their education momentarily.
There are many options an online instructor can take to reach this struggling online learner. Personally, my approach is calling the student, emailing the student and texting the student. Lately, we have implanted Facebook as a communication tool to reach the struggling student that has failed to respond to the previous means of communication. The Facebook account, must be and is strictly professional. The same contact information that is available to the student in the online environment is available to the student in the facebook account. This is not a means to engage with the student in any other way rather than academically, so no pictures are posted. Any requests from individuals outside of the course are simply ignored. I had suggested this some time back to the program chairs, but it isn't until now that it has been enacted.
AS an instructor in an online environment I can still provide the assistance and refer to it each time there is an assessment made. Just as in a ground classroom, if the student does not want help, in the end there is nothing that can be done other than make help easy to get to.
William,
There is a point that you may not be able to help the online or traditional student; however, we need to be aware that the online students may need a little more attention than traditional students to provide them the extra support and attention necessary to help the be successful.
Herbert Brown III
I certainly wouldn't give up on that student. If the student is non-responsive to my offer's to help I will likely go to the next step (when applicable) which would be to contact the student by phone to engage conversation.
Dr. Brown, I agree and disagree. I disagree because there is always a way to get in touch with a student if they seem to refuse your offer to help. Contacting student advisers or student advocates and submitting "at risk" reports to the college are another avenue for getting in touch with the student. I agree in some ways because no matter who contacts a student they eventually have to accept or reject the help!
I disagree as I feel you always have the opportunity to help until the student is dropped from your course. At our school, we have a process in place as an "early alert" form. This is a form that instructors complete which then get submitted to the students advisors to assist in the communication process. Sometimes students may feel more comfortable discussing certain situations with their advisor as opposed to their instructor.
I learned about the different learning styles, and how some of them can cause students to avoid participating. I do think there are steps we can take as instructors to reach out to these students, through e-mail, inviting them to live chat sessions such as IM, or even calling them and asking how we can help them to be more successful in class. Before we take these steps I don't think we can simply say there is nothing I can do.
There is typically something you can do to help. First you must take the time to gather information on the student and the particular problem. Then using that information plan an attack on the problem. Even if you only have a small amount of success in steering the student back on track, you've done something.
