Collaboration

Fostering communication among students allows you to reproduce any collaboration you had built into your course and maintains a sense of community that can help keep students motivated. It helps if you already had some sort of student-to-student online activity (for example, Canvas Discussions) since students will be used to both the process and the tool. Consider these suggestions when planning activities:

• Use asynchronous tools when possible: Having students participate in live video conversations can be useful, but scheduling can be a problem and it can be challenging to manage large classrooms. In such cases, using asynchronous tools such as Canvas Discussions or VoiceThread allow students to participate on their own schedules. In addition, bandwidth requirements for discussion boards are far lower than for live video tools.
• Link to clear goals and outcomes: Make sure there are clear purposes and outcomes for any student-to-student interaction. How does this activity help them meet course outcomes or prepare for other assignments?
• Build in simple accountability: Find ways to make sure students are accountable for the work they do in any online discussions or collaborations. Assigning points for online discussion posts can be tedious. Some instructors may ask for students to detail their contributions and reflect on what they learned from the conversation.
• Balance newness and need: You will need to balance the needs and benefits of remote collaboration. Learning new technologies and procedures might be counterproductive, particularly in the short term, unless there is clear benefit. Keep the focus on your lesson topic and less about the technology, when you can.