When disruption happens, students appreciate knowing that you’re “there”, so they not only understand what to do, but they feel connected and supported. Proactive communication also helps to reduce the number of questions you’re likely to receive and reduce student confusion.
Key Considerations
- Be in touch with your students as soon as possible, even if you don’t know all the details yet about how you are going to teach your course. Tell students how you will keep them updated about the course and how they can contact you.
- Let students know if your office hours are changing and how you will host them (we recommend MS Teams).
- Consider adding a course-specific FAQ page to your Brightspace course. This may help reduce the number of questions you’ll receive. Let students know where they can find this page (sending the page URL is the clearest way to communicate its location).
- Not all of your students may have access to reliable internet. Consider surveying students about their connectivity and other concerns. MS Forms is an easy way to create surveys. See this UVM Knowledge Base article for more information on how to create a MS Forms survey.
UVM Supported Communication Tools
Brightspace Announcements
One of the easiest ways to do this is to use the Brightspace Announcement Tool because they can scroll to see all the communications from you. See the Announcement Tool UVM Knowledge Base article for more information. Note that you can also send Brightspace Announcements as emails to students.
Brightspace
You can email your students using the class roster in Banner or in Brightspace.
In Brightspace, your class list is found by clicking Grades & Feedback or under Course Admin in the green navigation bar and choosing Classlist. On this page, you can choose to display all students’ names at once:
select a number per page (bottom of the list) that is greater than your enrollment count
select individual students by checking the box next to their name(s), or select all by clicking the topmost checkbox
select the Email option.
To review past emails you’ve sent from the course, click the envelope icon at the very top of the page, choose email, and click Sent Mail.
See the UVM Knowledge Base article about sending email in Brightspace.
Teams
The Teams video or audio call feature works well for private conversations with students, such as office hour meetings. During calls, you can also share your screen, which could be helpful for giving feedback or demonstrating solutions to problems.
See the UVM Knowledge Base article about Teaching with Teams.