Your Plan for Regular and Substantive Interaction

As we close the Online Course Peer Reviews for this academic year, let's talk about how two of our professional development opportunities can blend to make your courses shine - Quality Matters (QM) and the Association of College and University Educators (ACUE).

QM Specific Review Standard (SRS) 5.3

This post in the QM ACUE series highlights QM SRS 5.3, which is about providing a transparent plan for reliable engagement. Many of you may recall your regular and substantive interaction (RSI) training provided many examples from Daytona State faculty. Your style of RSI is very personal and may be influenced by your subject matter so where and how you explain your plan is your creative choice. A few common examples are adding statements about the following to your syllabi:

  • What is your preferred method of contact?
  • What is your schedule for office hours? (Remember, by appointment does not provide a predictable or regular opportunity.) Consider reviewing the Bookings with Me blog post for a new method to schedule time with your learners.
  • What are the benefits of your office hours (are there critical or peak times you would advise to reach out early)? (Fashant et al., 2020, p. 73)
  • What is the turnaround time for questions and grading feedback?
  • Will there always be personalized feedback on every activity, otherwise where can they expect to hear guidance on how they are performing?
  • If you have discussions, can learners expect you to actively reply in the overall discussion or only in the grading feedback after it concludes?
  • Consider sharing your communication plan for if something delays the usual turnaround time - a reminder that we are all subject to emergencies and unplanned circumstances and a little grace may go a long way to building mutual trust and respect.

These help set the stage for learners to understand how they can develop a rich relationship with you as their instructor and subject matter expert. As you may notice, this SRS focuses on the design side - the intended plan - rather than implementation.

Cue ACUE!

When you think of implementation, ACUE provides an opportunity to put the design into practice. For instance, the Designing Learner-Centered Courses (DC) implementation strategies include transparent grading and effective syllabi whereas Creating a Productive Online Learning Environment (LE) implementation strategies include establishing your presence and providing useful feedback. These go hand-in-hand with constructing an effective set of statements about how RSI will be provided in your course and establishing a strong instructor presence:

  • Online syllabus - good news, Simple Syllabus is your online syllabus that is public and mobile-friendly where you can begin communicating and building trust with students before the course begins (Pacansky-Brock et al., 2020).
  • Student-centered language - consider if you are using academic vocabulary that your students may not be familiar with (Nilson, 2007), and consider if the tone of your syllabus is cold and contractual or warm and motivational (Harnish & Bridges, 2011; Richmond, 2016; Saville, et al., 2010).
  • Regular check-in messaging - anticipate and address pitfalls or pain points and how they can receive support from you along the way.
  • Regularly respond in discussions - model your expectations with a post and reply from you in response to students' posts to foster increased engagement and satisfaction (Boettcher & Conrad, 2016; Fashant et al., 2020).
    • "You wouldn't start a discussion with a prompt and then leave the classroom." (Fashant et al., 2020, p. 74)
  • Personalized feedback - as the subject matter expert, your feedback is the critical difference to students' experience here at Daytona State as opposed to looking up content online.
  • Timely and actionable feedback - building and maintaining trust and motivation with our students includes demonstrating a reliable routine for their learning progress.
    • Consider sharing your academic journey, including tips on how you learned about your strengths and improved your weaknesses.

You may learn about each of the different courses in our upcoming June cohorts for Promoting Active Learning (AL), and enroll yourself using the Daytona State ACUE page. All full-time and part-time faculty are eligible, but there is a limit to the number of participants. If you have any questions, please reach out to the Faculty Innovation Center at 386-506-3485 or fic@daytonastate.edu.


Jasmine Checchi
Instructional Designer, Division of Online Studies
jasmine.checchi@daytonastate.edu | 386-506-4278
Online Studies | Faculty Innovation Center (FIC)

References

Boettcher, J. V., & Conrad, R. (2016). The online teaching survival guide: Simple and practical pedagogical tips (2nd ed.). Jossey-Bass.

Fashant, Z., Ross, S., Russell, L., LaPlant, K., Jacobson, J., & Hutchinson, S. (2020). Designing effective teaching and significant learning. Stylus Publishing.

Harnish, R. J., & Bridges, K. R. (2011). Effect of syllabus tone: Students’ perceptions of instructor and course. Social Psychology of Education, 14(3), 319–330.

McTighe, J., & Wiggins, G. (2013). Essential questions: Opening doors to student understanding. ASCD.

Nilson, L. B. (2007). The graphic syllabus and the outcomes map: Communicating your course. Jossey-Bass.

Pacansky-Brock, M., Smedshammer, M., & Vincent-Layton, K. (2020). Humanizing Online Teaching to Equitize Higher Education. Current Issues in Education, 21(2), 1-21.

Richmond, A. S. (2016). Constructing a learner-centered syllabus: One professor’s journey (IDEA Paper No. 60). IDEA. https://www.ideaedu.org/Portals/0/Uploads/Documents/IDEA%20Papers/IDEA%20Papers/PaperIDEA_60.pdf

Saville, B. K., Zinn, T. E., Brown, A. R., & Marchuk, K. A. (2010). Syllabus detail and students’ perceptions of teacher effectiveness. Teaching of Psychology, 37(3), 186–189.