Improving your online teaching

Jennifer Anderson Learning Skills Adviser Federation University Australia

At Federation University Australia, a regional university with campuses in Ballarat, Berwick, Gippsland and Horsham, the Learning Skills Advisers (LSAs) are used to conducting online consultations with ‘flexi’ students. Yet now that all consultations are online, we’re finding it much more exhausting. How do we explain this? There appear to be multiple factors at work.

In part, we miss the energy surge of face-to-face (f2f) student interactions, of cooperative engagement with study skills and knowledge needed to plan, develop and create relevant and interesting assignment tasks.

We’re also finding that some interactions take far longer, that we struggle to identify student intentions for contacting us. This may be because we need first to address their anxieties: those who chose f2f instruction must now deal with a 100% online environment; the learning for and about university in the same physical space with other students, tutors and lecturers is missing; and Moodle contains a seething mass of text, with vital information spread between multiple ‘hidden’ sites. For example, a lecturer hides a useful resource on ‘How to write the essay’ in the announcements section. The email students receive, 'I’ve posted it in Moodle', is reminiscent of a complex Easter Bunny hunt for the hidden egg.

In phone consultations with newly arrived international students from English as an Additional Language (EAL) backgrounds, the conversation fillers so necessary for meaning-making such as ‘Ah ha’, or ‘Oh, I see’, or ‘Sorry? What do you mean?’ are absent, resulting in communication breakdown.

LSAs from other universities ask why we’re not using video conferencing as the default. It’s because so many students have lost their casual jobs, so cannot afford high bandwidth connections. We also understand that many of our students share laptops with friends, and do not have desks or quiet study spaces.

No matter the communication mode – video conferencing via Skype, MS Teams or Zoom, or non-visual media platforms such as email or phone – many non-verbal gestures shared in real time communication are either not used or invisible. I use the word ‘shared’ because it is this sharing that facilitates a common under- standing. Research into the role of mirror neurons in building empathy and a shared intention may be of interest here.

Be extra careful how you word your instructions online: use dot point instructions and plain transparent English. Place any information about the assessment task in the Assess- ment section of the LMS. Create multiple opportunities to listen to the voices of the students, through written text and other media.

Encourage online student study groups, whether institutionally organised, such as PASS, or selfselected, and ensure both synchro- nous and asynchronous online op- portunities. Identify those students who are not digitally literate, or cannot afford digital devices. Always offer text-based information as a backstop. And be prepared to repeat key messages in multiple ways, over and over until some of our students can hear through their anxiety. •